Gear and techniques for writing guitar riffs – the essential guide
It’s a great feeling when your guitar playing moves away from learning your favourite songs and riffs to coming up with your own. Better still, is sharing those ideas with bandmates or other musicians in a jam/rehearsal setting and hearing them in a brand new context – often resulting in fresh inspiration.
But what do you do when you’re writing guitar by yourself? Some people are blessed with the creative vision and skill to visualise a fully-formed song from the outset, but many of us need some form of accompaniment to help us hear the big picture.
In this guide, I’m going to present a series of techniques and tools that I’ve found useful as a solo composer. We’ll be looking at both free and paid tools, so that you can find an approach that works for you.
Before we dive in, it’s important to remember that writing guitar by yourself does get easier with practice. My early ideas were super simple, and while I still lean heavily on many of the tools highlighted in this guide, sometimes a song comes out fully-formed. When that happens, it’s important to embrace it and not mess with it too much. Many of the world’s greatest songs just poured out in a single sitting with little to no additions.
Our favourite techniques for writing guitar by yourself
Rip off your favourites
Sensationalist headline aside, I do really recommend this technique. I’ve taken rhythms, chord progressions and riffs from artists I love and turned them into something completely different that feels like an authentic representation of my style. Your influences may be very obvious in those early days, but the more you play, the more those influences become a footnote of your songwriting and playing style.
Write all the time
You can’t force creativity, but the more you write, the more you hone your writing skills and ability to construct solid ideas when inspiration strikes. Just hit record on whatever device you’re using and play. Not every session will be fruitful, but that’s OK. Your creativity is like a muscle; the more you use it, the more effective it will be.
Don’t be confined to one guitar
I’ll caveat this by saying I spent the first six years using a single electric guitar and your creativity is by no means affected by the number of guitars you own. However, if you’re fortunate enough to be able to own or at least experiment with different guitars, it can unlock a lot of ideas you’d never consider.
In my 20+ years playing, my guitar collection expanded from my Fender Strat to a Cort M600, to a Squier Bass VI and finally a Jackson JS22-7 Dinky. With each successive guitar, the ideas that poured out whilst playing were ones I hadn’t considered and/or couldn’t work on the previous guitar.
You might find that exploring extended range guitars unlocks new creative paths like me or inspiration may strike when switching from electric to acoustic (or vice versa), or exploring other string instruments like mandolin, gottan or cittern.
Find passionate players that speak to you
What really helps me out of a creative slump is being reminded why I love guitar. Loading up YouTube and checking out the latest ‘Thick Riff Thursday’ from Nick Broomhall, seeing what silliness Dean Lamb’s up to or hunting down an interview with my favourite artists on the Garza Podcast never fails to inspire me. That’s before you add in official guitar playthroughs, rig rundowns, production tutorials on how to sound like ‘X artist’, etc.
Will every video turn into a new idea? No, not necessarily. But it keeps me engaged in that world, so that when I do pick up my guitar, there’s inspiration ready and waiting.
Our favourite free tools for writing guitar by yourself
Best for ease-of-use: Voice memos
Voice memos are an invaluable tool for guitarists, be they solo composers or in a band, and pretty much every one of us has one in our pockets. Record your idea, then connect your phone to a pair of headphones or a speaker and you can overdub lines or write lead parts.
Voice memos don’t even need to involve your guitar. A melody or rhythm might come to you when you’re away from home, so recording a quick voice memo is a great way of retaining that idea and exploring it when you’re reunited with your guitar.
Best for efficiency: Video recordings
The major downside, at least in my experience, with voice memo recordings is that I don’t always remember how I played something, especially if the idea is quite old. By filming your ideas on your phone, you can clearly see what you’re playing. If you’re using pedalboard effects, filming the settings on your board is also really helpful so you can dial in the same tone(s).
The caveat here is storage space, as videos will fill up your phone’s HD much faster than voice memos. A free Google account comes with 15GB of free cloud storage, so you can backup your ideas without fear of losing them.
Whether you choose voice memos or video recordings, I recommend devising a naming structure (key, chords, vibe, etc.) so that when you’re browsing through all your ideas, you can pick out the one you’re looking for quickly and easily find ideas that can be paired together to flesh out songs.
Best for computer-based composition: Tracktion Waveform Free
If you’d prefer to demo ideas on your computer, a free DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Waveform Free is super useful for writing guitar parts by yourself. With unlimited audio channels, built-in FX, third-party audio plugin support and video training resources, this is such an amazing tool and a great way to develop not only your songwriting skills, but your recording and production chops, too.
You can even combine this with your voice memo recordings and drag-and-drop them into Waveform and loop them for overdubbing additional guitar parts, writing solos or accompaniment.
Our favourite paid tools for writing guitar by yourself
Best all-rounder: Guitar Pro
Guitar Pro is an incredible solo songwriting tool – I just wrote a three-part guide series on the very subject, so I won’t go into massive detail here. Costing just £61, this software remains the best investment for my musical development, creativity and songwriting.
Whether you’re trying to write sections with multiple guitar parts, hear what a riff sounds like with bass and drums behind it, or just catalogue your ideas so they are ready for when inspiration strikes, Guitar Pro is, in my opinion, the best tool for the job.
Best for tactile songwriting: Loop pedals
You might look at my previous recommendations and feel like your hands are spending too little time on the fretboard, and to those people I recommend a loop pedal. I’ve had a Line 6 DL4 since the early 2010s – a purchase made more for my love of artists such as Brontide and Minus The Bear, rather than its looping capabilities. It’s a delay modeller for crying out loud! Regardless, I’ve racked up hundreds of hours of looping fun on my DL4, but there are so many fantastic dedicated loop pedals for a fraction of the cost.
TC Electronic’s Ditto+ is a space-saving powerhouse with up to 60-minutes of looping time, while its bigger brother the X2 Looper sacrifices looping time (5 minutes max), it adds FX like stop, reverse and half-speed. Both feature a micro USB which allows you to import/export loops and backing tracks (Ditto+/X2) and work with your loops in a DAW (X2 only).
Then there’s Donner’s Circle Looper, which offers the same core functionality as the Ditto, in addition to being a drum machine and metronome. Personally, I find writing with a drum beat is essential to moving ideas along, so having these tools in the same pedal makes a big difference. Like the X2 Looper, you can connect the Donner Circle Looper to your DAW of choice.
At the time of writing, each of these loopers is around the same price point (£89-95), so it’s really about what features you would find the most useful, rather than which pedal is the cheapest.
Best for computer-based composition: Drum libraries and guitar plugins
Building on my point about how drum grooves can unlock creative ideas, I have to shine a light on some of the excellent digital drum libraries available. These libraries contain high-quality recorded samples of iconic kits, players and styles for you to use to build out the rhythm sections of your songs. Sometimes, all it takes is hearing a groove for ideas to start pouring out and it’s why I rate tools like this so much for my own songwriting.
As I write and play predominantly in heavier genres, GGD (Getgood Drums) is my go-to for digital drums, especially as several of their flagship libraries are now available as standalone plugins. For a more jack-of-all-trades drum library, Toontrack EZdrummer 3 is a super versatile plugin and an affordable one at that. I would recommend doing some research of your own and trialing a few different libraries before taking the plunge.
While it can be dangerous thinking that new gear means new ideas, there’s an element of truth in that. For that reason, I’m including guitar plugins as an honourable mention. These don’t necessarily need to cost anything, but they can absolutely spark ideas and break you out of a creative dry spell in the same way that a different style of guitar can. Our guide on the best free and paid guitar plugins is the best place to start.
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