Write A Riff

A riff is essentially just a melody. As usual, for melody writing lessons, check out MTM 17, 18 & 19for melody making basics.

Generally, when I think of a riff, I think of an intro riff like in MGMT's Kids or The Black Keys I Got Mine but a riff can also be used in place of (or alongside) the chords in a song, like in the verse of the Beatle's Daytripper, or as a riff/chords combo like in Seven Nation Army.

There are other uses for riffs, but try to focus on this type of riff for this exercise! Generally, a riff used for an intro or as a chord replacement has simple, memorable phrasing. If it gets too fancy or the phrases get too long, it might not have that anthemic effect. Also, this is a great opportunity to try a phrase scheme like ABAC or AABC or ABCC.

As usual, your riff can be an on-the-fly 8 second phone recording or part of a full fledged, multi-layered song recording in your DAW. Whatever you have time for. Whatever doesn't stress you out. The idea is to have fun!

Write something sparse

Sometimes I write a challenge involving a specific music theory concept and sometimes I write a more vague challenge. This one is in the second camp.

The dictionary definition of sparse is "having widely spaced intervals" but that might seem too specific to music so lets define sparse this way:

Sparse music:
1. gives room for empty space
2. favors utility and simplicity over ornamentation and "extra" notes

Ways to approach this challenge (you could focus on one or two or all of these things)

Tonal sparseness:
In tonality, sparseness could mean vagueness. Like, you could barely provide enough information to figure out what key you're in. For example, the guitar could play just roots, or roots and thirds. Or if you're playing bass on your track, the bass could play roots and the guitar could just play fifths or thirds and fifths. If you're sticking to just guitar, you could think of spread out chords and only playing the minimum number of strings possible.

Rhythmic sparseness:
Instead of strumming the entire time, you could try strumming once at the beginning of the measure. Or doing something like ::root strum root root root:: where you're keeping rhythm with just the root note and occasionally (maybe once a measure?) revealing the chord. This might be a fun opportunity to mess with a pedal tone (keeping the same bass note going with different chords over the top) as well, since it keeps things sparse too.

Aesthetic Sparseness:
You are welcome to explore your own ways of being sparse, wether thats a guitar tone that feels sparse, lyrical content that feels sparse, or some other part of the song that feels sparse. If you've got other ideas, go for it!

Write something in the key of Eb Major

You can write anything you want! Sad, happy, weird, folk, rock - I don't care! As long as it's in the key of Eb Major, anything is welcome.

As usual, keep in mind that what you write can be really fancy using a DAW or full blown recording studio OR you can write a partial, half-baked concept that takes 5 seconds to play into your voice memos on your phone. I'll gladly accept both extremes and everything in between because this isn't about performance, but about being creative.

Along with the audio of your creation, please write a little explanation of what you've written and why you're convinced it's in the key of Eb.

Post your creations to THE COMMUNITY FORUM

All you need to know is:

A) how to make an Eb major scale (Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb)
B) how to turn that scale into a set of chords

I = Eb Maj
ii = Fm
iii = Gm
IV = Ab Maj
V = Bb Maj
vi = Cm
vii° = D°

From there you can write a chord progression, and create a melody over it if you like.

For those of you who want to get a little fancier (and maybe apply some of the things you've learned from the first Community Song Analysis) I'd happily accept some mixolydian modal stuff in your Eb Major composition.

Write a Minor i - III - VI - V progression

This is a classic progression. You can hear it in a lot of songs. Here are a few:

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley (Cm - Eb - Ab - G)
If You Want Me to Stay by Sly and Sly and the Family Stone (wait for the song to get going, you'll hear it) (it's not tuned to A440, but if it were the chords would be Bbm - Db - Gb - F)

Here are the rules for this challenge:
1. Use this progression, in order, in one section of your song.
2. Whatever you write has to be written after reading this post.

The first rule means you can't play i III V VI or III i VI V instead, it's gotta be those four chords in order! However, if you wanted to write something that went something like:

i III VI V
i III IV IV

that would be ok! As long as you're including one complete set of i III VI V

For those of you who might be new, let me do a little breakdown of these roman numerals:

Lets take the key of E Minor

Scale first: E F# G A B C D E

If you remember the order of chords in a minor key, it's minor dim maj min min maj maj so:

I = Em
ii° = F#°
III = G
iv = Am
v = Bm
VI = C
VII = D

These are the chords in E Natural Minor, but the chord progression we're using for this challenge has a Major V chord (you can tell because it's UPPERCASE)

Major V chord means we're in harmonic minor territory. So the scale gets the option of a #7 and while that can have an effect on other chords in the key, the main chord effected is the V chord.

So now, instead of Bm = v, we've got B = V, and since it's the V chord, we can make it a dom7 so B7 = V7

The basic triad version of this progression is: Em(i) G(III) C(VI) B(V)

If you want to add 7's to each chord it's: Em7 Gmaj7 Cmaj7 B7

If you need a refresher on this stuff, check out Music Theory Monday's first few lessons.

Your creation can be the equivalent of a scribble on a napkin, something you did quickly and recorded on your phone, or a full song. As long as you follow the rules, your creation can be as sloppy an hastily recorded as you like. Perfection is not necessary. You could even just pick a key and play this chord progression to make sure you understand the assignment. But if you want to write a full song, you're more than welcome to do so!

Pick any previous challenge!

To be more specific:
You could pick a previous challenge that you missed when it was first posted, or pick a previous challenge that you feel like you could have done better or differently.

If you haven't tried a community challenge yet, you could pick one that looks the easiest, the most interesting, or the most fun to try! I strongly encourage anyone who hasn't tried a Community Challenge to participate in this one, since you've got a lot of options!