Zitat des Tages über Riffs:
If I sit down with an electric guitar, what's going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like 'Desperado.' You're not going to write 'Desperado' between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume.
Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.
Some of the best rock riffs ever written were by Jimmy Page, and I can't really name the songs, but some of the stuff he did on his first and second records is beyond brilliant.
Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.
I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.
I think Pantera is a type of band that has been documented very, very well over the years. With the past re-releases, we were fortunate enough to have old demos and stuff that never really saw the light of day. But Pantera was not the type of band to waste many riffs or many parts or songs.
I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people.
My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.
I started learning everybody's riffs, from Donny Hathaway to Jeffrey Osborne to James Ingram. That helped me create my own style of singing.
The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that.
I've always loved big riffs and chunky guitars.
Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'
There's fifty bands doing my riffs for ever and ever.
It's always a pleasure when you can compose guitar parts from a strong vocal and not just put the melody on top of guitar riffs.
I had a diary full of lyrics and whatnot and a little voice recorder of guitar riffs.
As much as I love heavy riffs, I like The Eagles, Neil Young, Elton John, Crowded House.
Words can have the same kind of magic as riffs can.
I really don't have an ear for pitch. I can't sing at all, I can't hum melodies and I can't write riffs.
Riffs are a repeating thing. They come back to you. Some of the things on 'Back in Black' were ideas we had knocked around on tracks before that: 'That bit - maybe we should take a chunk of that and slug it in here.'
'Kraken' is set in London and has a lot of London riffs, but I think it's more like slightly dreamlike, slightly abstract London. It's London as a kind of fantasy kingdom.
I play and I've played in heavy bands, but when I write for myself, I don't particularly feel like writing huge rock riffs. It just doesn't work for me and my voice.
