FIVE WAYS TO… WRITE A CLASSIC RIFF

The chords and composing tricks that built rock’s greatest riffs

Our Top 50 riff list reads like a who’s who of the history of rock, with classic acts hitting the heady heights of, well, pretty much the entire Top 50 if we’re honest. Newer acts received far fewer votes by comparison. Perhaps it’s just a matter of renown; it’s just harder for younger bands to be as well-known as acts who may have been around for 40 or 50 years. Here we’re looking how those classic riffs were written. These aren’t exactly songwriting secrets. More, common themes and threads. Techniques and musical devices that can be recycled and reimagined when you write your own riffs. You get the idea, so let’s get started...

Guaranteed to rock, the E minor pentatonic scale allows you to make plentiful use of the guitar’s heaviest note - the bottom E! Of course, pentatonic riffs, unison bassline and heavy drum backbeat was a winning formula as far back as late 60s Cream and Led Zeppelin, but it’s still relevant today, with bands like Greta Van Fleet and Royal Blood making it their core creative approach.

The blues scale is the basis of classic riffs like Purple Haze, Scuttle Buttin’ and Johnnyb. Goode, which are all examples of melodic riffs. This one scale shape seems to contain an endless supply of riff ideas. In classic rock and blues, riffs are often based around the I and IV chord change - Am to D5 in the key of A for example. Both of these chords can be found within the A blues scale and it is helpful to view them as one and the same.

Our idea here should give you a feel for some typical E minor pentatonic phrasing. The 3rd, 5th and 7th frets figure highly, as does the open sixth string. Also look out for those quarter-tone bends.

We’ve mapped out the notes of the E minor pentatonic scale for you here. Only on the bass strings, of course! Riffs are in and widdle is out, remember, so keep it low and mean when you write your own riffs.

In this example, we start with a Hendrix-inspired string-bending lick, followed by some Billy Gibbons Lagrange doublestops. After repeating the opening lick, we change the to IV chord (D5), then finish with a flurry of notes ala Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan. All played within the confines of the A blues scale.

Look at the blues scale shape shown here. You can trace Am and D5 chords within it and indeed many more; try creating your own chord shapes from the scale and using the shape to write riffs which you can combine with them.