Loop to Track: Part 2 – Structuring and Arranging
Okay, so you read last week’s piece and you have your loops. Now it’s time to turn those loops into an arrangement. A daunting task, you say? Not so much once you understand the philosophy behind it. This week, we examine structuring and arranging a loop into a track.
Count to Four
Electronic music – like 99% of popular music – is built on counting to four. Your loop is one to two bars, each comprised of four counts. After once or twice around, your beat gets stale. Liven it up with a refresher or a fill. That gives you eight bars.
The key here is to realize the points in a song where something happens. These one-off events break the monotony of the loop and identify unique segments, creating a song out of a loop. These events will occur, with varying length, complexity, and intensity – at intervals of four or eight, depending on the length of your loop and phrases.
Really, the process of structuring and arranging a dance track is extrapolating this basic process across four or five minutes, with about thirty seconds to one minute of reel at the beginning and at the end to aid the DJ in mixing. The trick is to make each refresher unique in its own way. You can even look at downshifts and risers as nothing more than really long, elaborate refreshers.
The Dropout and the Riser
This is a strong sign to the dancers that something big is going to happen. Removing the kick is the oldest trick in the book because it works really well. By removing the dominant force driving the track forward, you dilute the energy in the track and make a huge amount space and you give the dancers some space to breathe.
The dropout is followed by the riser – your opportunity to create tension and escalate it to a peak after which you reintroduce your loop with…
The Drop
This is the part everybody is waiting for. It’s also the trickiest part for you, the producer, to create. It’s not enough to bring back the main loop – you have to make it exciting. Part of that is producing your riser segment to create a huge amount of tension. The other part is handing off to the main loop in a logical, exciting way.
Reel In and Reel Out
Once you have your track produced, it’s time to make sure you give DJs ample opportunity to mix in and mix out of your track. This is what I call “reel in” and “reel out.” These segments are deviously tricky because you have to balance interest with blandness. You don’t want the beginning of your track to overshadow the track that’s currently playing.
The easiest way to do this is to take your loop, remove the bass, leading elements, and perhaps even elements of your foundational loop. Then, introduce key elements and/or sporadic identifiers at key points (measures 8, 16, and 24 are good bets). By bar 33, your track should actually start. Whether it starts with a build or a bang is up to you.
For the reel out, do the same process in reverse. Remove elements bit by bit at logical intervals (remember, we are using multiples of 4 or 8) until your track stripped back to a bare, minimal loop. End with a fill for flair, or just let the loop stop. It doesn’t matter as much as you think because by this point, the DJ is already playing the next track.
Conclusion
We’re not producing for Toolroom just yet, so let’s take it easy. Structuring and arranging isn’t the easiest thing to do, but doing it well is a necessity for creating good electronic music. The important takeaway is this:
You won’t get anywhere producing killer loops and shelving them. The only way to improve is to try and fail and try again. I have a huge back catalog of garbage tracks that will never see the light of day, but they served their purpose – I practiced arranging by creating them. You need to do the same. Even if they’re terrible, make sure you complete them. With each track comes experience, and with experience comes skill.
Until next time,
-Chris
AudioMunk
Missed part 1? Check it out here!
