Talk:riff

Is the musical sense really limited to guitars?? [w:Eurodance] talks about synthesizer riffs

sense 2. riffle.
Citations: Lee Child novels. Listed as synonym for paged on thesaurus.com. google for riff pages or riff.cards.
 * Could you look up the citation on Google Books so we can all see it? Which sense of riffle, we have 7 verb senses. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a clipping of riffle
What meaning of riffle is referred to? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:15, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Grips & Bird
I remember very clearly that Joe Pass stated that jazz guitar players referred to specific voicings (of chords, on the guitar) as "grips". I realize that it is a long-shot, but as I am not surprised by the uncertain origin of the word, I thought I might add it: "riff" COULD be a corruption of "grip".

Of course, this is WRONG. Charlie Parker's 1949 recording "Anthropology" also goes by the name "Thriving from/on a Riff". From this usage, we can divine that "riff" clearly comes from "refrain". Mousebelt (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)