How To Write Death Metal Riffs Easily... ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE STUCK!

[@TaylorDanley]

If you struggle finding time to write songs, check out my workshop SPEEDWRITING - DEATH METAL www.patreon.com/taylordanley/shop/speed-writing-death-metal-46186?Link&

[@devourerinthemist]

If you wanna know what makes Death Metal work in terms of structure, it's pretty simple actually. It has a lot of alternating playing speeds, time signatures, (usually only to break flow, might last like a bar or 2 at a time.) A lot of random chromatic notes interspersed in the riffs, implemented similar to how the time signature changes are. (interspersed in the core riffs.) Lot of slow chuggy sections, and equally as many blazing fast riffs. Most of the notes are diads, because of how hard it is to change chords that fast. Use a lof of flated, diminished, augmented and minor intervals as well as power chords. Scales that are good are: Minor (harmonic, melodic) Phrygian, Arabic, Locrian, Locrian Super, and scales that have similar intervals and structures. Write a riff, repeat the riff twice, usually should be about an 8 bar riff, then repeat. On the repeated sections, start putting in chromatic elements and time signature changes (this can introduce contrast and make the main idea stand out more. Techniques are tremolo picking, sweep picking, tapping, sliding (Portamento) and a lot of palm muting.

[@philipandersen4406]

Dude these are so much more useful videos for me then the gear demos, don't get me wrong I love gear demos but I have the gear I need and just trying to make music with ez drummer and you just showed me things I didn't know I could do with it

[@TaylorDanley]

Awesome! That’s the whole idea, just get people motivated to create!

[@toontrack]

Amazing, Taylor!

[@seenproveseven]

Sooooooo goooood!! DEFINITELY interested in seeing more of this kind of thing - working with Superior Drummer to flesh out an arrangement. I've been trying to listen more actively to songs that I know and love to get better at building up my own parts, but watching you woodshed on it is super helpful.

[@TaylorDanley]

Glad to hear it, I'm kind of shifting some of my focus into writing and arranging music. Something I probably take for granted, but people seem to want my insight into. I'm going to do more workshops and courses next year as well!

[@malcolmrff]

Investing in ezdrummer was an eye opener for sure. Now sometimes I’ll throw some grooves on there, and riff to it instead of always having a riff first. It’s pretty great and I’ve got about 8-9 completed songs.

[@Reapertips]

instantly grabbed ezkeys after this, thank you so much taylor! your videos are awesome :)

[@Reapertips]

btw, check out the band Singularity. its a tech-death band and they use keys in this fashion- it's so awesome!

[@SwainerDrummer]

Duuuude...Singularity is awesome

[@chopshop777]

Dude, that is absolutely killer, brilliant ideas, cheers.

[@Bigscott4130]

Thanks for this Taylor. I use EZ drummer to start a lot of the stuff I make, the one thing I hadnt considered was breaking up the song sections in a session and then moving them apart and then back together as I work on them. This is gonna save a whole lot of time instead of trying to punch in or several takes for the whole song to get that one at least acceptable take for the whole thing. Forgive me, I'm primarily a bass player... I'm sorry Glenn.

[@lordovthorn2747]

This was incredibly helpful advice. Finished up a song with these tips... Cant wait to post it when I get the mix right! I will tag you when I do.

[@TaylorDanley]

Hell yeah, DO IT!

[@brrblack497]

Caveman Beatdown, great name for a Metal band, ha-ha.

[@havocdevelopment6142]

Caveman cult

[@8eight104]

Necrophilic Beatdown exists already

[@morbidcorpse5954]

Chris Barnes can be lead vocalist.

[@FortressofShred]

This reminds me of when I was playing Guitar Hero. My AI generated band name was Unicorn Warrior 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Solomon-b4z]

this exists already haha

[@SwedishBlackMetal]

Cool presentation! I also got a Jackson! Great for early 90s Swedish Death Metal together with the Eyemaster pedal!

