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Riffin’ is a free weekly video guitar lesson series by Nashville guitar guru Dave Isaacs focusing on the construction and development of killer guitar riffs. There’s a lot to learn in this series, so be sure to subscribe!

Video Guitar Lesson

A riff is part of the sonic signature of a song, and as important as the vocal melody or a soaring chorus in making a song memorable. In this series of videos we’ll look at what makes a riff memorable, and explore the different ways riffs are constructed.

This first video starts with intervallic riffs, specifically using the intervals of the perfect fourth and perfect fifth. This is a great place to begin, because you probably already know lots of riffs that are build on fourths and fifths. Any riff with sliding power chords is using the fifth as its primary sound.

A quick theory lesson. An interval is the distance between two notes. When we play a scale, we can number the notes in sequence from 1 to 8, and the distance from note one to note five is called a fifth. This is not only a relationship on the fingerboard but also a sound that’s probably already familiar…the next step is simply to name it – fifth – and recognize it when you hear it. Fourths work the same way, as do all other intervals. There are other kinds of fourths and fifths besides the “perfect” variety, but that’s a topic for another lesson. (“Perfect”, for the theory geeks out there, refers to the fact that the mathematical relationship between the frequencies of the two notes is an even ratio. Octaves are perfect intervals as well).

Fourths and fifths are so commonly used to create riffs because they’re easy to play. In standard tuning, the guitar is already tuned in fourths except for the interval between the third and second strings, which is a third. So when playing any other pair of adjacent strings, simply holding down the same fret produces a fourth. Add a finger to the higher string two frets up and you have a fifth, So the finger patterns fall very naturally under the fingers. In open position, you can play a fifth by adding a single note to the next higher-pitched string from an open string, two frets up. For example, adding the second fret of the A string to the low E produces an E5 power chord, which is a perfect fifth. This same pattern works to create A5 and D5….just as we discussed before, it only changes when we’re talking about the G and B strings. (In any position, a pattern that creates a given interval on two adjacent strings has to be adjusted when moved to the G and B strings – the higher note just moves up a fret).

All this can sound complicated until you start to play. I can almost guarantee that you already know riffs that use fourths and fifths…as I said, you just want to know the names associated with the shapes and be able to identify the different sounds. Watching the video will make it very clear.

To make your riffs memorable, try to make them singable: find rhythm patterns that stick in the ear and melodic shapes that are easy to follow. Remember, when we move a shape around the neck we’re just taking a sound – an interval – and either repeating it or moving it up or down. So let that repetition or motion create a melody. If someone can hum or sing it back on the first hearing, you’ve got a winner.

Of course, all this is only the beginning….we’re only scratching the surface of a very deep topic. So start exploring, and stay tuned for the next installment!

Riffin’ is a free weekly video guitar lesson series by Nashville guitar guru Dave Isaacs focusing on the construction and development of killer guitar riffs. There’s a lot to learn in this series, so be sure to subscribe!