Starting in 2021, The Spector Media Group (or SMG) Discord Server run by heavy metal producer and recording engineer Glenn Fricker started hosting a Riff Challenge
. A riff in music is (according to Wikipedia), a repeated chord progression or refrain in music; it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or accompaniment of a musical composition. The way it worked was you were given a MIDI of a drum rhythm, and would use that to build your riff.
I got involved, but since I didn’t have any traditional heavy metal instruments (aside from an electric bass guitar), but I did have a lot of horns. So my entries were... odd, to say the least. The ones with recorders tended to be very folkey, while the ones with my brass and saxophones tended very strongly towards Ska (which I am a fan of).
Please forgive the clipping in some of them. Clipping is when the volume exceeds what an audio channel can handle, so peaks of the sound waves are clipped
off and the sound becomes distorted. I was learning Reaper as I went, and my recording setup was even suckier then than it is now—I didn’t have a proper microphone, nor a proper interface, and I didn’t know how to set its gain (sensitivity), so my early entries have really poor sound quality—aside from the rather crappy playing.
I hung around the SMG server for a while, but then Glenn Fricker took a joke wrong and went on a ferocious rant aimed at yours truly. His virulent antitheist stance (aimed solely at Christianity so far as I could tell) and equally virulent hatred of bassists (did I mention my only heavy metal
instrument was an electric bass?) had also begun to really chafe, so I quietly left the server.
About a year later—much to my surprise—the fellow who ran the contest got back in contact with me, asking where on earth I’d gone. It seemed that those who listened to the challenge missed my oddball contributions. After some thought, I decided to return.
The first of my entries, played on a tenor recorder.
Some wag suggested I play the next challenge on tuba. So I did.
Back to recorders this time.
Results May Scare Ye
So elaborate I actually wrote this one down.
Bad 2 Verse
Part of the collaboration challenge, I went all-brass with this one.
Adding a soprano saxophone into the mix.
All six sizes of recorders (that I own).
Same trio of instruments I used up in Week 2.
The only one I did on electric bass
By the time I returned to the SMG Discord, I’d gained a baritone saxophone; so I put it to use.
I cheated massively with this one. I took a hymn that was in 3/4 time and changed it to 4/4.