How to Turn a Metal Riff Into a Song (7 Simple Steps) 

Go Beyond Just Riffs and Create Songs with Metal Songwriter's Forge: metalmastermind.com/metal-songwriters-forge/

This lesson is the golden ticket in helping me be intentional. Proud to say the 20 year rut of playing randomly and unintentionally is over!

Thank you for this. As a rhythm guy who loves well written songs but has always had a hard time making riffs into songs without feeling clumsy or segmented this info is very helpful!

Yes! I have so many riffs, but what comes after the riff? This, now this is actually helpful!

playing guitar since 15 years and saw a lot of youtube videos about it, this one is one of the best i have to admit. well done.

I don't play metal, really never have, even though it makes up over 50% of what I listen to. But, being a musician that has played just about every other genre and non-genre in the field, I can attest that this is such a great common sense, enlightening video that gives direction and structure to any musical artist. It really just condenses everything for you and lets you unravel the parts in a context that matches where you are at in the writing process. This really works for a lot of different kinds of music. Great video for getting creative vibes flowing in a direction that produces artistic output!

Hi, I came across this video. Your channel is amazing! I'm already preparing to organize to attend all the classes. every time you think about giving up, remember: you've come far here in Brazil and you can go even further

I use to struglle with this when I was younger. Learning some music theory really helps thanks for this tutorial! I am writing an album currently and this gave me a few ideas. I have 10 songs so far! Keep it metal!

This is what I needed. Thanks from England.

Great video dude! Always good to see a member of the metal community step up to help future generations

Love how you explained this one Jason, very helpful and valuable information 🤙🏽🤙🏽

You're awesome dude. Thank you

Man you have no idea how much you have helped me(and I’d assume many more) to make it easier turning my life around.🤘🏾 much love

Dude, I’ve been doing part of this forever and always kind of hitting a wall afterwards. This info was the cherry on top that I needed. Thank you!

Thank you. Really appreciate what you are doing here. I see this as a first step for me to start writing. I will share once I have something decent enough for sure. Thanks again.

I'm glad I found your channel. Great video and very helpful.

I wish all my teachers were like you! Thankssss

Thank you. Liked and subscribed :-) you're great at describing the different steps.

Freakin awesome man. 42 year old metalhead and I’m coming out of a ten year writers block with the help of musicains/teachers such as yourself. Thank you for taking the time to make this video bro

You're awesome man. Thank you for this video.

I've always been good at coming up with riffs but have a hard time developing them into songs. This is awesome thank you!

Great songwriting system and super valuable, free resources!

This Video is one of the best I've seen in my 10 Year guitar journey. And I've seen a lot of them. Thank you! Liked and subscribed

This is so solid! Thank you so much. Your channel has really helped me!

This was helpful as hell thanks man🙏

You’re a good dude bro, thanks for the vid, very helpful and easy to watch.

Great lesson !! Thanks 🤘🔥

Since finally understanding Modes I write my choruses using a Mode. It's in the same key but changes the song up. Sometimes I use the same chords as the beginning but change the order up. Something I also do is take a song and find what key it's in. Next I figure out the progression for all the parts then use it as the base for a song.

Great video! Really well explained and informative.

Pretty good take on establishing the basic elements of song writing without confusing the target audience. Good video for beginners but also for seasoned musicians. Sometimes it’s good to do a “back to basics” approach when hitting a writing block. Less is more.

Great video! I came here because I love the arrangementsand structures in metal music. I write "electronic music" and the arrangements are very often, alot of the time, just boring. Thanks for some great insights. Inspiring

I love your videos bro, They are and have been so helpful with my guitar and bass playing and writing. Appreciate the content very much! Thank you! 🤘🏼🔥🤘🏼

Youre a great speker and teacher. Good luck with your channel and teaching endeavors.

Thanks for this video!

This is very helpful. Thank you.

This will help my writing process so much more for the band! Thank you, definitely going to have a teacher moment with the band🤘🏻

Thank you for this! This is totally new to me and I would love to be able to learn how to do this better. I've seen other videos and they are just too complicated for me. This break down is great. One thing though I personally don't understand is the components of a song like intro / coarse / ottro , etc , the actual flow of it all, as one song. I think with most modern song there is more to it than just that, but I Love this video! Thank you for making this, it was very helpful!

