Best way to remember riffs?

[Agileguy_101]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

The true bane of my playing life is how often I think of great passages of music when I am nowhere near a guitar.

F'n this.

I recently acquired an SM57 (mostly to mic myself at gigs and run through a small PA behind my drummer so he can hear me and the bass when the amps aren't pointed towards him) but I plan on using it at home to record my acoustic. Once I get a ****ty practice amp, maybe a Mustang 1 or something, I can start playing electric at home again. Right now, everything I have is at rehearsal space save an acoustic guitar and a project guitar.

We have a Tascam handheld recorder at band practice. A lot of our music is just borne of jams, so we record everything we do when we're not practicing old stuff so I can listen to it later and create full songs. Our newest track came from one of those recordings, and it KICKS ****IN ASS. I'm really proud of that one.

[kramersteen]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

A good mix of induced alpha waves and some muscle memory always helps. If i want to remember a riff or melody i write it into guitar pro. Its simple but works for me.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

its the same thing as being able to do anything else in music:
practice.

[Robbiedbee]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

If I can't record it, I have no choice but to play it over, and over, and over again until it becomes a part of my DNA.

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

If I can't record it, I have no choice but to play it over, and over, and over again until it becomes a part of my DNA.

I've never been big on recording stuff for future use, because it just seems to create a big back catalogue of ideas that never get reviewed. But i do believe in just playing ideas endlessly for days and becoming almost hypnotised by them. (this works for me because many of my ideas have unusal timings and i need the repetition to get the technique right to play them, so the long hypnotic sessions of playing them over and over serves two purposes ... getting my hands around what's required and drilling the idea into my mind).

I have always felt that if i can't remember a new idea over the first few days, it probably wasn't that good. If i do remember it, it's likely to be something that is worthwhile. Also, playing ideas on acousic is great, it removes electric tones and effects and strips things right down to the bone. If they can stand up like that, the ideas have legs and will survive.

[Rockstar216]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

I've never been big on recording stuff for future use, because it just seems to create a big back catalogue of ideas that never get reviewed. But i do believe in just playing ideas endlessly for days and becoming almost hypnotised by them. (this works for me because many of my ideas have unusal timings and i need the repetition to get the technique right to play them, so the long hypnotic sessions of playing them over and over serves two purposes ... getting my hands around what's required and drilling the idea into my mind).

I have always felt that if i can't remember a new idea over the first few days, it probably wasn't that good. If i do remember it, it's likely to be something that is worthwhile. Also, playing ideas on acousic is great, it removes electric tones and effects and strips things right down to the bone. If they can stand up like that, the ideas have legs and will survive.

This is true. Ive listened to acoustic covers of metal songs and some sounded beautiful. Since I don't own an acoustic I usually do it on the clean channel of my amp or do it unplugged.

[constant mesh]

Re: Best way to remember riffs?

I record much of my stuff, but my strongest riffs were always the ones I could play from memory the next day even though I have recorded it just in case. I used to record whole jams, now I only make short clips. I never had big problems remembering stuff that was encoded in my ear and mind years ago, but I suffer from forgetting something that is totally fresh too soon.

One thing that helps me whenever I'm in a hurry or just don't get it is to play the key notes/chords before the actual riffs (recorded of course). If you're into theory it's even easier just to lay down the scale or the mode to get a feeling for proper intervals and possibly chord progression. It might sound bogus, but what you play is what your percieve from those 12 tones in an octave we call music. One can clearly hear Jessica (TAB) in an A major scale, but some might just hear the boring DO-RE-MI crap they hated in school.