5 Classic Riffs Every Budding Guitarist Should Learn, and Why

They’re the riffs every guitar shop owner is sick of. Played by every guitar student in the rockverse.

There’s a good reason for it; they’re amazing riffs. They sound complicated, but are quite simple to learn. Learning these riffs will not only impress your friends, but also introduce you to different playing techniques and exercises, and improve your playing.

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd

This southern rock riff is unmistakable. The whole song is filled with top-notch guitar work, but this riff has got all the necessities of great country-rock guitar playing.

The majority of the riff is based around standard Dmaj, Cmaj, and Gmaj chord forms. Rather than strumming these chords, the guitarist plucks a certain sequence of notes from the open chords, creating more of a riff. This is a great way to make a simple chord progression sound more interesting.

The first few notes also introduce palm-muting. Palm muting is a great way to add percussion to your playing. It cuts off most of the resonance of the string, leaving you with more focus on the picking sound.

Life In The Fast Lane – The Eagles

Joe Walsh played this riff as an exercise during a rehearsal with the Eagles. It was catchy enough to get the attention of songwriter Glen Frey, who worked it into the song we know today.

What makes it a good exercise?

It’s all about the movement of the hands.

This riff breaks the mold of running up and down scales. What makes it difficult is using the same finger to play the second, third, and fourth notes of the riff.

You’ve got to stretch your third finger over two strings and control your picking to do this effectively.

This is a great way to break the habit of playing the same scales and riffs when improvising. It gets your hands working in a way they are not used to. When you want to take your soloing to the next level, you have to think outside of what’s comfortable.

This riff is very uncomfortable to play, yet oddly contagious. You’ll find you can’t stop playing it when you’ve got it down!

Thunderstruck – AC/DC

This is another contagious one.

The riff sounds a lot more difficult than it is, so don’t worry. It will still take time to master, though.

When I first learned this riff, I played it with pull-offs (playing the open B string by pulling it with the finger I was using to play the notes). I later learned that Angus Young picks each note individually.

I would recommend you learn it this way, it is a great way to learn picking control.

Mastering pick control will ensure that every note you're playing, fast or slow, will be nice and clear and accurate. Clear tone and accurate timing will take your playing to the next level in no time.

Invest the time into learning this riff really well.

Sweet Child Of Mine – Guns ‘n Roses

This riff is another great exercise for picking. It bounces between strings quickly, so you have to take the time to learn how to pick accurately.

It is also a great fretting hand exercise. You hand moves with each note played. As the chords change, the notes in the riff change, and your hand moves even more.

Slash used this as a warm-up exercise to get his hands working and moving together. The more smoothly you can move your right hand to new positions, the easier it will be to play interesting leads.

Skip to the chorus of the song, and you’ll hear the intro riff played lower on the neck.

Slash takes the same riff (based around a Dmaj form) and moves it down the neck (to an Amaj form, and a Cmaj form) before returning back to where he started.

This is what we call transposing a riff.

Transposing is a great tool for musicians. Some musicians play songs in different keys, usually based on how difficult it is to sing. Learning to play riffs in different keys is crucial to being a flexible player.

Changing keys and scales during a solo is a great way to take your soloing to the next level.

Transposing riffs is a good way to start.

Let’s say you’re soloing over a two-chord progression. Dmin and Amin. You can solo in a Dmin blues scale the whole time and it will sound fine, but if you switch to an Amin blues scale over the Amin chord, your solo will sound a lot more interesting.

Start by creating a riff, and playing it in both scales, switching according to the chord changes.

Roundabout (Intro) – Yes

This one is a little bit different from the others. Steve Howe of Yes fingerpicks this intro on an acoustic guitar.

This riff brings entirely different techniques to the table; techniques that can be transferred to your acoustic or electric guitar playing.

The riff starts with harmonics at the twelfth fret, forming an Emin chord. These harmonics add a sweet touch to any guitar solo or riff of your own. Explore them in the keys of Gmaj and Emin, as well as Cmaj and Amin.

The rest of the riff consists of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and fingerpicking with multiple fingers at a time.

The end of the riff is tricky, but well worth the time investment. Playing two counter melodies at the same time is an underused skill in guitar playing.

Howe demonstrates the style beautifully in the last part of this solo, as he blends the trills of the higher notes with the cascading lower notes.

This style of playing is very impressive, and applying this style to your own playing will take your playing to the next level.

So there you have it; 5 riffs you have probably heard every guitar player play. Now you know why.

Develop your style by learning the styles of other guitarists. There are always new techniques hidden in the songs you grew up listening to. These techniques can be taken from these riffs and applied to new, interesting music.

Guitar players are constantly evolving. Learn as much as you can, then go and write the next great rock riff yourself!