“Sometimes simplicity wins the day. Our namesake song, Black Country, was written by accident”: Joe Bonamassa on the art of writing a heavy guitar riff

Last time, I spoke about writing heavy-sounding riffs, which is what I’m tasked with when working with Black Country Communion, featuring Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals, Jason Bonham on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards.

The music of this band is very much inspired by the classic recordings of bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Free, Mountain and others.

When approaching writing a heavy riff, sometimes simplicity wins the day. Our namesake song, Black Country, was written by accident. I was at Glenn’s house – we’ve written all our songs in the same writing room so far, with me playing a guitar through an old Epiphone amp.

Joe Bonamassa: More on the art of writing a “heavy” riff - YouTube

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We were just talking and wrapping up the day, and without any thought I began playing the riff in Figure 1, which is based on the E Phrygian mode (E, F, G, A, B, C, D). I play 16th-note triplets with repeating E notes followed by a slide up one fret to F, a slide back down to E and a pull-off to D.

On beat 4, the riff ends with the notes A, B and D played in slower eighth-note triplets. Glenn heard it and said, “What’s that?” I said, “I don’t know!”

Next thing you know, he’s doubling that riff on bass, and the pieces started to fall together into a song. Figure 2 shows the big D5, E5 and A5 power chords we move into, after which the lick modulates up a 4th to A Phrygian (A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G), as shown in Figure 3, before reverting back to the riff in E.

As a heavy song, it coalesces when the band plays it in a tight, precise way. This is where, for my guitar part, palm muting (P.M.) comes into play.

Palm muting effectively reigns in the sound here; without it, the guitar riff would sound like a mess. It’s all about chiseling out the riff: I will alter the amount of palm muting as I play the riff, in order to change the feel and expressiveness of it, and I’ll also rotate my pick to a different angle for a sharper sound.

I take a similar approach with my tune The Ballad of John Henry, as illustrated in Figure 4. This riff is based on E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D), and part of creating it was deciding where to play the open low E note in conjunction with the fretted E on the 5th string.

For the G5 and A5 chords in bar 2, I thumb-fret the 6th-string notes and include all of the strings in the voicing except for the G string, which I mute with my fret-hand fingers.

When playing the song live, I add an Em chord to the riff, as shown in Figure 6. In bars 1 and 3, on beat 3, I fret E and G notes on the A and D strings, respectively, and strum across all six strings to get the open top three strings into the voicing.

Bars 3-8 illustrate the pre-chorus riff, which alternates between B5 power chords and sliding octaves that move between C, B and A, with an Am(add2) chord sounded in bars 4, 6 and 8.

And – are you ready for this? – most of my favorite heavy riffs are played in standard tuning, although Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix and others made things just a little heavier by sometimes tuning down.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.