Let’s just load up project. So, I think we should kick off. So, I’m going to bring up another project here. Wow, thanks for the response. For example, the most common track structure for uplifting trance is : “Intro – Buildup – Breakdown – Build – Climax – Outro”. But they kind of come down. So, I wanted to get this vocal kind of sounding as good and perfect as possible. And these are all grouped into this one summing stack here. That is a classic trance song structure! It’s just ten [inaudible from 00:35:06 to 00:35:08]. Ski:                  I can’t play it very well. Arranging can broadly be defined as the process of transforming a collection of musical ideas into a complete track. It’s the final week of the Academy of Electronic Music hangouts! Yesterday we kicked off with a topic that’s often the most difficult aspect of producing for beginners and experts: arrangement. I’ve missed it a little bit. Thanks a lot. Brought to you by Google, Armada Music, DJ Mag and Point Blank. I’m just going to quit Logic. Yeah, that's what I've been doing, but part of me feels dumb that I couldn't come up with the arrangement myself. I could’ve skipped this bit here. This section here, I call it “Tag.” Because just to kind of get back to the basics, the chorus or the refrain is normally the catchiest part, dynamics-wise. Now, this is a completely classic technique when it comes to second verse. How does one cater to the needs of the DJ without making a track that is essentially different variations of a loop? We’ve got another 16-bar verse and an eight-bar bridge. And you can see here “Track Building-Adding Parts” and “Arranging.” There’s a whole load of videos here. I tend to kind of roll off some of the bottom end with backing vocals. I got home, sort of working on headphones. The third most common structure was ABCB, which is much closer to the traditional pop structure. Skrillex and Diplo's 'Where Are U Now' contrasts a minimal verse arrangement with a chorus that's fuller and livelier. at 4, 16, 32 or 64 bars, and always have major ideas (breaks, introducing/taking away a lead) in 32 bar intervals. “Extending the Arrangements.”. I’ve done de-constructions already. It’s pretty similar to the Melodyne, which is something I’ve been using for a good few years. I like to do things in a non-formula way. I really like what you’ve done with the vocal, the way you’ve processed it. I am asking you to help me with some guidelines, some arrangement cliches.. And we’ve got the winner’s remixes of Viv’s acapella to look forward to, as well. Often genres such as dub techno have no clearly defined traditional structur: the dynamic tension is created by long evolving contours, and changes on an almost micro level. If we look at that, there’s going to be similarities when we look at the next one. There was also a grid editor, piano roll and a drum editor etc. What this allows you to do is to group these two tracks together. He just goes straight into the verse. You can extend out, obviously, you can have a long intro, beat intro. think about a radio edit of your track over the next couple of days, that’d be cool. And it comes up to the first verse Fick forward and it comes up to the chorus. as a MIDI file or something. I’m going to play it to you, see what you think. It’s the final week of the Academy of Electronic Music hangouts! It’s the bit you kind of really remember. In the meantime, you can get access to loads of free tutorials by subscribing to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/pointblankonline. Pretty. I thought “Well, I’ll finish it off when I get back.”. Let’s have a quick look at the last track. It’s quite nice just dealing with one audio file. I just sort of had it lying there. You can do the same thing in Ableton, just by grouping tracks together. The task for all of you today is to come up with a radio edit, a three and a half minute version of your winning tracks. I’m going to basically spit like what I had prepared earlier. My plan, really, was to create an acapella. Required fields are marked *, Music Production Tutorials & News from Point Blank Music School. It kind of stays back in. Just to give you an example, this is the first one. "When I heard the samples from the Deep Premium Pack II back in the day I was instantly hooked and knew I have never heard better sounding and better fitting drum samples for the sound I wanted to do, but could not quite get together. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. Like I said before, it’s often the hardest thing. The Structure of a Typical Track. Yesterday we kicked off with a topic that’s often the most difficult aspect of producing for beginners and experts: arrangement. It’s all about the tension. So, I called it the Bridge. And this is kind of similar, actually, to the Armin Van Buren. Ski:                  I love the movement. I didn’t spend ages over it. I wanted to put more distortion in it. And it’s so nice to. Electronic Music Composition #10: Arrangement and Structure. If you understand a song’s structure–the way its sections have been arranged to create the total work–then you’re getting closer to understanding how a song can connect, emotionally, with its listener. Let’s play Picarlo’s track and this is a completely different vibe. It kind of comes down to the bridge. So, cool. You can see, I’ve got on the lead vocal here, just in this, kind of, first section, I used Logic’s take recording as well. I didn’t actually brighten up too much in here because she’s got quite a bright-sounding voice. Just having the verse, bridge, chorus, instrumental break, verse two, bridge, chorus, outro. And slam