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Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 24 2011, 04:42 PM

I never considered myself a very good heavy metal riffage player, due to the fact I was hardly using it in my playing. However, it's very important to practice your palm muting and riffing chops.

How good are you at riffing?

What is your approach when practicing/coming up with riffs?

Posted by: JVM Jun 24 2011, 05:40 PM

Not quite as good as at solo improvising, usually I'll start soloing with some arpeggios or single note patterns and double stops, but as I get into it I begin to incorporate more chords. I'm getting to the point where I can throw chords out and do chord melodies though, and power chords are of course quite easy to riff with. Palm muting is pretty good, picking is good enough for what I want to do usually. I think I'm going to practice improvised riffing right now!

Posted by: MonkeyDAthos Jun 24 2011, 05:42 PM

not that bad me thinks, i can do tornado of souls riffage relaxed and master of puppets but only at 190-195 atm.
my main goal on riffin' is training dinamic!

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Jun 24 2011, 08:29 PM

I consider myself really good, I just enjoy rhythm a lot. I play a bit of drums and I also think about odd time rhythms all the time in my head and also interesting ways of rearranging a 4/4 normal beat. Polyrhythms as they call them...

Technique wise, I just learned all of Metallica's repertoire. Why? because I loved their music too much...still sometimes to this day

Posted by: Sinisa Cekic Jun 24 2011, 09:02 PM

For what interests me - I know enough

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Jun 24 2011, 09:34 PM

As Daniel said, I am in love with rhythm as well to me, being groovie is more important than a lot of other things, so, yes, I can say that i can play polirhythms, divide a 4/4 beat in unusual ways and things like that. I love riffing in general - can't always do it as spontaneously interesting as I would like to, but, with a little work it always comes out right!

Posted by: thefireball Jun 25 2011, 06:53 AM

Yeah, riffing has come natural for me. I can adapt to new rhythms fairly well. But I almost always play in 4/4, so I'm kinda limited in that respect.

I recently learned a couple of more rhythms from listening to my favorite band, RED. It was hard to learn at first, but I also had the benefit of watching their YouTube lesson from the guitarist himself.

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Jun 25 2011, 08:20 AM

Very good mate! I like the tone very much! I also like Red

Posted by: Rated Htr Jun 25 2011, 11:04 AM

Same here, at least in a metal context

Posted by: zen Jun 25 2011, 12:30 PM

No matter how good one thinks he/she is.. There is always a new challenge waiting to test you (within the same technique).

Ivan, I can handle simple metal rhythms but working on developing the stamina for faster ones and also for odd time rhythms.
I don't practice them that much though. Only through songs I jam and cover.

But yes, I absolutely love rhythm guitars.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 25 2011, 12:48 PM

Those are some great thoughts guys!

It may seem from this discussion that the more advanced your rhythm playing becomes, more evident is breaking away from regular 4/4 timing and creating more elaborate patterns?

Would you consider this true? If not (or not entirely) - what was the direction and way of progression in your riffing voyage?

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Jun 25 2011, 01:33 PM

Well, it depends, I for one am not the adept of complicating things just for the sake of it if something asks to be complicated from itself, it's just gonna come out that way, but I would never try to incorporate something complex just because I want to showcase something.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 25 2011, 02:33 PM

Please forgive me if the impression was that as more advanced playing becomes, it tends to get complicated. This was not the intention.

The thing that I was curious about is to learn through what kind of steps does the riffing evolution goes through with players that have made progress with this technique. For example, starting with simple powerchords, then adding component here, or here, as time goes by. Hope it makes sense

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Jun 25 2011, 03:09 PM

Hey Ivan! Don't worry mate, I never looked at the question in that way for me this process starts from hearing a certain riff in my head. After that, I lay down a drum track and start playing around with different combinations in that drum track and adapting the riff to it or viceversa.

I takes a little while, but the product is more important than the time taken I guess

How does it work for you?

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 25 2011, 04:47 PM

Very similar way mate. Creating riffs out of something I'm singing during the day, something catchy. I just sometimes need to "snap out of it", remember the riff that was there, and write it down (often harder then it looks because I'm drifting most of the time and don't have that great memory )

Although during the recording process, some alterations occur, so it's never certain how it will sound in the end. Sometimes it comes out good, sometimes doesn't. I've destroyer lots of cool riffs with poor drum programming in the early days of my composing voyage. Opposite to that, I've come to make some very cool ones by accident, while having one riff idea, programming drums, and recording something completely different on top of the drums. So, there are no rules, but it's basically very similar process.

Posted by: thefireball Jun 25 2011, 06:38 PM

Cosmin, I wonder it you could do some lessons in the style of Red or Skillet?

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Jun 25 2011, 06:51 PM

I'm happy with my riffing technique nowadays but it has been a weakness in my early days... I dedicated too much time to solo techniques and not too much too riffing so then I had to balance that...

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Jun 25 2011, 09:35 PM

HA! Sure I'd love to do that!

Posted by: thefireball Jun 26 2011, 02:26 AM

AWESOME!