[@micah_noel]

Hmmm, I’m a metal guitarist who loves keyboard and has attempted to play and compose poorly for many years. I’ve heard of EZ Keys and I’m not sure what I thought it was but suddenly I watched this video and realized I need it. That riff turned out sick with the symphonic sound, which I was not expecting at all when I clicked on this. 🤘🏻

[@robertsylvester3542]

I’ve always found when I hit a block I push through by having access to different drum beats, that Moore pedal is sick, the x2, I’m about to go on a writing tangent now that I got mine yesterday!! Your review definitely helped in my decision.

[@kmerk000]

unexpected use of ez keys in the creation of death metal songs. I will definitely try this method!🤘

[@woodward_alan]

Wow i never thought of this! More please

[@bvanhoosen]

Dude, this is my exact process as well. EZ Keys FTW!!

[@TaylorDanley]

WE ARE LIKE PEAS IN A POD MY GUY

[@ChuckLeone]

Top notch! What a great writing process, I had no idea EZ Keys had this sort of feature. Definitely going to give this a try.

[@audioengineer86]

I really appreciate this. I'm perpetually stuck trying to write music by myself

[@robertehahntx]

Cool it was interesting seeing EZKeys used for metal thanks

[@Baldy4495]

The Ez Keys tip is awesome.

[@broncoxy]

Great video man, definetly some inspiring ideas, especially the keyboard one!

[@metalfather8139]

doood u just inspired me with that corpseacation riff u made at 1:43

[@TaylorDanley]

💪💪💪

[@knotid]

Hey Taylor, right on the money as always. Thanks for sharing your process. That's my approach too and sometimes I feet like I'm cheating or something because I use those tools too but you just encourage me too keep using it because is fucking cool and helps to go places that we normally don't.

[@TaylorDanley]

It's good to force yourself outside your comfort zone once and a while and come up with things that you might not have otherwise!

[@denverrandy7143]

Damn that tone goes hard.🤘

[@SlyHikari03]

Thanks, needed this since im bad at writing chromatic/a-tonal stuff.

[@_Henrique66]

Wow, this aproach helps a lot!

[@riokinsey2134]

How are you getting the guitar tone? Signal chain? Thanks man. Great ideas

[@rafaelsencine4946]

amazing dude!

[@MASTERRIFFS]

⭐COOL 🔥Taylor danley🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@pinx5976]

What did you play on guitar and what kind of riff do we learned on this video?!

[@stephenblack9843]

What did you use for the orchestra? That sounded sick

[@21stCenturySin]

This is very informative because I didn’t realize EZKeys had those type of adjustments. Then again, I don’t think it’s accurate of you to say you don’t know theory because you have to know what keys your guitar riffs are in to adjust the EZKeys midi to match. Obviously you can play around with it if you have a good ear for melody. But to me this shows it’s very helpful to know your basics of keys & melodies to make something that’s going to work for your song.

[@GerlachGaming-rt3gj]

I can’t wait to get equipment

[@RaVirrTheTrader]

@15:30 it was at this moment that Taylor was injected in the neck with Fleshgod juice.

[@RedHorizonRecords]

This is pretty much how my process works

[@shawnbeaghan9809]

For a future episode, could you go in depth on the gear that we would need to do something like this? I don’t know what type of computers can be use for this stuff. None of my friends are into this, we just do it the old school way. I’m so far behind on this stuff. The only digital piece of equipment that I own guitar wise is my old Digitech xp100.

[@MetalZoned]

Any modern decent laptop can run the programs

[@shawnbeaghan9809]

I have a Chromebook. Would that work?

[@MetalZoned]

@@shawnbeaghan9809 I dont think that will have the juice!

[@jaredt3985]

