Rock and Riffs

The “riff’ is a totally mega important part of rock guitar playing. These repeated hooky phrases express bucket loads of attitude quite often a nod back towards the blues and usually a heap of dirty distortion on top.

The great news is its easy to learn as they often involve simple finger movements. The groove and attitude is all important when playing riffs, if you’re not locked into the drum beat it aint happening.

Smoke On The Water

One of the earlier primal guitar riffs played by Ritchie Blackmore in the band Deep Purple, this riff became so popular it was banned from music shops. Deep Purple were all gifted players and the way the band pulled behind this gave it great momentum.

check out the original here:

must at this point give a shout out to my very talented big brother, who has just recorded a super acoustic fingerstyle guitar version of the song. you can check this out here.

Smoke On The Water – Acoustic Fingerstyle

Will come back to riffs at some point, but for now you might want to search for best guitar riffs and see what you can do.

cheers, Bob