Period/Style: Minoan. Location: Crete, Greece. Material: fragment of a fresco. Function: The walls of Minoan palaces and houses, both on Crete and the island of Thera, were painted with frescoes showing various aspects of Minoan life and images taken from nature.
guitar riffs. A riff is a cluster or sequence of notes or chords. A riff is used in a song. It can be repeated over and over again, but it may only be heard once, say for instance, in a lead guitar solo. Riffs can be minor decorative elements or they can be the basis of a song.
The terms riff and fill are sometimes used interchangeably by musicians, but [while] the term riff usually refers to an exact musical phrase repeated throughout a song, a fill is an improvised phrase played during a section where nothing else is happening in the music. While riffs are repeated, fills tend to be varied over the course of a song.