Many people say they just fiddle around with their guitars to come up with guitar parts/lines for a song. But what confuses me is in what way do people do this. There are just so many ways you can do a guitar part.
Chords, chords+melody or other lines, riffs, chord riffs (think Yellow (acoustic)-Coldplay or Friends-Led Zeppelin,) fingerstyle patterns, etc.
If you loom at a tab of a published song (especially modern rock or pop) the song sometimes doesn't seem to follow a particular pattern, with the verse or chorus being a number of riffs and parts that don't get repeated.)
What I'm wondering is how do people come up with these? Even with a chord progression in mind to start with, how does arpegiating the chords turn to a song with riffs/licks? What form of playing do you guys start trying the chords with, just straight chords, arpegios, fingerstyle patterns? Or do you pretty much have an idea of the arrangement to start with?
Actually, most of what I write comes from a simple passage, or even a mistake. I remember Karl Groom of Threshold https://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=154
telling me that he was just the same way. Neither of us can actually practice because we end up writing something new.
Remember that what you hear on an album is generally quite different from what was written. Some people just strum plain chords and the arpeggios, riffs, etc come from someone else who is better at arranging than they are.
Other times it could be just picking around and something sounds good. I always say that your fingers know where to go. They know the neck much better than your conscious mind does which is why most mistakes are most likely intentional (from the unconscious mind).
Once you've got that little part down, play it ad nauseam. As your mind drifts into it, you'll just know where to go. I know it sounds strange, but it gets a lot easier over time. Let it flow, it's sort of as if the song already existed and you were learning to play it. It takes time, but not a lot.
