Structuring Your Track & Keeping It Interesting

[th@-pu$$y]

6:30 is a pretty long tune. Killer thread though

[naus]

I always write my intros first - it gives you the vibe and drive of your track it helps you decide where to take it, musically!

Then again, I start writing my tracks with pads and atmosphere..

I find if you write your intro first it sets you up for a big building job essentially.

If you write your intro you gotta think of something new to follow it, or something new to introduce into it to turn it intro a drop. Your drop to me is like the height of your musical ideas, it's kinda like a taste of everything in the song, so the way I see it, if you have your drop written then you've technically already written the intro - for instance you could just copy and paste your drop into where your intro should sit, remove the drums and bass, and maybe re-arrange your pads a little, or make them twice as long or put a filter on them and play with automation.

Everyone writes differently of course, so there's no right or wrong really, just whatever suits, personally I'd just rather write a large musical idea and deconstruct it than keep building on small ones.

I write like this to mostly. i find if i have the beefy bits of my tune done the the rest is just parsley.

[ShadowMachine]

Its awesome to see someone talk about the golden ratio, I was taught how to apply this to DJing....
great tool to learn for anything design oriented, and man just seeing this made me go "dammit" *palm 2 forehead* "why did I forget this" lol....
once you learn it, amazing

[tintala]

killer thread , want to know more, please expound!

[Ldizzy]

i always seem to write some part of the breakdown first...

a groove with sparse elements...

and from there i decide what they'd do thats more eloquent ...

i kno it sounds weird... but it works when it works..

buildups are the hardest for me.. anything progressive, i just can't seem to make it flow naturally..

i really am from a hip hop background so the 8 bars of grime is the law i go by... by lack of anything better...

[Dosva]

for me, the intro is definately the hardest part of a song to write. it is usually the last part of the song i work on too.

always write your drop first imo

This is something I need to try out considering I almost always start with a loop and then move through the verse to the end of the song, then go back and make my intro. Starting from the drop sounds a little easier because I won't be stuck trying to fit it in somewhere.

Sweet thread!

[Ldizzy]

melodies or drums first guys?

[DZA]

Thats not really 8 bar tho isit a better example would have been musical mob - pulse, alias - gladiator ect....

[Ldizzy]

ESKI

Edit : ok that was a little more then useless... sorry... im on edge.

[Iorek]

Great thread I appreciate your hard work in all of these.
I have a question. I'm working on a track that has a slight pause before the drop, the way it is set up now It pauses on the 33rd bar and drops on the 34th should I have it pause on the 32nd so it will drop in time with the 33rd?

here's a screenie

[brack3n]

Great thread I appreciate your hard work in all of these.
I have a question. I'm working on a track that has a slight pause before the drop, the way it is set up now It pauses on the 33rd bar and drops on the 34th should I have it pause on the 32nd so it will drop in time with the 33rd?

here's a screenie

Id like to know that too..

when making a track DJ friendly, as long as you have your basic structure (i.e 32 bar intro, 64 bar drop) does it matter whether the content within these 'boundarys' are in, for example, 16 bar loops.. because if i wanted to put a little pause or something it would mess up the arrangement. Or would i have to account for the pause when sticking to the structure and make any loops slightly shorter. Hopefully you guys get what i mean.

tbh i think i need to stop worryin about shit like this but i seem to have the idea in my head that everything i do must be in 4/8/16 bar loops its driving me mad lol.. just something id like to hear some more experienced view s on.

[RandoRando]

Great thread I appreciate your hard work in all of these.
I have a question. I'm working on a track that has a slight pause before the drop, the way it is set up now It pauses on the 33rd bar and drops on the 34th should I have it pause on the 32nd so it will drop in time with the 33rd?

here's a screenie

Id like to know that too..

when making a track DJ friendly, as long as you have your basic structure (i.e 32 bar intro, 64 bar drop) does it matter whether the content within these 'boundarys' are in, for example, 16 bar loops.. because if i wanted to put a little pause or something it would mess up the arrangement. Or would i have to account for the pause when sticking to the structure and make any loops slightly shorter. Hopefully you guys get what i mean.

tbh i think i need to stop worryin about shit like this but i seem to have the idea in my head that everything i do must be in 4/8/16 bar loops its driving me mad lol.. just something id like to hear some more experienced view s on.

i say , forget the dj's, its MY music, im not writing it for them, if they are a good enough DJ they can figure it out

For song structure, look at Mala "Lean FWD," toasty "Take it Personal"....

there's a ton, but thse are ones that I can keep coming back to that never cease to inspire re: pacing.