Great video ; simple but effective and on point.

This helped me so much thank you!

That’s awesome man. Good lesson

Very glad you mentioned galloping as a good guitar technique - I don't write songs and riffs much (as much as I would like to get into it) but sometimes when I'm playing stuff from some older thrashy bands with straight downpicking I add in my own gallops to give myself a little speedboost to keep going but it also just adds more variety and a nicer sound to the riff, definitely something I'll have to experiment with more!

Hey man, just found your channel here, wanted to say thank you for the videos, very helpful.

Thank you so much, this is really going to help. Like everyone else saying this video was good as hell. Definitely will watch more!

What a cool channel you've got here. Exactly my learning style too. Thanks.

Your video deserves thousands of comments and millions of views. Amazing job

It helped me a lot!

Ok, that's the Basics: The Tricky part is when the flow of your music changes the root note so you end in another scale and if you want to go back to your main riff it can be really difficult. In Metal usually also not so often the riffs are straight in Key. To get it more interesting you use a lot of chromatic, or add tones chords that are not in the Scale which becomes challenging playing a solo over that chord progression.

Awesome lesson!

Great lesson Jason 🤘🏻

Great video Jason, very useful and informative info here, it helps a lot, thanks! You're like the cool metalhead dad I never had haha 🤘

Now this is content to follow for sure this is where you stand out from the herd of guitarist online brother 🤘🏻🔥🎸

Thank you this is helpful!

Man what a great video, im not well versed in music theory but i dont need to with your explanations, i can just look up the bits and pieces i actually need to know such as the notes in a key. Absolutely great video and demonstration, earned my sub, like and respect 🤘

I consider myself and amateur guitar player and I just started creating riffs of my own, this video is perfect in helping me establish the steps in the song creating process 🔥 now if I can just find what recording software to use

Absolutely beautiful ❤️

love this guy

thanks dude, you really helped

Very cool stuff Bro!

Great video! I had a friend that had that same ltd guitar it was so much bang for your buck!

Very useful!

Man I love that classic hangar 18 shirt I use to have the same one when I was 6 but it was an all over print I miss it bad so glad to see a vintage shirt but remastered a tad and thinks fir the killer lick teaching

I have recently just stumbled upon your teaching tecnique videos and I have only seen a couple of them yet but I'm already thinking that they are going to be very helpful..., The problem I always seem to get snagged on is when it's time for me to switch the bad ass riff I have and make an awesome chorus with it ...

ive been playing guitar for 6 nearly 7 yrs and ive got 4k videos of riffs ive come up with but now with ur help i think its time to do something with em

Very very cool. I couldn't click fast enough when I saw the title. I'm a decent guitar player, but suck at figuring out how to make them into songs. Or, not that great and this is a great system. Love it. I'm more of a blues and 80s metal guy, but love almost all music. Digging that LTD ESP too man. I've been thinking of getting one of their new single cut EC series I think it is with stainless frets, etc. I want to try this, and I'm going to use some chord inversions, etc. I'm big on riffs though. The Christian band Stryker is great at riff songs to me. Great stuff man and I subscribed and look forward to hearing more of your videos. Thanks man for this video. I learned a lot ❤

Another cool thing volume swells for intro/outros also!

this video is amazing you are amazing

Love this.....

I haven’t been able to try this method out, but I’ll test this method on the hardcore songs I’m writing with indie sections and see if I can apply it.

Great clip man...like i read in the other comments i am not the only guy who plays since 20 years completely self taught. I come from a time with no YT and no internet so self taught was realy self taught. To be honest i was sceptic when reading the name "metal mastermind" i thought "oh yeah...another guy who shows off his godlike skills and telling me how easy this is"...but hell yes... You sir are on another level. Having the skills and the ability to tell them others in a simple and usable way. Thumbs up from Germany 🌍🤘Metal World Wide🤘🌍 thank you 😁

😮I never thought of this. This is so useful. And probably a great way to catalog tour riff. I'm sure there isna program that helps

Bad ass video!

Only needed 1:22 seconds to sub your channel. You can indeed write a damn good metal riff and song.

