Best way to remember riffs?

[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.