How to Write Guitar Riffs: Create and Play Great Hooks for Your Songs

by Rikky Rooksby

Overview

Countless great songs are based on riffs—catchy guitar phrases that repeat until they’re seared into your brain forever—or snappy chord sequences as memorable as any melody. Riffs get people excited, whether they are musicians or listeners. Advertising agencies use riffs on television, internet videos, and cinema trailers. Riffs sell concert tickets, guitars, and downloads. Youtube is full of guitarists playing riffs.

This book now in its third and updated edition digs deep into the world of the guitar riff, identifying 30 distinct types and illustrating them with reference to 150 examples: from Howlin Wolf to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Chuck Berry to Limp Bizkit, the Kinks to the Strokes, Black Sabbath to the White Stripes, Coldplay and Kings of Leon. The book includes 56 tracks of audio, illustrating all types of riffs covered, plus notation and TAB for 40 original example riffs composed by the author. In the book you can

• trace the connections between riff types and the scales, modes, or chords from which they’re drawn
• learn the guitar tips and arranging techniques to get the best from your riffs
• read an exclusive interview with Led Zeppelin and Them Crooked Vultures bassist John Paul Jones, a multi-instrumentalist, writer, and arranger with 50 years experience in riff-based music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493061099
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/01/2021
Edition description:	Third Edition, Revised and Updated
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	422,797
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rikky Rooksby is a guitar teacher, songwriter/composer, and writer on popular music. He is the author of How to Write Songs on Guitar (2000, revised 2009, 2020), Inside Classic Rock Tracks (2001), Riffs (2002, revised 2010, 2021), The Songwriting Sourcebook (2003, revised 2011), Chord Master (2004, revised 2016), Melody (2004), Songwriting Secrets: Bruce Springsteen (2005), How to Write Songs on Keyboards (2005), Lyrics (2006, revised 2021), Arranging Songs (2007), How to Write Songs in Altered Guitar Tunings (2010), and Songs and Solos (2014). He has also written fourteen Fast Forward guitar books and transcribed and arranged over forty chord songbooks of music, including The Complete Beatles. He has written entries on rock musicians for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and published interviews, reviews, and transcriptions in many UK music magazines. He is a member of the Society of Authors, Sibelius One, and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Visit his website at www.rikkyrooksby.com for more information.

Table of Contents

Preface to the third edition 7

How to use this book 9

Introduction 11

A brief history of the riff 16

Section 1 Interval-based riffs 23

Semitones

Tones

Octaves

Perfect fifths

Perfect fourths

Tritones

Thirds

Sixths

Mixed intervals

Section 2 Scale-based riffs 74

Pentatonic minor

Blues scale

Pentatonic major

Major scale

Mixoiydian

Aeolian/natural minor

Dorian

Lydian

Locrian

Chromatic scales

Section 3 Chord-based riffs 132

Pedal notes

Drone notes

Arpeggios

Major chords

Minor chords

Suspended chords

Triads

Inverted chords

Unusual chords

Section 4 Techniques for playing riffs 173

Section 5 A masterclass with John paul jones 205

Section 6 Example riffs 214

Index of songs 259

Index of artists 267

Acknowledgments 271

About the author 272