Master Guitar Songwriting

I find that the most obvious way to write a song is to keep to a simple plan and then add to it as I go along. Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus or something similar usually works very well.

To start off, keep it SIMPLE! It is usually a waste of time writing lots of complicated music for your first song. Once you put the parts together on your first try it may sound like a big pile of notes with no substance.

The main thing you should put into a song is a Riff or Hook. This is a repeated part of the music that keeps the listener interested. All rock music has some kind of riff.

Rage Against the Machine are a band that mastered the use of riffs, not forgetting the masters of Rock - Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton!

Led Zeppelin’s song ‘Whole Lotta Love’ uses an amazing riff, used on the BBC TV show Top Of The Pops as the theme tune

Once you have written a good riff/hook put some basic chords around it. If you wrote a basic riff like in ‘All Right Now’ by FREE, the riff is made entirely of chords and is the basis for the entire song, you might not need to put more chords around it. Often the simplest ideas are the best.

Other styles of music, such as Metal, are more complicated. A lot of Metal bands use 2 or more guitars, one playing the riff and the other playing chords. Matching chords to riffs is very simple. If you haven’t yet learnt about keys and scales then using power chords and playing some of them on the same frets as the riff can make songwriting very easy. You’ll know if it doesn’t sound right because the notes will clash – unless that is the ‘dark’ sound you are going for!

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