Tips On How To Perform A Riff On The Piano

Before performing a piano riff, you have to know it well. This means that you should be able to sing or hum it. It won’t come out of you if you do not have it in you. After knowing it, you will have to execute it. If you find it hard to play a certain riff, you should start by playing it slowly. As you become more comfortable with the riff, you can increase your speed until you reach your desired tempo. It is crucial to understand that with some riffs, after knowing it at a medium-fast tempo, you may play it hyper-fast and pull back to your desired tempo.

The desired tempo will be much easier to play after the hyper-speed. If you are going to play it a lot of times in a row then you need to ensure that you do not let your wrists or hands up too much as you play your piano riff notes. Take some breaks because there is no need to hurt yourself and jeopardize your ability to play for the sake of a cool lick.

Types of riffs

There are different types of riffs. Some examples of riffs include jazz riffs, blues riffs, rock riffs, bluegrass riffs, Celtic riffs and many more. A musical riff is like a figure of speech but in a musical context. If you want to learn how to play some riffs then there are a lot of books out there that will show you how to play riffs and licks in different styles of music.

It is somehow hard to give you a piano riff right now. However, here are some jazz and blues riffs based on medium swing tempo and notes. All notes in the following riffs have similar rhythmic values. C E F F# G E C, G Bb Gb F Eb V Bb C and F Eb F Eb F Eb C.