Personally I never use scales to make riffs, riffs come from jamming in my experience, solos come from scales.
I couldn't disagree more. I find that if you know
and apply scale method to riff construction you get much more flow because then you can make a more informed decision about where that riff is going to go next and what precedes it. Especially recognizing the key helps everything move faster, then if you want to make tonal music you can decide how you want the resolution to happen. If it is atonal then that is another story of course, but still knowing the key and subsequently applying a scale method to it can create brilliant harmonies or equally brilliant discordances if you want a clash (obviously it depends on what you are going for).
