Any advice/info on how guitarists on this board go about writing decent riffs?

[The Grand Design]

Hey I'm Geoff, I live in New Zealand and I have been playing guitar for about 5 years now, I'm self taught. I play a Jackson DX10D and I was just wondering if any other guitarists on this board could tell me how they come up with decent guitar riffs. Is it simply trial and error or is there a certain way you approach the writing process to come up with something decent? Any info or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[TravisW]

There are a few ways I have gone about it. Sometimes, I get a riff running through my head and I have to hurry up and play it before I forget it. Sometimes, it comes from jamming with the band. Other times, I'll be noodling around on the guitar and find something that sounds kind of interesting. Listen to a lot of different music, and try not to force it too much. I'm self-taught as well, and have been playing for about...14 years.

 

[The Grand Design]

Okay thanks dude. That will help me a lot, just one question, when you say lots of different music, do you mean different in terms of style? e.g. Jazz, Classical etc.

 

[arcaneperseverance]

I think he means everystyle of music-excluding punk-And I would suggest too start playing the traditional music of the location where you live, and then combine that style into your music-although I cannot think of any traditional music from New Zealand-although according to the place where you live I would think "gospel" or some shit...And I suggest that you write lyrics about keeping New Zealand how it is and stopping more proggression(nationalism)-cause new zealand is one of the few beautiful places left on earth!!!

 

[The Grand Design]

Well I do want a variety but mainly something of metal inclination. Christchurch doesn't have anything gospel about it really, haha, it's just the city name. But yeah I'll talk to our bands singer about lyrics that are about keeping NZ clean and green.

 

[The Grand Design]

I have a Bach album on my computer that I have been listening to along with all the metal I listen to. My band is called Signs Of Life and I can't really say if we are any particular style of metal yet, because we are still finding our own sound. Right now we're sounding like a big mix up of In Flames, Opeth, Katatonia and a lot of other influences. We have heavy and mellow parts to our songs and so far it's sounding really good.

 

[TravisW]

Listen to any style of music that you want. Jazz, Rock, Metal, Country, Punk, Classical, Folk...whatever. For as much as a lot of metalheads hate punk, metal probably wouldn't have nearly the same velocity had there been no punk in the 1970's.

It's my opinion that metal that is only influenced by metal largely amounts to derivative crap. When you write music, you want it to be a sonic picture of what you're thinking---your vision, not somebody else's.

 

[The Grand Design]

Yeah, although making the music a sonic picture of your thoughts isn't always easy. Haha.

 

[TravisW]

It's one of those things that either is really easy or really tough. I think the harder I try to write, the poorer job I do of it. A lot of times, if you come up with a riff and have no idea of where to go with it, it helps to play something (anything) else for a while. Then go back to the initial riff and just fool around with it for a while, just having fun playing it, and you'll often come up with an idea of where you want it to go.

 

[The Grand Design]

Yeah I notice that when I'm just playing random stuff and not really focusing too much on what I'm playing I come up with riffs that are actually real good.