I'm actually writing one up of this kind of structuring now ! Just finding a name for it is whats bugging me.

Call it "the mala structure"

[brack3n]

Yeah, true.. i think the main thing i have trouble with is trying too hard to make it interesting by adding too many differnt elements instead of getting the best out what i have and creating better atmospherics and getting a vibe going.

I tend to add new elements and change the drum pattern a bit every 8/16 bars instead of maybe making slight changes to the drums iv already got and playing with the sounds im using.

why cant i ever think like this when im sat at the computer lol

[serox]

Great thread I appreciate your hard work in all of these.
I have a question. I'm working on a track that has a slight pause before the drop, the way it is set up now It pauses on the 33rd bar and drops on the 34th should I have it pause on the 32nd so it will drop in time with the 33rd?

here's a screenie

Id like to know that too..

when making a track DJ friendly, as long as you have your basic structure (i.e 32 bar intro, 64 bar drop) does it matter whether the content within these 'boundarys' are in, for example, 16 bar loops.. because if i wanted to put a little pause or something it would mess up the arrangement. Or would i have to account for the pause when sticking to the structure and make any loops slightly shorter. Hopefully you guys get what i mean.

tbh i think i need to stop worryin about shit like this but i seem to have the idea in my head that everything i do must be in 4/8/16 bar loops its driving me mad lol.. just something id like to hear some more experienced view s on.

You can have pauses wherever you like. As long as the track has 32/64 bar loops its all good.

[brack3n]

So say i wanted to put a half a bar pause, as an example, in the middle of a 64 bar drop.. would you do 32 bars then the pause (or break) then do the next 32 bars? Or include it as part of one of the 32 bar sections? i know there are no hard rules to this so im just wanting to know how other producers go about it..

[serox]

So say i wanted to put a half a bar pause, as an example, in the middle of a 64 bar drop.. would you do 32 bars then the pause (or break) then do the next 32 bars? Or include it as part of one of the 32 bar sections? i know there are no hard rules to this so im just wanting to know how other producers go about it..

I would suggest you keep your 32/64 bars and do whatever you want in them.

What some people do is have 32bar intro, then 64bars, then a 32bar break down, then drop into the 64 bar loop again.

This way when a DJ drops the record from the first noise on the record it will all be in time for the drop. As a DJ I like to try and keep each record in sync bar for bar, if that makes sense.

[brack3n]

Yeah thats what i thought would be the case.. thanks for clearing that up mate.

[Iorek]

Makes more sense now thanks guys.

[fragments]

Is it weird that I pay attention to time rather than bars? For instance I usually use about :30, :45 (rarely 1:00 but sometimes) intros, about 1:00 to 1:30 loop, :30, :45 (rarely 1:00 but sometimes) breakdown, and finish it out with about a 1:00 to 2:00 second bit/loop (exact times relative to BPM).

I'm on bored with the "just let the track do what it wants" philosophy, however there is often and editing process to reel in tracks that get...off track.

I generally write tracks in a linear fashion (intro to outro), but have recently gotten into arranging a "bare bones" version of the 64 bar loop then starting with the intro.

Some one had asked melody or drums a earlier...I've been trying lots of different things. Track I'm focused on at the moment I took some advice from Basic A and started with just writing all the ambient/atmospheric parts of the track, made that sound full and lush, arranged that bit of the track front and back, then went back and wrote drums, bass, melody etc. Also really focused on making the pads/atmospheric not just full/lush but melodic elements that play off of each other even if they are low down in the mix--gotta say I'm *really* happy w/ the results so far. Hoping to post some results soon.

[rachtiiibam]

Great thread Legend4ry. Looking forward to see it progress.