it back in with the chorus again. Just see if you can be really ruthless, really brutal and just try to kind of compact it down. Obviously, you can do a club version. Another example is the song arrangement of Halcyon & on & on from the Hackers soundtrack. I started off making a radio edit. And then, you’re going down to the G, which is the seventh chord. It’s also important to understand that each section typically has a role to fulfill. So, what I’ve also done is I’ve written out the sections here. It starts off with the intro, I’m not sure if you can see this. Then going to A, which is the one chord. So, the first one I created was the lead vocal. So, remember, I introduced this use this hook here, right at the start. There we go. I was using Logic as the platform to record the vocal in. And then, just because I heard it in the car this morning, “Disclosure” featuring Sam Smith “Latch.” Beautiful track, amazing chorus. We used the [drive] vocal. I suppose I'm torn between having something DJs & Dancers will like, but also wanting to have every section and every instrument/sound to have a purpose. But even with the most, I don’t know, complex, minimal, tech-y, non-vocal track, you can still apply this classic arrangement technique to that when you’re thinking about dynamics and structure. And some EQ. Obviously, I’m talking about, these are radio edits. Advertisement The thing that makes these hooks unique to most other genres is a lack of traditional musical content. pop songs, rock songs) are based on vocals and have their own structural dynamics that are similar to dance music song structure but slightly different. As well as masterpieces such as “Skylarking,” “Flaming June,” “Must be the Love” and collaborations with Tiesto, Armin van Buuren and many more. That’s the section that Viv wrote the vocal over. First is the Armin van Buuren “Waiting for the Night.” Second one is the Florence and the Machine “Spectrum,” Calvin Harris Remix. But it starts off with an intro. Press PATTERN CLEAR for rhythmatic synthesis. I have a good analogy for arrangement and song structure. What I found with take recording is in order to get it to work, I had to use Flatten and Merge. I can really hear that you’ve worked on that as well, which is fantastic. You can also use the new arrangement markers, as well. Choirdise. I’m just going to give that quick a play. We’ll analyze the structures of some big-selling tracks to use as possible templates. It's like giving someone a good back rub. My only worry is just the tuning of the vocal at the end. Ski:                  Yeah, I thought so. Arrangement of Song Structure, Transitions and Variations: Turning a cool 8 bar loop idea into a full song. You all right? We made it sound more present, more powerful in the mix. This song structure is more electronic songs with variations. Ski:                  Really? I just bring up the arrangement for this. Ramon, before we did the session, he sent me an extended version of his track. But I knew I wanted to get to you guys as soon as possible so you could get working on the remix. And I’m just going to double-click on this, for example. Deep House is a highly varied genre, and as such, quite a wide range of tempi are employed across the spectrum. Most popular dance music follows a basic structure that’s easy to learn. You can watch the whole thing below and don’t forget, we’ve another four hangouts left, starting with a hangout with vocalist, songwriter and producer Christian Burns today at 3pm GMT. One, two, three, four. You can have all these great sections. level 2. But I just want to look at radio edits for the moment. I for one enjoy trance song structures, so I have brought that over into my arrangement style for techno. It’s pretty common with arrangements. I was a bit disappointed the next day, I thought I could have done a slightly better job. Welcome to this very special EMC session in the Academy of Electronic Music. adding layers and building the flow of the song). We have massive special guest BT appearing tomorrow and Armin van Buuren vocalist and songwriter Christian Burns joining us on Thursday. Because you’re going to get varying levels and it just makes it much easier to mix. Like I said, I did some work with the flex pitch. And then a similar thing. I don’t want to bring it down too much. I’ve just used kind of a stock Ableton sound here. The mixdown stage shouldn’t completely overturn a track and its content (unless that’s the aim for creative reasons); it should instead be an opportunity to tighten up the track’s energy, maintain optimum clarity and in turn help the track’s arrangement make even more sense to the listener. Here we go. I just went to bounce and project or section. But I didn’t have time to. I’ve done my own version of a radio edit. I’ll just solo that now so you can hear what sounds like. We decided to break down some of the tracks we’ve covered over the past three weeks and explain the arrangement trends between them, revealing that a lot of tracks tend to follow similar rules. I’d love to do a de-construction of that sometime. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. In this article, we go over a basic edm song structure and give some tips to turn your loop into a song! And I’ve taken three tracks. This is acting like a chorus, but there’s a real build-up. If you like what you see in these EMC hangouts and would like to enroll in a full course, head on over to www.pointblankonline.net/electronic-music-composition. The key to good techno is syncopation, and you can radically alter the feel of your percussion track by shifting elements forward or back.