How To Turn Riffs Into Songs
4 Simple Tips
Embrace Structure
The first tip for turning riffs into songs is to use tried and tested song structures.
By using tried and tested song structures you have an instant framework to fit your riff into. This will get you most of the way towards a complete song and allow you to focus on what needs completing.
If you’re new to this then the best approach is to keep it simple, with a structure like:
Riff - Verse - Chorus - Riff - Verse - Chorus - Bridge/Solo - Chorus x 2 - Riff
This structure allows for multiple repeats of the riff, whilst minimising the additional writing that is required to complete the song.
This is even easier if you reuse the riff for the verse in a simplified way. For example you could strip back all the other instruments and just get the bass to play the riff. Or take out additional brief notes and articulations and reduce the riff to a skeleton.
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Put your riff on the scales
The next thing to do is work out what notes are in your riff. If you’ve composed the riff on the guitar and aren’t familiar with the notes on the fretboard you might need to look them up.
For example, imagine a riff with the notes : A E D G and C
I could have written this using the A minor pentatonic scale. But what if you wrote this without any scales in mind? And what other scales do these notes feature in?
There are many plugins, apps and websites that can help with this task. For example, you could try this website out : https://www.scales-chords.com/scalefinder.php
You can see that I’ve got a range of options for potential scales. This gives you a whole palette of notes to choose from to shape and colour your song or alter your riff with.
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The Clues In The Riff
You can look to your riff for more ideas for your song.
A common and easy thing to search for are chord notes.
Many riffs are built on arpeggios. This is a type of broken chord in which the notes that compose a chord are individually sounded in a progressive rising or descending order.
For example take the previous example with the notes A E D G and C.
The first three notes A E and D are the notes in an A sus4 chord. If you add the G then it becomes an A7sus4 chord.
If you want to hunt for chords hidden in your own riffs you can use the following website: https://www.scales-chords.com/chordid.php
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Make It Harmonious
If you play chords whilst the riff plays then you are harmonising it. This means that you are hearing a new selection of notes, which provides a different feel to the song.
You can think of each moment of a song like a big chord which all of the instruments and voices are contributing to. If you pause at any time and look at all of the notes being heard then you can work out what chord is being played.
The most harmonious chords to use are unsurprisingly those which contain the riff notes. Luckily this is something I showed you in the previous section!
You can look to notes in your riff that stand out. Change chords when these notes are played and it will highlight the importance of them and can add real drama. It also brings in some of the riff rhythm to link the riff and harmony.
Here are some chords from the previous riff notes that could be used to harmonise the riff.
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If you want to learn more you can click here to watch a YouTube video exploring these ideas.