when you come up with a riff that already exists...

[whitedamp]

...do you keep it anyway?

I was messing around with my guitar and wrote this heavy riff for a song, and when I showed it to a friend he said: "Dude... it´s the riff from 'Laughing In The Hiding Bush' from Bruce Dickinson".

Indeed, it is almost identical. Many of you must have been through a similar situation, coming up with a riff just to discover it was on a song by Metallica, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Slayer, Megadeth, AC/DC or any group of long hair people that have been recording riffs for living on the past 20 years.

So, do you keep it on your song or throw it away?

 

[Chryst Krispies]

Depends how much of clone it is... sometimes if you pepper the background with shit. the riff won't sound as copied.

 

[Wolfeman]

I wrote the intro riff to Seasons in the Abyss. It was almost identical. I played it every time I picked up my guitar for about the first 2 years of playing. Then I discovered Slayer, and I couldn't fucking believe it....

 

[AudioPhile777]

My problem is the opposite...

I'll write something, record it and do nothing with it and then months or years later, its on Machine Head's The Blackening...

I can't tell you how many times that has happened... more then 50 times for sure... ridiculous.

 

[-J-]

If I came up with it on my own and never heard their riff - I keep.

If I think I subconciously copied it from something I do own- I'll keep the basic shell, but change it up a bit to make it unique.

A bigger problem I have now is after 19 years of playing, I find myself stealing my old riffs and not realizing it for awhile. Not exactly, but different keys, similar phrasings, etc. I chalk it up to "fuck it."

I just posted a riff that sounds like a combination of one on Testament's Gathering (don't know the name) and Overkill's "Fatal If Swallowed" off Taking Over. I don't really care. My shit's barely heard let alone commented on.

 

[Metal Overload]

i wrote a riff once, and then discovered that was a Hammerfall riff. didn´t keep it, but one song from my band has an almost identical riff from "message in a bottle" from the police.

 

[colonel kurtz]

if papa roach can get away with ripping off that one maiden riff, then anyone can do it

when it comes down to it, if i write something my own and find out later that someone else has already gone there, i'll probably keep it i really like it...unless it's so ridiculously close that it'll just sound lame

 

[midget donkeys]

You could try playing thre riff over a totally different beat, that can totally chagne its feel up.

Or try layering a harmony over it, then keep the harmony and throw out the old riff. Then you could harmonize your harmony and keep coming up with out there stuff.

I read that advice by Marty Friedman in a magazine a long time ago and it is actually very usefull for coming up with stuff.

 

[kev]

if papa roach can get away with ripping off that one maiden riff, then anyone can do it

when it comes down to it, if i write something my own and find out later that someone else has already gone there, i'll probably keep it i really like it...unless it's so ridiculously close that it'll just sound lame

It wasnt just one either lol

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Happens all the time, and often I don't realize it before it's recorded. A while ago I almost totally ripped off the verse from In Flames' Bullet ride, realized it a couple of days later and thought "fuck it, the riff fits there perfectly and at least it's copied from a killer song" and left it there. With the amount of music in the world, you're bound to copy a riff every now and then without even noticing it at first.

 

[Skinny Viking]

Hmmmm lets see...

I wrote the outro to Overkill's "Gasoline Dream" about a year before WFO came out ... that pissed me off

I was struggling for 2 months trying to find the right chord progression to bridge two parts of a song I was writing and loving, only to discover after I finally DID get the perfect combo of chords with a little catchy melody I had just reverse wrote the main parts of Bad Religion's "Generator" .... that was not a good day

most recently I have discovered that I've completely lifted a major section of Hotel California ... at this point I don't even care, I'm counting on the fast tempo of the tune to conceal it

anyway, if it sounds good and you can maybe throw some kind of sweetener into the parts, keep them, just try to twist them up a little so it doesn't sound like you're as lazy as me

Cheers!

 

[if6was9]

Arch enemy are seriously guilty of this- can't count the number of riffs and sections they've totally ripped off other bands. Even read them in an interview saying they steal stuff but change everything else so no one will ever know, but we do!

i've done this, really annoying when its something you've never heard before or gets released well after you wrote it.
I've seen some of the few bands i've recorded do it too- like a friends band of mine who'd a whole harmony section from a maiden tune off the first or second album- i mentioned it to them and they denied it. then they heard the maiden one and totally re wrote the section- it was uncanny!

 

[Metal Overload]

Arch enemy are seriously guilty of this- can't count the number of riffs and sections they've totally ripped off other bands. Even read them in an interview saying they steal stuff but change everything else so no one will ever know, but we do!

Hey, I hear you!!
i know i´ve heard the chorus part for "nemesis" the lead part in the background while the lirycs says "one for all, all for one..." but don´t know where, and a bunch of other archenemy riffs, but they make them sound really cool.

 

[abyssofdreams]

I once had a really, really nice riff idea in my head, recorded it and was blown away for how catchy it sounds...then....3 months later, "The Gathering" was released and I couldn't believe my ears to hear the exact same riffage on Riding the Snake....I was really disappointed they had this idea too
To answer your question, if it's a very obvious riff or melody and played maybe even in the same tempo then I tend to not use it after all.
Though I'm pretty sure every existing riff in the universe has been played at least once anywhere...

 

[beyond dead]

this happens to me with lyrics. mostly lamb of god. i swear randy steals my journal

 

[Amberience]

Man.. I know what you guys mean.. I wrote the entire Godless Savage Garden album by Dimmu Borgir when I was liek, 8 yrs old.

 

[FULLMETALSPEEDO]

Chimaira did it to me with the opening riff to "The Flame". Almost the exact pick pattern. Song got scrapped.

 

[Zuranthus]

it's happened to me with a lot of things, music, inventions, stories, movie ideations
it's like the muse is going around scattering ideas all willy nilly & if you're not the first one to put it out you get screwed

 

[Metaltastic]

Man.. I know what you guys mean.. I wrote the entire Godless Savage Garden album by Dimmu Borgir when I was liek, 8 yrs old.

Hahaha, a regular anti-christ Mozart And that's especially impressive considering that album is a compilation of stuff from different parts of their career

 

[TeamOmega]

it's all about context. how does the riff fit into the song? how simple is the riff? how many times has it been copied before?

i'm sure there's a billion bands by now that have copied a meshuggah riff, but at the same time i'm sure a lot of those bands don't sound anything like meshuggah when you add all the other instrumentation in.