How To Improve Your Songwriting Skills (Tips & Tricks)

[@Jazzguitar00]

Riff Salad is this weird phrase people use to insult bands that don't have predictable song structures. Somebody even tried to tell that Hate Eternal songs are Riff Salad...huh? There are clearly chorus and verses on most songs and god forbid multiple parts on the bridge. I'm so sorry you're dumb a** can't pick up the chorus if it's not a pop vocal with harmonies. Also...not everybody is trying to make things so predictable. I don't listen to Artificial Brain because I want to listen to something comforting and predictable. Anyway, I know the thumbnail is supposed to be attention grabbing but all it's doing is regurgitating a dumb phrase that randos on forums like using to insult bands they don't like.

[@hoborec]

Wow, did not expect any one to get offended by this. What you're talking about is just a matter of taste. If you listen to most of my productions it's absolutely not pop productions with with vocal harmonies. To me riff sallad is just when you put stuff together without thought just because a couple of riffs sounds cool. You can definitely have great songs that have the weirdest arrangement, just as long as it's well thought out and on purpose. We're talking about just that in the interview too. Thanks for watching and commenting though, appreciate it 🤘

[@hoborec]

Also, for some reason your comment gets hidden by KZbin. The only way to make it visible is to pin it.

[@treyxaviermusic]

There's a massive difference between adventurous and unpredictable song structures and completely thoughtless chaotic garbage for no reason. Riff salad is a real problem, and just because somebody in a forum uses it wrong doesn't mean it isn't rampant. You can make crazy unpredictable music with great storytelling and cohesive artistry that isn't riff salad. It's just that MOST bands don't know how, and riff salad is easy to make because you just plop whatever riffs you've got saved in your phone end to end and call it a song.

[@jnbovee]

Hate Eternal is garbage

[@antonioravina]

Cool stuff. Great tips! Finishing songs and working on them before going to a studio is important and oft neglected. Vocals are often forgotten in writing process and in my experience asked to improvise when going to Studio. Demos and recording at rehearsal will help!

[@bryanmcneil9872]

He asks “how do you know if you have a great song?” Remember that you’re a fan first. If you really like something, genuinely like it and find it interesting, then others will too. Trust you’re instincts and be honest with yourself. To the bone.

[@hoborec]

This ☝️ I have a hard time being objective to my own shit in the moment though.

[@cederickforsberg5840]

A problem appears when artists just are not open to 2nd hand input. As a hobby producer with a natural sense of flow to not overrepeat things, etc... I have noticed some musicians just wont listen to anything others have to say, and don't understand what they are missing out on by for example overrepeating a riff until the listener gets bored and hits "next" before the verse even starts.

[@hoborec]

Absolutely! It’s pretty funny sometimes how precious these things can be to some musicians. As Trey said, cutting things away is often the way to go. Unless it’s a 1 minute grind core song 😄

[@pablorrachoSOF]

@@hoborec totally agree, genres like punk, powerviolence, grindcore, etc are way too far from this rule. it all depends of the band and what noise are they making

[@treyxaviermusic]

@@hoborec those songs have already cut away the crap hahaha

[@GearStuffandThings]

Saw you at Namm you were pretty busy setting up a tripod so I figured I wouldn’t bug you

[@hoborec]

Bummer! You should have just interrupted me 😁

[@robertsackl3464]

hey, nice Vid, as always. What about when a artist is trying to avoid that "same plot as song X"? Would you recommend to go on the path of clearing it out to make it fit to certain expectations, or do you appreciate the odd an off feeling of more free stuff?

[@hoborec]

Thanks! Great question. I think that when you have a decent understanding of song structures it’s not that hard to make your “plot” unique. My suggested experiment to copy another songs structure was more to either get a better understanding for it, or to force yourself to try something different if you tend to en up with the same structure over and over again.

[@robertsackl3464]

@@hoborec thanks for the answer. Got it. It all comes down to the "tell a story" thing.

[@simondanielssonmusic]

This is kind of unrelated to the video, but... Metallicas latest album is a COMPLETE riff salad. I don't write metal anymore, I'm a pop & hiphop producer nowadays but it's kind of difficult for me to grasp how Metallica could release something THAT bad. I compared it to Megadeth's latest album from 2022 and the musical direction and the storytelling of each song in that album was so much more immersive and catchy than the things Metallica has written as of late.

[@hoborec]

Haven’t heard it yet to be honest. I saw a band at a festival this weekend that really hit the nail on the head when it came to just stacking riffs. At first I thought they sounded cool because they were very talented and tight as a band. But after a while it hit me that it was all just random riffs after each other. No structure at all. I got pissed off and went to the beer tent instead 😂

[@zombiemarc]

Metallica has always been a riffsallad in my opinion!