OK - I've probably 'finished' about 8 or so tunes, (i.e. arranged and mixed) so I'm still learning my own workflow. I hope this isn't too much of a 'how long is a piece of string' question.
I'm finding that sometimes I move into arrangement mode too soon, and find that I don't have enough elements in my track to hold the listeners attention for the duration of a full track. I then end up struggling to add stuff late in the process, which usually sounds forced and doesn't fit as well as the elements developed earlier in the process.
The flip side to this is when I spend longer in session view and create loads of elements and variations to use as an archive when moving to Arrangment, but then 70% of that stuff doesn't make the final cut.
I'm sure everyone is different - but how do you know you are ready to move a project into arrangement mode?
Thank in advance, guys!
How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
I am thinking kinda same problems, but I am on an earlier point on my music way. 
I've just finished my first track https://soundcloud.com/marat-bakirov/blues-for-dad and thinking about the right way.
This track was made having a structure in mind, and then I was starting from the bass line, i worked in a session view most, and then just like in a Jazz impromptu way - I've recorded backing bass and harmony for a particular part, then push record and started playing crazy stuff on keyboards and guitar. After oving to arrangement and doing mastering\effects\equalzer\etc I realized that the track is long, but finally decided to leave it as is.
Now I'm creating my second track, this time I am starting in a Arrangement view.
What I think is that there is a mistake to think in this way "I do all my work in session view, then I move to arrangement and never go back". What I think is a right way is that we need to combine aproaches. For example, you have your first 1.5 minutes ready in an arrangement view, why not go back to session and start looping and creating\inspiring\imaging the second part? After it is ready, you can record or copypaste it back to Arrangement.
As far as I understand , you can even play session clips on one track and arrangement on another track simultaneously to see how the stuff you have recorder in clips go with your arrangement.
So again - my vision is that we need to combine aproaches. So there is not point when you move from sessoin to arrangement, as I think the best way is not to do it one time, but do it several times.
This is just my humble opinion.
I've just finished my first track https://soundcloud.com/marat-bakirov/blues-for-dad and thinking about the right way.
This track was made having a structure in mind, and then I was starting from the bass line, i worked in a session view most, and then just like in a Jazz impromptu way - I've recorded backing bass and harmony for a particular part, then push record and started playing crazy stuff on keyboards and guitar. After oving to arrangement and doing mastering\effects\equalzer\etc I realized that the track is long, but finally decided to leave it as is.
Now I'm creating my second track, this time I am starting in a Arrangement view.
What I think is that there is a mistake to think in this way "I do all my work in session view, then I move to arrangement and never go back". What I think is a right way is that we need to combine aproaches. For example, you have your first 1.5 minutes ready in an arrangement view, why not go back to session and start looping and creating\inspiring\imaging the second part? After it is ready, you can record or copypaste it back to Arrangement.
As far as I understand , you can even play session clips on one track and arrangement on another track simultaneously to see how the stuff you have recorder in clips go with your arrangement.
So again - my vision is that we need to combine aproaches. So there is not point when you move from sessoin to arrangement, as I think the best way is not to do it one time, but do it several times.
This is just my humble opinion.
-
evangelink
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:25 am
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
I mainly use Session view for getting the basics together. Once I've got 2-3 distinct sections, I then move it all into Arrangement view.
I roughly map out the sections, and put them in an order which I think will work. I then use Arrangement view to flesh out the basic track structure I've developed, adding extra percussion for interest, and different melodies for variety.
Personally I'm much more confortable adding detail in Arrangement view, but everyone works differently.
I roughly map out the sections, and put them in an order which I think will work. I then use Arrangement view to flesh out the basic track structure I've developed, adding extra percussion for interest, and different melodies for variety.
Personally I'm much more confortable adding detail in Arrangement view, but everyone works differently.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Hi, this is something that I've struggled with in the past as well. Live 9 has a few features that made things "click" for me. I just started thinking up this workflow last night and am in the first stages of it but I'll share it and hopefully it helps you in some way.
