I don't want you to play me a riff that's going to impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play. — Ozzy Osbourne
Every cool riff has already been written by Black Sabbath. You're either playing it faster or slower or backwards, but they wrote it first. — Rob Zombie
I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk. — Stevie Ray Vaughan
Rock & Roll is feeling, and after you know most of the basics ... chords, rhythm, scales and bends ... getting that feeling is just about the most important aspect of playing guitar — Eddie Van Halen
I instruct you to be the obeyer,
A rhythm recipe that you'll savor,
Doesn't matter if you're minor or major,
Yes, the Tribe of the game, rhythm player,
As you inhale like a breath of fresh air — Phife Dawg
You should do what we do, stack chips like *Hebrews*
Don't let the melody intrigue you (uh-uh)
Cause I leave you, I'm only here
For that green paper which lead you — Jadakiss
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks. — John Lee Hooker
In my live show, it will feel like I'm making up everything as I go, and a lot of it I do. I riff with the audience and see what happens. — James Murray
The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion .. the tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind — Jeff Beck
Tony Iommi - the undisputed king of demonic heavy rock riffs. In this area, no one had never surpassed him. — Ozzy Osbourne
Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris? — Frank Zappa
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. — Miles Davis
In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator. — Colin Greenwood
Generally my songs are just some riffs slung together as an excuse for a guitar solo. — J Mascis
Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all. — Steven Tyler
There's fifty bands doing my riffs for ever and ever. — Santiago Durango
I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time. — Scott Ian
Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff. — Carl Reiner
When I need to nail that riff to the cross, Marshall will always provide the hammer! — Dan Hawkins
No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer. — Ethel Waters
I have this tendency to take a little bit of questionable knowledge and riff on it. — George Saunders
Led Zeppelin is just a bunch of stupid idiots who wrote cool riffs. — Chris Cornell
Guitar Riff Quotes
To me, the hook of the riff is what makes a great guitar recording. It's the backbone of the whole song. When you have a strong riff, it's the rocket fuel for the track. — Dwight Yoakam
Scotty Moore plays one of the first really amazing riffs in rock history on Heartbreak Hotel with Elvis Presley ... it was dangerous, it scared everybodys parents, which was part of the attraction then - as it still is now... it totally blindsided me and made me want to get a guitar and do that. — Roger McGuinn
A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by. — Barry Mann
All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar. — Ian Anderson
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. — Wes Borland
I don't want to hear from a band that pretty much sounds like another band. Oh I've heared this riff before, or I've heared these words that everyone is saying. I want to hear new poetry, new guitar riffs, new drum-beats, new sounds. Then I'm really interested. — Gordon Raphael
I didn't even write the lyrics down. I got in the booth, I put down a little guitar riff and the idea I had was it was going to be really simple, I just want it to be all about the lyrics and I just literally sang the lyrics. — Benji Madden
Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong." — Mark Stevenson
The vocals are the very last thing I do. So, it's kinda the opposite: with country. it's singing and guitar first, but with rock, I worry about the riff and music, vocals last. — Hank Williams III
It was Scotty Moore's guitar riff [in "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You"] when he was doing The Steve Allen Show that got me into rock music. — Elton John
I have encountered in this world riff-raff and good people. I lose. I win. I defend myself when I am attacked. I take when someone has taken from me. But I beg you to believe me; I have never done an act of espionage against France. Never. Never. — Mata Hari
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. — Kathy Acker
The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation. — Anne Rice
Excuse me while I light my spliff, Good God I gotta take a lift, From reality I just cant drift, That's why I'm staying with this riff — Bob Marley
Everybody knows that Black Sabbath started everything and almost every single thing that people are playing today has already been done by Black Sabbath. They wrote every single good riff... ever. — Rob Zombie
Interspirituality is the world music of religion; borrowing, fusing, blending and bouncing rhythms and riffs off one another not to create a homogenized spirituality, but to birth a radical new sound embedded in the ancient and timeless silence. This doesn't impact or deepen my life-it is my life. — Rami M. Shapiro
The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures. — Jimmy Page
I really wasn't needed... Just straightening up riffs, that's all. Just two guitarists doing it instead of one. — Jimmy Page
Once upon a time . . .” “In the beginning was . . .” That’s the way it always starts off. Every story, gospel, history, chronicle, myth, legend, folktale, or old wives’ tale blues riff begins with “Woke up this mornin’. . . . — Steven Tyler
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. — Billy Corgan
Even though there's these songs and whoever the hell put it in the internet, if there's any good riffs in them, we raped the songs and put in the new ones. — Kerry King
The focus of my playing is the groove, and every time I find a new rhythm, I find I can write a bunch of new songs. Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently. — Stone Gossard
The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea. — Carl Hiaasen
If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I'll be lucky. I'm not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it's hard to find time to deal with them. — Jello Biafra
It's got big riffs and really it's a rock and roll album. I think Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver fans will relate to that — Scott Weiland
Those dogs of democrats and liberal riff-raff will see that we're the only chaps who haven't been stultified by the ghastly period of peace. — Karl Marx
When I was younger I would have told you it was my genius, but now I don't believe that for a second. Music just comes out of you, it flows through, it's weird. If you think about it intellectually, how does someone come up with two hundred riffs over their life time? — Tracii Guns
My biggest influences were 1980s punk and metal. Metallica were my biggest influence because they were good at everything - riffs, energy - but with such an ear for melody, it was hard not to get pulled into it and become a fanatic. — Corey Taylor
You would find in a lot of Zep stuff that the riff was the juggernaut that careered through and I worked the lyrics around this. — Robert Plant
Best trumpet: Mike Vax, an alumnus of the Kenton Band, who plays every style with a bright cutting edge, throwing in bop riffs here and there. — Herb Caen
Just understand that the end began long ago We got here just in time Look All the squares in the sidewalks were already there All these strangers have more money than you do All the good riffs have been taken And everyone is so scared Murder is commonplace I don't even flinch at the gunshots outside my window I feel lonely without them — Henry Rollins
Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together. — Chad Smith
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. — Mike Gordon
One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from. — Johnny Rivers
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. — Roscoe Mitchell
Even back then I really didn't enjoy playing chord changes, riffs, and solos when I was young. The only thing I enjoyed playing were these Robert Fripp-type double-picked loops that no one wanted to hear, including me; I just liked playing them. — Kevin Drumm
As a species, we're always seeking out authenticity. We're dying for authenticity. We smell it immediately, and we also smell even the slightest riff of somebody who's not completely true to who they are. We have that ability because, as a species, we have organized around stories. We tell them and we subscribe to them. — Jonathan Tucker
I don't play a lot of instruments so when it comes to the song writing process I don't have a lot to do with that. A lot of times it's just acoustic guitar and a small riff that produces a song. Ultimately you want to write a song that people are going to enjoy and that you love to play, most importantly you have to write it for yourself first. — Barry Kerch
In Conclusion
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