A Simple Blues Riff To Elevate Your Playing

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The scales and shapes that make up the blues are just rife with riffing possibilities!  So if you’ve ever wanted to create some awesome riffs and licks, look no further than the pentatonic scale!  It’ll make a great basis for riff creation and development.  The riff that you’ll be looking at here is written entirely within that pentatonic framework.  …Well, almost entirely.  You see, each version of this riff starts on the flat-5 interval of the key, also known as the blue note.

Here’s the interval relationship you can find within the riff: bV, V, IV, iii, I.  When you think of this riff in terms of interval jumps rather that individual notes, you can apply it to any key.  In the key of C, that riff will look like this:  Gb, G, F, Eb, C.  

While you’re practicing any riff like this, take time to listen intently to it.  Listen to how the intervals sound in relation to each other, and how they shift ever so slightly when you transpose the riff into a different key.  This will benefit you in a number of ways.  Try to listen for the root, the third and the fifth of any key.  Those are great ‘anchorpoints’ to keep in mind as you play.    

Having a well developed ear is a HUGE asset for anyone who’s interested in improvising or songwriting.  The goal of a simple riff like this is to see it more as a guideline rather than something that should be learned verbatim.  So learn it with the objective of dissecting it and making it your own.  Practice it enough so that you can ingrain it into your muscle memory, but then put it in your back pocket as a tool for you to use next time you want to just sit down and explore at the piano!  

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Jordan Leibel is passionate about songwriting, improvisation, and helping you become a creative musician! He’s worked as a composer for film, commercial, and theatre projects as well as a session musician and producer for recording work.