New guitar player, stuck in the learning curve!

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barks62

New member
I started playing guitar back in December, and recorded a couple of songs over the past couple of months. I’ve attached both songs (one was posted in mp3 mixing clinic too, sorry for doubling up) for anybody that wants to listen.

I understand a little about chords and chord progressions, but nothing about how to write a good riff. And forget soloing; that’s pretty far off for me right now. Basically, my question is, what should I do to figure out how to write a decent riff? I’m a rock guy at heart, and I really, really want to write some good rock tunes, but when I sit down and plug in my mind goes blank. I end up practicing chords and that’s about it. I try to throw in some random notes sometimes but it all just sounds stupid to me.

Does anybody have any advice about how I can find some creative riffs in my playing? Any ideas would be welcome!

Oh, and feel free to let me know what you think of the tunes! Valentine is very simple but fun to play and, I hope, fun to listen to. The Picture is slightly more complex, and I actually like that one a whole lot.

Thanks all!
 

Attachments

  • 03 The Picture.mp3
    4.9 MB · Views: 10
  • 02 Valentine.mp3
    3.4 MB · Views: 38
You gotta get inspired. You gotta listen to riff based music and get some ideas. If you're into rock, Aerosmith and Guns and Roses are pretty friggin riffy. Deep Purple. Sure, they're dated and old, but so is riff rock.
 
Play along with music you like and that you want to 'sound like'. Practice practice and more practice. You've been playing for 5 months? Your calluses are still building!
 
This takes time.

Do you know any scales? Pentatonic maybe?

Listening to what you like and getting inspired is key, yes, but if you don't even know the building blocks to write a riff, nothing great is going to happen.
 
do you have a name yet? when I first got to recording i spent a lot of time working out band names for the sound I wanted to have - to get inspired. But anyway - you have only been playing for four months and recorded two songs and they sound cool. Do what the other guys suggested, jam along with bands you like. Play as much as possible. take a lesson or two. learn a couple scales.
 
Guns N Roses is old and dated?? You're killing me, kid! Lol, GNR is actually one of my favorite bands, I grew up listening to them (I'm 36) so I love their old stuff, but I actually like Chinese Democracy too. Anyway, I'll try to respond to everybody's comments since you all were nice enough to respond to me.

Greg: Your CD rocks! I'm a big fan. I do love the "riffy" stuff like GNR, but I also like bands like Blue October and One Republic. My problem is, every time I sit down to play I just end up strumming different chords and don't actually "play" much. I haven't learned many songs, though, and maybe that's my problem.

mjb: yes, my calluses are still building, lol. I've toyed around with music before, but never really "played' anything the right way until I wrote The Picture. I practice as much as I can but I feel like I don't know what exactly to practice. What scales and stuff like that. More on that in a second...

Crows: the only scale I've played around with was a basic blues scale. I've looked online for licks and stuff to learn, but every time I search for stuff it is either beyond my skill level or layered under tons of ads for "Learn guitar in a week" DVDs. That's what I need, though, to know what to practice. You got it exactly right, I don't know the building blocks to learn and therefore nothing is happening. I'm thinking pentatonic scale is the place to start? That always looks intimidating to me because there are so many positions. I'm always better at stuff when someone tells me how to do it, looking at the scale diagrams scares me into just practicing chords again.

chuck: no, I don't have a name yet, lol. Maybe The Barks62 Experience?? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I understand what you're saying about the band name inspiring you, but I wasn't really thinking in terms of a band, since it's just me. You're right, I need to learn some songs. I just started lessons, but due to financial constraints I'm not going every week so that will take longer than I want. I've had two lessons so far and we're mainly working on chord progressions. I'm hoping to get some scale exercises out of the guy next week, though. Oh, and thanks for saying the songs sound cool!

Thanks to all for the responses. I really appreciate it, and if anybody knows where I can get some solid information on practicing scales, I'd love to know where to look! Like I said, all of my searches have turned up either too much information or too many advertisements.
 
Just search the things on youtube you want to learn, there are plenty of online videos of people teaching various techniques, scales, etc.

If there's anything in particular your looking for, PM myself or someone else, I'll be more than happy to find a video that will help spell out everything very simply.

And if you have the funds and time, it is very beneficial to get a teacher starting out. Even just a month of lessons will be really really helpful to build a good foundation to start from.
 
I was just being stupid about the band name. When I first started we probably spent more time thinking up band names than playing. That was a long time ago, and I remembered it for some reason :-)
 
Band names are almost always stupid. There's only been a tiny handful of bands that I thought had a cool name.
 
Well I've only been playing a month or so - and I'd be very happy to be making music like that in 3 months. I'm impressed, keep it up :)
 
chuckduffy said:
I was just being stupid about the band name. When I first started we probably spent more time thinking up band names than playing. That was a long time ago, and I remembered it for some reason :-)
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I've written lyrics before, but never music. Many times I've come up with a title for a song, then wrote the lyrics around that, so fashioning a sound around a band name wouldn't be much of a strech, lol. As a side note, those lyrics never turned out that great...
 
Whaleblue said:
Well I've only been playing a month or so - and I'd be very happy to be making music like that in 3 months. I'm impressed, keep it up :)
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Thanks, man. I did have a head start because I have a very talented musician friend that taught me a good bit about recording, but nothing about playing. When I started doing my stuff this year I at least knew how to plug in and get a decent sound. Now if I could just learn how to really play!!
 
Greg_L said:
My project name "Gregor the Terror" has personal meaning. My dad used to call me that when I was a kid. :)
Click to expand...

That's cool :-) Didn't mean to suggest that there was anything wrong with your current moniker by the way... I saw a post where someone called you 'teh gerg' and thought about it.
 
chuckduffy said:
That's cool :-) Didn't mean to suggest that there was anything wrong with your current moniker by the way... I saw a post where someone called you 'teh gerg' and thought about it.
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No, I didn't take it that way at all. Just giving the explanation behind the name.

People have been calling me "teh gerg" for a long time in here. I don't even remember how it started.
 
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