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20 Years of Arrangement Advice in 10 Minutes
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- Your music sounds like Lego. You make a nice loop, paste out for 5 minutes, and it sounds blocky and repetitive. It doesn't flow like an actual record, even
- though the loop was great. I had this problem for years, even after two decades of producing, millions of streams, and editing magazine features
- about arrangement. But by unlearning most of the usual advice, I figured out how to arrange great tracks without the struggles, and I help hundreds of
- producers do it, too. So, to stop you making the same mistakes I made, here are six arrangement lessons I wish I'd learned sooner. Starting with lesson
- one, which flips conventional advice on its head. I used to produce in separate stages. I'd make a loop by stacking up all my sounds vertically, then I'd paste
- everything out horizontally to arrange. Sometimes, everything would flow nicely. Other times, my awesome loop would feel like Lego bricks bolted together. I call
- this the Lego effect, a blocky, predictable style of structure I'm sure you're familiar with. For me, the solution to this came when I realized
- the problem wasn't actually arranging, it was everything else around it. If you design a synth patch to evolve over a minute or two, that's sound design, but
- it's also arrangement. If you write chords that shift to new inversions, and you change the melody, that's composing, but it's also arrangement. And when you
- mix one section to hit harder than another, that's mixing, [music] but it's arrangement, too. So, lesson one is this: Stop treating arrangement
- as its own compartmentalized stage. Structuring [music] your song should be baked into every single decision you make, from the first sound you add to
- the final mix tweak. When you work like this, by the time you lay things out on the timeline, the sounds are already pulling the track forward. The act of
- arranging takes way less effort because everything you do and every sound you add is designed to flow and avoid the Lego effect. Okay, let's move on to
- lesson two, which also goes against what many teach about writing tracks, including me. I used to teach this when I was the editor of Computer Music. Here
- is a tip from the December 2018 issue of the magazine. Take a reference track, use it as a template, and copy its structure. I still see people giving
- this advice today. And what's crazier is that producers sell DAW projects with markers laid out on a timeline. Yes, the world has gone mad. Now, I get the
- appeal. I used to copy arrangements for years, but it always left me feeling like I hadn't allowed my tracks to grow and come to life in the way they wanted
- to. Just like using full splice loops or copying melodies from other songs, I was sacrificing creativity for certainty. And although copying helps with
- structure, it doesn't help you understand why a structure works. It wasn't until I decided to listen to my sounds and respond to what they wanted
- to do that I broke beyond this advice, and my arrangements started unfolding naturally and organically. So, lesson two, stop borrowing other producers'
- arrangements. Learn to hear where your sounds want to go, and allow your composition to go on the journey it wants to. The method I use to arrange
- without templates is called stress testing. It's a key part of my Loop to Track Workout. Loads of producers have emailed me to tell me how game-changing
- this has been for them. If you want a free guide to stress testing, I made a free cheat sheet you can download at the link below. Okay, so lesson three,
- you've moved on from copying other people's structures. So, how do you actually build your own? I used to make more loops than a cupboard full of
- Cheerios, and the more loops I made, the less tracks I finished. Until one day I snapped. I'd had enough of being stuck in this endless loop hell with no way
- out. So, the way I solved it was simple. To break myself out of the loop, I decided to stop making loops. Now, that doesn't mean stare at a blank project
- like a zombie and not do anything. To show you what I mean, here are some of my tracks from my works in progress folder. I've imported them into Live so
- we can look at the waveforms. And I've only imported version one, so these are all exports from after the first initial session. And as you can see, most of
- these are full arrangements and the others have at least a rough arc, so intro, drop, B section. There's not an eight-bar loop in sight because if you
- think about it, a drop is not a drop without a build-up [music] before it to give that drop the context it needs. Or a chorus without a verse isn't really a
- chorus at all. So, lesson three is this: if you're sick of getting stuck in loops, stop making loops and start arranging your first session. Make sure
- every idea gets extended out into something with a shape, even if you're not sure whether it's good yet. Because when you make a rough structure early,
- the idea immediately crystallizes into a track. It's never a loop to begin with, and then you can hear its full shape and structure and evaluate it as a piece of
- music, not as an eight-bar loop doomed to stay unfinished. And if you want free practical techniques to help you break out of the loop, I'll put links below to
