Hey, y'all.

I've been writing music non-seriously/recreationally for a while now, although I took a long break last year. I've recently started writing more death metal oriented stuff, and one thing that trips me up when it comes to arranging/writing songs is tempo changes, specifically from slower/doomy sections to faster thrashy/grindy parts. Sometimes it works well, and other times I feel like it sounds clunky. One thing that sounds pretty decent is playing the fast riff again, but with a slower rhythm, but I'm wondering what else you guys do when it comes to these transitions, I don't want to rely on one songwriting trope too much. Specifically, I'm wondering if you guys have any tips on transitioning from a fast section to a slow, groovy breakdown.

Thanks for any tips you guys have!

The drum fill leading from a fast part into a slow part (or vice versa) can make all the difference. A slow fill based on quarter and/or eighth notes during the last bar of a fast section should prepare the listener for what's to come. (For example around 24:40 in Edge of Sanity's Crimson.) You can also do a pause before going into a slow part, like that section in Crimson also does.



Might be less relevant but still worth mentioning:
If your riff begins on, say, a D note, the new, slow riff should also begin on that same note if you want to go for a ring-out effect. This ties into another thing -- I use a lot of midi and often have many individual tracks playing at the same time, and it can really help to keep the same instruments going before and after the transition.

Also, yeah, I like to half-time the fast riff, but I can see how that would get old.

If you don't want to go for a chaotic, jarring, disjointed style of songwriting, and try to keep your songs as cohesive as possible, it's better to not do tempo changes other than half-time feel breaks (or 2x tempo parts). There are some songs with iterations of the same passage with gradually slowing tempo (like Shape of Despair's Still Motion, and Cult of Luna's Eternal Kingdom), which works for them, but that's a very particular effect. If you really have to write tempo changes (other than 0.5x and 2x) into your songs, I guess try to maintain the thematic context otherwise. If you just string together different riffs with different tempos and groove, you're making riff salad.