You make it look so easy arggghhhh...

I feel like this is solid advice. Typically I think as you get more and more into playing you end up doing these things in an intuitive sense. Especially if you're someone who delves into theory. Whether you're into writing advances harmony or just know the basics. The level of theory in this video is just the basics. However that bit of knowledge goes along way. (Knowing what notes and chords are in any particular key) I believe knowing a ton of theory isn't necessary to be a good artist. Although it doesn't hurt and can only help. But that's why I said it's typically an intuitive thing. Meaning once you have a riff, it's usually pretty obvious if you try to add another section an it doesn't sound great. Which is usually because stuff like modulating somewhere that clashes or something as simple as tempo. Modulation can add a great dynamic effect to a song. But it all depends on what effect you're shooting for. Most commonly people go up a 4th or 5th. But you have bands like Metallica who often modulate their verses and choruses up a whole step. In otherwords, they have a riff in e minor and play the riff more or less the same but rooted in F#. It just adds a bit of intensity to the song. Usually right before the chorus in Metallicas case. My advice, pay attention to the types of things bands do. Where do they modulate to? What feeling off effect does the modulation have? Do they switch to cut time for certain parts? Maybe the rhythmic feel is different.

Great Video! One small thing is the F# power chord is out of the Em key because it contains a C#. It can still sound good though.

Man so right 👍🏾

W vid thank you!

Thank you

Guitar world did and interview with Mark Morton of Lamb of God years ago. In it he talks about his “riff farming” process. Great key points from that in addition to the points in this video would have you pumping out songs

even if you might never read that comment: thanks for the tutorial :D makes writing songs drastically easier than i´ve done it before :D much love and stay heavy!

Sick video, really helpful!!! 🔥i'm wondering, in the beginning of the video when you play the first riff, how do you achieve that tone? pedals? amp?

Jason!!!! Yes!!!

I usually write a couple of riffs, and then smash them together

The way I interpret step 7 is like telling a story. A story in riffs.

Metal Guru 🙏🤘

Cant underestimate the immense utility of recording yourself. Because when you are playing, you just simply do not hear the riff as objectively as u can. Because you are in the moment focusing on your playing. Recoding yourself let's you step outside you own head so to speak and hear the riff / song / beat with your entire attention span. Some riffs are so fun to play that we get too biased by how it feels to play vs how it actually sounds, recording ourselves helps remove this bias.

guess the genre by nature of riff. Aggression, Dead, In control, Insane

that riff really remind me of creeping death

I got horrible grades in school...referring to your "I got a lot of Ds comment" but I've always been able to understand music and play music. Our brains just work differently and that's okay 😜

I appreciate you brother! Also I have a question, not related to this but might be a topic for a future video. Just bought a Jackson SLA6 barirone that suits better for downtuning. It came with emg active pickups, and Im not sure how am I supposed to feel about a battery powered stuff. Any thoughts?

I wrote a melo-death metal riff, i think this will help, thanks! +1 subscribe +1 like! I'll watch more of your videos, because all of your topics are good! 🤘🔥🤜🤛

thanks for ur teaching! it helps a lot!but u really scarys me

Finally a metal channel not purposed to sell you shit or draw you in with sex. This was fantastic!

your way is actually simple and easy to get but i think it would mostly apply to beginners bc once you get used to composing you wont be needing to sit and choose your key and notes writing will just come up naturally and you dont need to think that mch of theory

The II chord in minor is a diminished triad, F#dim in E minor

been searching for something like this since ages so thank you. Can u teach us how to cosntruct a MESHUGGAH basic riff taking 1/2 whole diminished or whatever u like...thanx in advance....am stuck in dissonance....i get the riff but then verse,chorus,bridge part eludes me.....

As a fledgling songwriter, I can usually come up with two parts of a song, but I always feel that the ending needs to go somewhere else, and that's where I struggle. I blame Tony Iommi!

BASED

You said they gave you a lot of Ds, i give you an A. Thanks a lot!!!

Thx for your efforts of making this tutorial. y You mentioned F# minor chord in your tutorial, however if I'm not mistaken, the intervals between such chords make them a F# diminished chord.