Warning: This will be long. You’re going to want something with at least an i5, 16GB of Ram, and an SSD (which they all should in 2023). 8gb is fine until you start building up the tracks and processing, just go with 16GB or higher. Laptops like this can be had for pretty cheap these days. Don’t worry about the graphics card, whatever comes stock will be fine for these programs. After that you’ll want a moderately decent interface. I know everyone says Scarlet, it’s kind of the go to, but in my experience Universal Audio, Motu, and Audient make better interfaces in that price range. I like Motu myself, built like a tank, clean and clear DI for recording. Then you’re going to need some amp sims, OR, a microphone (plus XLR) if you want to record your actual cab. If you go the amp sim route, there’s literally hundreds of them out there, from free to a couple hundred dollars each. Do not fall down the amp sim rabbit hole, it’s a waste of time and money, nobody gives a fk in the mix. Amped Roots from ML Soundlab is really good and it’s free. If you want to spend some cash take a look at NeuralDSP or Helix Native. They’re the best in terms of raw amp tones imo, but they are pricey, and again nobody has a clue in the mix. I personally love the Bogren Digital Ampknob series. They’re super simple and instead of messing about with tweaking parameters all day, you just basically set your gain and get after the riffs. They sound great too. Along with an amp sim you may or may not want to check out some third party IR’s (impulse responses), which are basically snapshots of a mic/speaker/cab configuration. Be warned though this is a MASSIVE rabbit hole, and you can easily find yourself just switching IR’s and tone chasing instead of actually writing music. Once you’re squared away will all that then it just comes down to how you want to monitor yourself. You can use anything from a cheap computer speaker setup, to multi thousand dollar studio monitors. Basically the more expensive the monitors, the more “true” your tone will be. Now this is awesome for mixing engineers, or people who mix their own music, if you don’t plan on doing that, or don’t have the budget, you can just go with a cheap computer speaker setup, and upgrade later. For just jamming at home I recommend the Yamaha HS5/Kali LP6 price range for monitors, they sound great and won’t color your sound like computer speakers will. Or, you can get a set of good headphones. Everyone has their tastes but I’ve been using Sony MDR7506’s for years and their cheap and built to last. Not the flattest sounding but once you learn them that doesn’t matter. Sorry for the novel! Hopefully this helps. It seems overwhelming and expensive, which I guess it kind of is, but it is so so worth it to have a decent setup at home for recording and writing. Edit: I forgot about a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). You may have heard of some like Pro Tools, Reaper, Studio One, Cubase. I use Reaper and can recommend it, it’s affordable and is cpu light compared to some of the others. There are TONS of tutorials on KZbin for any DAW you end up choosing.

[@rookiem8]

​@@jaredt3985 good looks on all the information.. really appreciate it

[@macvelasco3640]

Symphonic black metal 🤘🤘🤘

[@billbradleymusic]

Nice work kid

[@zAvAvAz]

cool song part reminds me sort of Cradle of filth

[@ebenezerspludge8369]

If it sounds like Ghost than no, It's never the sound I'm going for ha ha.

[@kyleross889]

That tone is crunchy AF. Bag O' chips at 3am crunchy.

[@alexsdstudios6580]

Hey man! Great video, which model is that Jackson??

[@TaylorDanley]

it’s an older X series warrior.

[@alexsdstudios6580]

@@TaylorDanley the reverse headstock it’s what got me

[@thevoid5117]

what model warrior is that?

[@vejichan]

which toon track drum midi/ezx expansion packs do you use the most? and what amp sims are your favorite?

[@brutalpcbuilds3246]

What is your personal recommendation for midi packs for death metal, small list if possible?

[@flippyleglock]

My opinion would be listen and try playing different styles of music. To me personally it helps me think of different riffs. You would be surprised.

[@mityaIvanov2023]

❤😮ohhhh !!! Coool!!!

[@morkusz]

Show!!!

[@luieortega9495]

I want to learn NWOBHM style music

[@OFFICIALAZURITEKING]

Oh, yeah try using some other instrument other than main. I'm more a feeler and Story Theme telling for a song.

[@ParanormalArson]

Put the Bryan Adams piano line in your death metal song.

[@AL_KING777]

The beats are awesome for demos, and writing. The drums sound just like an app, I think releasing any music with those drums would be whack af.

[@vincentrichardson3734]

EZ KEYS RULES ...\m/ BLACKMETAL MACHINE

[@nukeyzen]

😍😍😍😍

[@synthkatt]

everytime the keyboard plugin plays all i hear is Mustis 😂

[@TaylorDanley]

Mustis?

[@synthkatt]

@@TaylorDanley he was dimmus keyboard player

[@beeemm2578]

Blast beaty...🤔😃

[@ebenezerspludge8369]

Sounds like Abhorrent Decimation.

[@ZagrasNixillis]

I was the 666th like🤘