In this column, I’d like to talk about guitar playing as it relates to songwriting. And as every guitarist knows, it’s all about the riff!
All great riffs have that instant allure that immediately captures the listener’s ear and attention. This is true in every style of guitar-based music. Songs like (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Purple Haze and Walk This Way are all great examples of the power of the almighty riff.
I wrote a song called Let It Burn for our 2017 album, Like an Arrow, that is built from a simple, catchy riff based on an open G chord. It all started, as is often the case, during a soundcheck. I was playing a Fender Telecaster or Esquire, and I said to our late drummer, Brit Turner, “Hey man, play the ‘train’ beat!”
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I began playing Figure 1, which became the main riff in Let It Burn. With my fret-hand in a 3rd-position G chord shape, I begin by repeating the low G root note in a syncopated, punctuated rhythm, followed by oblique bends and releases on the G and B strings.
In these bends, the note on the G string is bent while the note on the B string remains stationary. These bends are followed by single-note riffs based on the G major pentatonic scale (G, A, B, D, E).
We jammed on that for about five minutes, setting up the “runka-runka” feel of typical Chuck Berry-style rock and roll. I then went home and put the verse section together by singing over the G5 – G6 rhythm part. As shown in Figure 2, I moved from the rock and roll figure to a ringing C/G chord, and then back to the runka-runka part.
This is how I began to put the lyrics and melody together, and a song evolved from the initial riff idea. This prompted me to map out the first half of the verse section, shown in Figure 3.
The alternating G and C/G chords in bars 1-5 led me to the D5 – C5 – D5 in bars 6-9. At that point, I felt that it’d be great to bring in some kind of harmonic twist. When it comes to mixing rock and roll with the unexpected, in my opinion, the three of the greatest bands are Rockpile, NRBQ and, of course, the Beatles.
I thought, “What would they do?,” and came up with the musical curve ball shown in Figure 4. Starting on the relative minor chord, Em, I arpeggiate the chord and then chromatically drop (descend) from the E root note to D#, D and C#, resulting in the progression Em – D#aug – G/D – A9/C#.
The verse section then wraps up with a return to rock and roll in Figure 5.
All of this set up the chorus, and I now had my story; the protagonist in the song’s lyrics had had enough of this town and wanted to see it in his rearview mirror, and, preferably, on fire, so the vocal line is, “Let it burn!”
Figure 6 illustrates the end of the chorus section, which balances the rock and roll approach of the D5 – D6 chord movement with a heavier Bb – F figure in bar 2, which then brings us back to the intro.
Now that all the elements were there, I had to put on my arranger/producer hat and give the song some order and structure and sharpen the picture so that it would work as effectively as possible. And herein lies the balance between initial inspiration and a completed, fully realized song.