- several of my videos I've made on the topic. But one of the most important techniques is lesson four. This is the arrangement method that has changed how
- I think about producing. Here's another tip from that same issue of CM. It's a common tip, subtractive arranging. Paste out your full loop for the length of the
- song and then go through and remove sections until you have a full structure. However, over the years I've found that subtractive arranging is one
- of the biggest causes of the Lego effect because pasting and removing colored blocks is like playing with Lego. It gives you the most predictable structure
- possible. What was the solution? Well, imagine someone performing a track live. They're not building a Lego house. They're playing keys, fading sounds in
- and out on a mixer. [music] They're throwing tracks into reverb and cranking up echo feedback with their hands. And in the DAW, we use automation to
- recreate hands and fingers changing sounds over time. Now, I'm sure you use automation [music] already, but are you doing enough? Here are some examples of
- my tracks, and you can see I use tons and tons of automation lanes. If I play with a controller and I feel like it wants to move in a song, I record the
- automation in straight away. Not every track needs hundreds of automation lanes, but a good way to improve the flow of your tracks is to go too far and
- do more automation than you think you need, because sounds moving and changing with automation is what counteracts the Lego effect. So, lesson four is this,
- whether you record automation live or draw it in, making sounds change and evolve and fade in and out over time is the antidote to formulaic blocky
- arrangements. All right, now to lesson five. This one's a killer. Sometimes your best idea is the thing that's destroying your arrangement. This used
- to happen to me all the time. I'd be working on a track and I'd stumble on an amazing new sound or a new part. Then I'd spend ages rebuilding the structure
- around it, forcing everything else to accommodate this new shiny thing. But then I listened back and the track sounded way worse than before, because
- that sound had pulled everything in a different direction. That amazing new sound was amazing because it had its own energy and direction, and that's exactly
- why it wouldn't fit inside my track. This new sound was a star that needed its own stage to shine. So, now when this happens, I've seen this before, and
- I don't fight it. I drag the new sound into a new project. I will save it and leave it for another day. Now, the track I was working on gets its form back and
- then I've got a second idea ready and waiting for another day. So, lesson five, don't cram too much in. If a sound is brilliant but won't fit, don't
- untangle your entire arrangement to squeeze it in. That's a second track asking to be started. Okay, now to lesson six. This is something I've never
- seen anyone talk about in music production. Doing this will help you improve at all the lessons we've looked at so far. In the video game world,
- competitive gamers do something called a VOD review. They screen record their own gameplay, then they watch it back afterwards. This helps them spot their
- mistakes and bad habits and opportunities they missed. And this got me thinking, could this be used as a learning tool to improve our music
- production? So, I started screen recording my sessions from start to finish. And then when I watched them back, it was a massive eye-opener,
- mainly for seeing how I arrange in the moment. I discovered a lot of the arrangement issues and improvements we've looked at in this video by doing
- this self-review process. I noticed I would keep adding more and more sounds before committing to any kind of structure. I'd stay in that vertical
- loop building mode for way too long. And then once I did start arranging, I wouldn't automate enough stuff to make the arrangement feel organic and
- flowing. I couldn't see it while I was in the middle of it, but watching it back, it was totally obvious. Once I spotted these patterns, I could fix them
- and improve. So, self-reviewing my sessions changed how I work. This is lesson six. If you don't know why your arrangements aren't working, record
- yourself and watch it back because if you can identify these specific moment you get stuck, that becomes a problem you can work on and actually solve. If
- you want to do this, download something like OBS, which is free. Screen record yourself making music, then watch it back a day or two later, you'll spot
- arrangement habits and opportunities you probably missed while you were in the zone. So, these were the six arrangement lessons I wish I'd learned years ago.
- Stop treating arrangement as a separate stage. Don't copy other track structures. Build a shape in your first session. Automate more than you think
- you need. Don't let a great sound destroy a good track. And watch yourself back to spot the mistakes you usually miss. Now, if you want the full system I
- use to go from loop to finished track, that's what the Loop to Track workout is for. It trains you how to finish tracks through structured reps until arranging
- stops feeling like a fight. Hundreds of producers are already getting great results. Check it out at loop to track.com or at the link below. And if
- you want three actionable tactics to help you bust out of any loop, go and watch this video right here.