ARRANGEMENT TIPS TO CUT YOUR TRACK PRODUCTION TIME BY 50%

How to I arrange my music?

It takes so long finish a track?

How do I structure my music in a coherent way?

I have this nice idea or loop I started but how do I make it a complete song?

These are a bunch of questions people have sent in and they're the same questions I had not too long ago.

So how do you finish music, better and faster? That's what we'll tackle in this lesson.

Finishing Music Is a Learned Skill - So Practice It.

It's no secret. Finishing music is a learned skill. And so is arranging your idea into a polished, interesting and complete song.

The first step in finishing is to stop creating and start arranging.

As producers we have a natural inclination to want to start. Starting is fun, new and exciting. Arranging music...well not as much. But it can get fun.

If you've every played a music instrument, you can appreciate that the first couple months aren't that fun. But my month 3 or so, you can start jamming along and playing other peoples stuff and it's more fun. But in the beginning it's not!

Same for arranging.

It's a learned skill, so let's buckle down and learn some stuff because there's a smarter, faster way of working. And when you master this you can drastically reduce your production time.

Rather than slogging along with brute force and luck which may take a good 10-15 hours to arrange a song. We can do it in like an hour tops.

How?

Stop Creating Start Arranging

Off the top of my head I can describe a basic arrangement works quite well for me and if I had to I could take an 8 bar loop of music and fit it into this basic arrangement.

Bar 1-33 is about 60 seconds and my DJ friendly intro.

Bar 33-65 is where I introduce a bit more low end and the main musical hook of the tune.

Bar 49 I bring in a new sound.

Bar 57 I take it out removing energy from the tune as I lead into a quick breakdown.

Bar 65, I have an 8 bar break where I hi pass filter my kick and bass, so I just hear a click click click and there's no more pounding low end. Some white noise and atmospheric sounds build things up for the first "drop" in the tune at bar 73.

Bar 73, the main hook has been faded out, the low end kicks back in, and a new element is introduced which is a vocal sample.

Bar 81, The musical hook (like a chord sample) is being filtered back in. Some hi hats start to pick the energy back up.

I could ramble on, but the point is that it's not hard for me to just rattle off how a track should ebb and flow. I also know what tactics I can use to increase and decrease energy through out the tune.

I know how long my intro's and outtro's will be, I have an idea of where my break downs will begin and when the drops will take place.

And you can do the same thing. How?

You Have to Study Other Producer's Tracks

This really is the fast track to structuring your beats from loop to song. And borrowing the structure of other well produced songs is the key ingredient.

Do you know what The Matrix, Harry Potter, and The Godfather have in common? They all follow the same basic format or structure. Check out Joseph Cambell's Hero's Journey.

Think about Michael Corleone and Neo. Michael is a college age kid in the military dating a girl, buying her Christmas gifts. He's very much in the ordinary world.

Things change when his father is shot. The "Call to Adventure" for Michael is killing the gangster and crooked cop in the Italian restaurant. From there we see his more sinister side evolve - he's definitely no longer a kid.

In the matrix the call to adventure is the classic scene where Neo can choose the red pill or blue pill.

As you can see there's 12 major parts to movies.

If you've ever DJ'd and set hot cue points you'd probably make 6-12 points through out the tune.

See below for the marker's I've set up on one of my tracks in Rekordbox.

Better Yet Let's Open Your DAW

I think every DAW has the ability to add track markers. So since this is about producing, open up a track you like and start making markers.

Make note of how long the intro is, when is there a break down, the drop, the outtro. All the major points of action. A point of action might be where some ride cymbals start, or a verse if you're doing more of a house track w/ vocals.

I think you get the idea.

Once you've made a good 8-12 track marks, many of which you can see by just looking at the wave form, now it's time to start taking notes.

This is where the fun stars.

So let's say the intro is 32 bars long. Jot down everything that happens in that first minute of the tune. And keep this going being as detailed as possible.

This should take 40-60 minutes so feel free to work in blocks of 25 minutes and take 5 for a break.

Once you've done this you know have template to follow. So while your music is very different that the music you are analyzing, you can then borrow the arrangement by using your notes and the track markers to line up your own music ideas using someone else's arrangement.

For Pop Music This is Well Defined.

• intro
• verse
• chorus
• verse 2
• bridge
• chorus
• chorus
• conclusion/outtro

For music we like it's still fairly defined! So let's get it on paper. The only hard and fast rules are that you should use the first 30 seconds or minute of the tune as a proper intro.

Don't have a breakdown too early, that should happen at at least bar 57. It just doesn't make sense to pull energy out of a tune within the first 90 seconds or so.

The outro is pretty much the same as the intro.

Most sections of a tune are 16-32 bars long.

Using these basic rules gives you a good framework, but still allows you to be creative and flexible.

Wrapping It Up

Studying and analytics other producers tracks is the No 1 thing you can start doing to internalize the process of how a music should evolve and flow.

The next part of the process is fitting your own musical content into a borrowed arrangement.

Step 1 is to study and take very detailed notes. Be sure to make track markers in your DAW.

Step 2 is to fit your own musical ideas into this song structure. This will remove all guesswork! You'll know exactly where all the main parts of the song should be.

For example how long will my intro be? Solved, 33 bars. How will I add excitement as I move beyond the first 90 seconds of music? I'll add some ride cymbals.

When will my main breakdown be and for how long? It will start at bar 121 and will be 24 bars long.

If you follow another producers track all this stuff can be sorted out. Remember you're not stealing their music or imitating. You're just using another artists arrangement as a guide or roadmap.

You may be wondering, but what about automating filters and having those atmospheric sounds breathe and evolve. That will come in the next lesson. For now let's make the basic track skeleton like how long your intro and outtro will be and when things like hi hats, snares, claps, and other percussive elements stop and start. When you'll have breaks and drops. All that good stuff.

Adding things like noise swooshes, automations, and other bits of "ear candy" that make your track all the more interesting will be done after you've arranged your tracks.

The other key point is that when you arrange - JUST DO THAT!  No messing with mixing, eq's compression, tape saturation.  Remember that you cannot polish a turd. If you were recording and mixing a band, you can't use processing to fix a bad recording.  What I'm saying is that your tracks should sound good enough as they are to begin arranging.  When you produce and get your ideas down they should sound "good enough" to confidently move on to the next stage of production so you can focus just on arranging and nothing else.