Heavy Metal Riffing

The riff is a powerful thing. In heavy metal, riffs are the difference between a standstill audience full of yawns and jittery legs, and a head banging, crowd surfing, mosh pitting, idolizing audience.

So what goes into heavy metal riffing?

First off, you need to take a look at your playing style. Are you a speed demon or a lumbering monster? Are you tuned low or are you tuned standard? Are you a linear player, or do you like to explore your bounds?

These questions will better help you to understand which techniques are available for you when writing riffs. If you like playing slow, heavy, doom inflicting riffs, then chances are, tremolo picking is not the technique for you. Likewise, if you play fast and furiously, dissonant chords may be more a disservice than anything else.

The fact that heavy metal is such a broad and unique music style, there are countless techniques which you can employ within it. That being said, just like when writing a guitar solo, don’t feel the need to add all of your techniques in a single riff. Just like a guitar solo, a guitar riff needs a focus and a purpose. If you really enjoy legato, try adding a string of pull offs mid way into your riff. If you really enjoy trill picking, try playing a chord followed up by some faster picking.

Riffs should fit hand in hand, and work well with one another.

This means that your sad song about the death of a loved one probably should not include a riff that resembles a circus tune. That is, unless your loved one was a circus performer, and in that case, by all means, it should fit perfectly.

For riffs to fit hand in hand, there should be no harsh contrast between them. This means that riffs should be built using similar chord properties and keys. If you want to make a transfer from a major key to a minor key, do it gracefully by using the major key’s relative minor. If you want to use a chugging open note palm muted riff with single note accents, to suddenly burst into a G Major chord.

While there aren’t necessarily rules in heavy metal, it is about common sense; if it sounds odd to you, the listener will hear it twice as odd. This means that you need to be careful about chord usage and note usage.

You want everything to flow, like delicate river of notes, note choke upon itself like a dam. Riffs should flow into one another, and so should notes. If you jump from your first fret on your low E string to your nineteenth fret on your high E, you are eliminating the flow in exchange for extreme contrast. While sometimes this may work, most often it does not.

As with any music style, take notes on your favorite bands. Write down what you think makes their riffs so great, and try to implement those things into your own writing. While you don’t want to copy their work, you may want to emulate their style and form. Keep an open mind, but do it with an open ear as well.

Check out this video for some of the best riffs in metal playing that you can learn too...