Riffin'

[Pundan]

Nice beard!

[core9]

Nice beard!

Thanks bro, had to make up for the lack of hair on top!

[El Zombre]

I don't trust myself not to blatantly plagiarize something, so jamming out song's worth of riffs is never where the riffs end up at. I usually let that settle then come in and invert this part, combine these other parts, etc... so that at least what might have started out as a rip-off of something ends up as possibly a rip-off of something else entirely.

I've had a couple of teachers who stressed coming up with your own organizing principles for music rather than relying on music theory. So rather than chording out harmonies or something, I was told to make much more abstract diagrams: loud part here, soft part there, this part is mostly rising, this part changes directions rapidly, etc. That was from a composition teacher. A free jazz guy suggested every time I jam, come up with specific rules for the jamming and try to adhere to it. That's harder than it sounds and I need to practice that a lot more, and often.

[clockwork green]

That's interesting. That's essentially the way I usually write songs or at least finish them. I might screw around with riffs and put them into categories like: building, dark intro, aggressive climax etc and then consider what other categories of riffs I need to complete a song.