Riffs on the Low Strings

A riff is a short phrase that repeats, usually played on the low strings, usually as single notes rather than chords. It is the part of a song a non-musician hums.

Riffs live on the low strings because that is where a guitar sounds heaviest, and they are usually short — two bars at most — because they have to survive being repeated forty times.

The tab below is a riff in E minor. Read it as a picture of the fretboard rotated: six lines for six strings, the top line being the thin high E and the bottom line the thick low E. A number is the fret to press on that string, and 0 means play it open, without pressing anything. Read left to right, one note at a time.

A two-bar riff in E minor

Low E string unless marked otherwise. All downstrokes, and let the open strings ring into each other.

e
B
G
D
A
E

--------------------------|
--------------------------|
--------------------------|
--------------------------|
--------------0--3--------|
--0--0--3--0--------0-----|

This track is heavy rock in E minor moving between E, D, C and A — the same notes the riff is built from, which is why it fits.

Play the riff through the whole track. It will not line up with every chord, and that is normal: real riffs sit on top of changing harmony and let the friction happen.

Heavy rock in E minor. Loop the riff over the whole thing.