Music Post
If I had developed a riff that I wanted to to turn into a song, the first thing I would decide is whether or not the song has vocals, and thus a melody. Let’s assume yes. I would then decide if the riff would be combined with vocals/melody in some way or not. If yes, then I would nail down that part first. If not, then your as-yet-to-be-written melody would be the thing I would attend to next. I would develop the melody in such a way as to bounce off of, or compliment the riff. This is where your musicality and your creativity come into play. All factors that are to be considered when seeking advice on how to turn a riff into a song. All the decisions I have noted above are creative decisions that you as the artist would be in line to make. All I can do here is offer guidelines on How To Turn A Riff Into A Song based on the very many times I have done so. (See an extensive list of songs I have recorded one way or another HERE.)
Rather than sit and read about it, an even better demonstration of How To Turn A Riff Into A Song is covered through my Studio F YouTube channel video series where I detail the exact steps I took to turn my cool riff into the song I call "Gimme". You can listen to Gimme HERE. Anyway, the whole purpose of Studio F is to show how a song is both written AND recorded on a computer by way of fast-paced, info-packed videos on absolutely every aspect of how one would write and record a song on a computer—including how to turn a riff onto a song—as well as many other methods of writing a song.
In the video of "Gimme", a song that is in fact, based on a riff, and was a riff I of course turned into the song, I show how I come up with the riff; how I develop the riff; how I craft a B-Part from the riff; how I coax an intro and outro all pulled from the original riff. And then I show you how I arrange the various parts using the popular ProTools audio software to arrange the song; to create a scratch track, add tracks, all the way down to the final mix. I even have a section on how I wrote the lyrics. So it is a truly comprehensive answer to the question how to turn a riff into a song simply because that is exactly what I’ve done and I have detailed every step of the process in a series of 14 fast-paces, entertaining and informative videos.
Take a quick listen to the song HERE and see if you want to watch any of the videos HERE.
If you really want do see how to turn a riff into a song, what better way to do so than watch a video of someone who is really good it take you through the process from start to finish? There is no better way than with .