Writing 'Bass riffs'.

[Oscar South]

Hey, I've for a good few years now left behind the concept of riffs, preferring to write in the context of following chords and using countermelodies, I've written some good riffs now and then by accident but I've decided I want to get back into riffs as a compositional tool. I can still remember all my old creative methods (the generic 'hear it in your head first' way, the 'noodle untill a happy accident occurs' method and the 'pick a rhythm and build up the notes a step at a time' route) so I'm going to re-explore those, out of interest how do all of you riff-writers out there find your own inspiration?

[The Funk]

95% of the time = happy accident.
5% of the time = hear it in my head first.

[Tait]

depends, i only really write songs for my band, and if my guitarist's written the song then i listen tyo what he's playing and use a combination of the build up the root notes and the hear it in your head methods. if ive written it most of the time its because ive just been messing around and something sounded good, so i decided to make a song of it lol. so happy accident there.

EDIT: forgot to add, my guitarist writes about 90% of our songs.

Edited June 2, 2008 by lwtait

[alexclaber]

They usually turn up when I haven't written something for a while or even done any practising at all, and often when I'm playing someone else's classical guitar not my own bass. I do seem to be quite prolific with them, probably coming up with enough riffs for a good dozen songs every year - I know I have an ever growing stockpile of songs waiting to be finished!

Some composing happens in my head before I go near the bass but often it's more the problem solving that happens there - how to transition from one section to another, etc. At the moment I'm putting together something in my head involving vocal/sax harmonies which I think could be rather cool. Need to sit down with the bass and work out what exactly is going on before it vanishes into the ether...

Alex

[cheddatom]

I'm almost exactly the same as The Funk on this. I sit down with my guitar, or my bass, or at my drums (have a fat smoke) and play away. When I play something and i'm blown away, I record it on my phone. Around 30% of the stuff I record, I would actually use when i'm sober, the rest gets deleted as sh*t.


I also "dream" around 5% of the stuff I write. This can be day-dreaming, but also more interestingly, REAL dreaming. This stuff is far more likely to be good - i.e I would use 100% rather than 30% of the stuff I record from day/dreams.

[Galilee]

I tend to hum riffs a lot, then I sit down to work them out on the bass and realise they consist of two or three notes. So I abandon them.

[The Funk]

[quote name='Galilee' post='211240' date='Jun 2 2008, 05:17 PM']I tend to hum riffs a lot, then I sit down to work them out on the bass and realise they consist of two or three notes. So I abandon them.[/quote]

The riff in Billy Cobham's [i]Stratus[/i] is only 3 different notes - and it's killer!

[thisnameistaken]

I come up with all my best ideas in the shower, usually start singing something and then a bass idea pops into my head shortly afterwards.

If I'm ever struggling to come up with an interesting bass part sometimes I'll record some ideas into a sequencer, and then shift them a fraction of a beat out of sync. That usually messes things up enough to get the creative juices flowing, and sometimes even produces a winner!

[Buzz]

In a similar vein, I often think of ideas of what I'm focusing on (not muscially related most of the time) when in the shower or on the bog, I suppose it's doing a fairly automated action allowing your mind to wonder a bit.

Conversely I think of lyrics when in bed. They always turn out to be fairly sh*t, and I've never written more than a few lines, but occasionally something nice comes once or twice a year, gets written down, then thrown out with all the other crap lines.

[paul, the]

Things get cool when I take my mind off the bass while playing. Best results when watching TV.

[foal30]

I've just started analyzing chords/ chordal function as opposed to all songs being "off the riff".

Pretty much it's a rhythm thing for me, the bounce or groove is first, then notes, then tone/sound.
I see dreaming is mentioned...um, it is possible to hit that creative part of your mind when your are wide awake with Bass in hand. It takes practice but can be done.

"Lost in Music" indeed.

expanding on the rhythmic thrust is whether the lyrics if any go with the groove. Sometimes I will tailor either item to fit the other. Emotion may also dictate the pace of the feel. Like getting the tempo way back can dictate final note choice, pretty much how blue or chromatic I'll get.

[budget bassist]

The guitarist in my band pretty much writes everything, so i don't get much creative input. Which i don't mind too much because i suck at writing riffs.

When i do write riffs though, i tend to copy the style of a certain song i'm listening to or have in my head and just build on that. a lot of the time i just noodle until i get something that sounds good.

[ashgeezer]

I find i can think better when i've had a few beers, i just strap on my bass and start playing anything at all, i usually get the ball and chains keyboard out and mess out with that then put some riffs to that, some of em are garbage but some turn out ok.

[alexclaber]

One thing that can be great about writing songs on the bass is that you leave things more open for the band. So in a song we're working on at the moment I brought in a verse riff, a chorus riff, a bridge riff, a solo riff, a turnaround riff and an outro riff.

The verse riff will be doubled by guitar in places but also have the guitar playing skanking/scratching over it JB style. The chorus riff is actually a four chord sequence but I've left everything but the root notes up to the guitarist (and he can always come up with inversions if he likes). The bridge riff goes through some changes but is actually a unison part with bass/guitar/sax riffing together (though I'm dropping a maj 6th from chord to chord, they're going up a min 3rd). The solo riff is a reinterpretation of the chorus riff's changes. The turnaround riff is another unison monster in odd time but we might only have two of us playing in unison. The outro riff is an odd time monster with odder time moments, that I expect will have some unison work but generally the sax and guitar doing their own thang.

Once the band has vaguely got the hang of it - usually a very quick process - we'll bang through it and I'll start making vocal noises whilst recording the sound in the room. Then I can go away and write the lyrics and sort out the vocal so everything meshes together coherently. It amazes me how the band can change the sound so much and bring so much inspiration into the process. This song started out as a somewhat dark weird little thing but as soon as they joined in it became reminiscent of Superfly then warping into 21st Century Schizoid Man!

Alex