I'm pretty decent at writing cool leads, melodies, and solos. But my rhythm parts are SO boring. I just pretty much use diminished shapes on the fretboard, with powerchords. With only like half, quarter, or eigth notes and that's it. What are some tips for making good riffs. Mine are all starting to sound the same.

__________________

everyone's friend maiden can help you with different styles. I mean style, triplets! Dugadun Dugadun Dugadun.
Different palm mutes will help with rhythem..listen to Alice in Hell by annihilator, or the Fun Palace. Both actually. They have different styles.
Iced earth as well.,
Looking to learn some new stuff, just stick to power metal, they have crazy shit. Old Blind Guardian, hammerfall, y'know, stuff like that.
Just throwin that out there

__________________

Listen to new music and whatever already listen to again and start paying more attention to the rhythm, time signature and swing of the whole song instead of melodies and harmonies(that includes the rhythm guitar itself). Try paying less attention to what notes the guitarist and bassist are playing and more attention to what groove and rhythm it has. You can plagiarize a song with the same rhythmic changes and no one will notice! Do that with a melody though, and everyone will know.

I'd suggest just improvising over drum beats too but I've personally never had much luck coming up with riffs over drum beats, I tend to figure something out on the guitar first.

__________________

i find it significantly easier doing it over drum beats. Unless the drummer is a douche and keeps switching up what he's playing.

__________________

Yeah I find the actual chord choice and sequence I can work out on my own, but I really need a drummer to help me get the actual rhythm down. I always feel that a rhythm guitar needs 5 extra frets, I always end up using the same chords and I don't just stick to power chords. How do Lamb of God survive??!

__________________

lamb of god are gods for rhythm. Hands down man.
They have the uncanny ability to portray how amazing they are at guitar, without playing any solos. They are a good band to look to for different rhythm structures. My guess is they make the riffs first, then Adler makes the insane drum beats.

__________________

Try some Darkane.

__________________

I'd rather have something with interesting rhythms -not necessarily odd signatures- and tempo changes than straight forward 4/4 all the time but that's just me. I just find it very hard to give a rhythm a melody, but I find it very easy to give a melody a rhythm. I feel a lot more comfortable making drastic changes to the rhythm of a melody that I came up with than coming up with notes that have to comply to a set rhythm.

LoG survive because they know how to market their music and they're not silly enough to put any real depth into it that mainstream listeners won't understand.

__________________

they know how to market their Good music you mean, haha. Deny that Mark Morten and Will Adler make amazing rhythm. Like, anything off ashes of the wake proves that point.

And it depends on how good the drummer is. It can work both ways for me, i like writing music and tempo changes as much as the other guy, but it's fun playing along side the drummer's beat...it depends on how i'm feeling that day i guess. But if the drummer doesn't know how to make his own rhythm up, then its near impossible to create something over top of him...if that makes any sense...and disregard any homosexual innuendos that can come from that

__________________

To be fair to drummers though... in most song writing situations the riffs will have been written first. Jamming is different of course, anything can happen that way.

__________________

Sup, I found it pretty cool to write rhymth guitar parts by harmonizing to lead, by Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, and Octave

But if you have a constantly picking song like all 16th notes
_____ _____ _____ _____
------ ------ ------ ------
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Lol that sucks, but it's supposed to look like a measure (4/4 time) of 16th notes... if each / would be a note (let's say open 6th) I'd harmonize it to perfect 5th so it'd be 2nd fret on 5th string and make rhythm strike it every other like 1 + Rest 3 + Rest or all 8th notes

__________________