Community Challenge | 03

Write A Riff For Your Song

This week will be fun but still a challenge. Your goal is to write a riff for at least a section of your creation.This could be interpreted as loosely as you like. 

Here are a few ways to look at it:

1. Write an intro riff, then play a chord progression during a melody. If you don't feel comfortable singing OR you haven't delved into recording software, you could just write a riff followed by a chord progression in the same key.

2. Write a simple riff as a turn around/ending section of a chord progression. This could be as simple as Am Am Dm riff.

3. If you want to be more adventurous, you could write a chord progression with a melody over the top, then write a riff to replace the chords.

But what is a riff?
A riff is an incredibly vague term, which is great! It means this challenge might be based on your interpretation. Often the word "riff" is accompanied by another word to clarify it. For example, above I talked about an intro riff, a turn-around riff, a verse riff.

For an intro riff, your role is to take over the spotlight. That could be playing the melody the vocalist will be singing later in the song (maybe the chorus melody or part of it, for example)

For a turn around riff, your role is to (usually) turn attention away from the singer for a second or sort of let your audience know "we're going to repeat this section now" or "we're moving on to something new now."

For a verse riff, this could be thought of as a rhythmic figure that you play for each chord, kind of like a bass line. Specifically, you could write a bass line, but for guitar to play instead of chords! For example. You could play R 5 R 3 for each chord instead of actually strumming the chord and you'd be playing a riff instead of a rhythm part. If you're sticking to a set pattern per chord, I tend to think of that as a vamp, which is just a more specific term under the umbrella of "riff." But not everyone uses the word that specifically so watch out.