Monday, January 1, 2018

Blog 2: Riffs

What is a Riff?
In the book Learning To Play the Guitar, a riff is "a short, catchy, repeated phrase that grabs the listener's attention and draws them into the song" (Capone, 30). Riffs are pretty much an essential to rock songs and "no decent rock song is complete without one" (Capone, 30).

Below are examples of some riffs that I'm sure many of you will recognize.



Queen - Another One Bites The Dust



Black Sabbath - Iron Man

These two riffs are super easy especially for beginners because they are played on the sixth string (the lowest string). Reasons being that "low riffs are generally more effective than high ones and no tricky string jumps are involved" (Capone, 30).


DNCE - Cake By The Ocean

These riffs were literally no trouble to learn and I enjoyed playing them. Hopefully as my skills grow I will be able to play more difficult riffs.

Riffs are very easy to master. They are also a great start to jam sessions when played with friends!



4 comments:

  1. hi Emily! I loved the song selections! I am interested in knowing how playing the cello helps you learn the guitar? Is the sheet music similar? From my own experience i have learned that playing one instrument is a gateway to mastering many other instruments.

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    1. I'm glad that you like the song selections! I think knowing to play cello helps me with rhythms and moving my fingers quickly when playing guitar. The sheet music is completely different. While cello has notes, guitar most of the times has only letters.

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  2. Emily, your explanation on rift have got me as a musician knowing much more about music in general. Was there skills that from orchestra class transfer over to help you to play the guitar?

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    Replies
    1. That's great that this blog was knowledgeable for you. Some skills from orchestra that helped to play the guitar would be finger placement and knowing how to read music.

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Post 5

So, I’ve been trying to play this song, Dixie, that I mentioned in my last blog entry. For this song, I started by playing the melody in my...