Basically there are four high-level activities I need to perform when working on a tune:
- composition
- sound design
- arrangement
- mixing
Ableton lets you work non-linearly so you can kind of do things in any order. Meaning you could do some sound design, then compose something from it, then mix that part down, then work on an arrangement in the context of the rest of the tune. For the purposes of this post I’m going to talk about them as if it’s (mostly) linear in the order I presented above, but with the nifty trick that you never get “stuck” anywhere. I’ll get to that a bit later.
Okay, so you know that any tune is going to have multiple sections. To start things off you want to create something resembling a foundation, and you want to compose at least two sections so you have some interest and contrast in the tune. Basically we’ll create a foundation for each section, comprised of just 3-4 tracks. We don’t want to do too much layering at this point because then you get stuck in that 16-bar loop problem. Create a foundation for each section before adding stuff. Let’s work on the first section.
- Create a midi track for the first part of your foundation. It can be whatever you want but a reasonable starting point might be drums...
- Create an empty 1-bar midi clip in ARRANGE mode. Drag this out to 16 bars
- Drop an instrument onto the track. Keep this simple - a sample you like, a basic synth patch you program, a synth preset, or some factory content. Not the final sound, just the right vibe
- Program or play your 1-bar midi loop
- Use the “duplicate loop” button in the midi clip to turn this into a 2-bar loop
- Change the second bar of the 2-bar loop
- Duplicate again! Change bars 3 & 4
- Keep duplicating and changing the new bars until you have 8 unique bars, or 16 if you want
Try to have some call and response in the bars but don’t worry about it too much yet. The point here is not to commit to a drum track yet but just to give you some compositional ideas to play with later when it comes to arrangement. It’s a lot easier to put together an interesting arrangement if you’ve got some variations on your basic drum beat rather than having a single 4-bar loop that you repeat everywhere and have to modify later.
- Move on to the next element of foundation. Create another midi track, maybe for percussion. Follow the same process as above, making each bar play off the drums a bit
- Do the same for 1 or 2 more elements - maybe bassline and lead, or bassline and arp/pad
Of course once you’ve got some drums and percussion going, you’ll probably have a decent idea for a bassline. You don’t have to do the 1-bar and duplicate thing here if you don’t feel like it. Just go ahead and play it in and record it if you want.
Okay, so now you have a foundation of 3-4 elements forming 16 bars that work together (sorta). If you listen to it on loop you’ll notice that it’s a bit hectic because of all the variations and how they change after 1 bar each. That’s okay, again the point here is to come up with some compositional ideas that are related to each other and work together. You’ll have a chance to make everything flow nicely when it comes time to arrange.
That’s the foundation for section A! Now repeat for section B. Make it contrast with section A in some way. Maybe the beat is different, or the percussion pattern or sounds are different, or you change something about the bassline or use a totally different one. Whatever, just follow the same process to compose a second section.
Now that you’ve got the foundation for two sections, go ahead and add more character to the track. Drop in some samples, write new parts, whatever. You have two distinct sections to work with, each containing multiple compositional ideas, so you’re not going to get stuck in a loop later on. Again this will sound hectic and not really like a tune at this point, but you are finding ideas and sounds that kinda work together.
Name each of the clips and drag them one-by-one into a folder in your user library. Name them like “A drums” “B drums” “A bass” “B bass” etc so you can easily lay them out. I really like the new user library feature because it lets you easily just store and organize clips, so you don’t actually have to save a live set until you get down to a detailed arrangement and mix.
Now you have two sections with plenty of character that are related to one another but contrast in some way. Cool. Move your clips into session view. Highlight the section A clips, copy and paste them into a session view scene.
So that takes care of our basic compositional part of the process. We selected basic sounds and wrote ideas for parts of the track. Now to get things start to sound good...
Here I want to do some basic processing. Just EQ and compression on individual parts to tweak them and make them sound how I want. I’m not really mixing at this point and I’m not even EQing in the context of other parts. Particularly for a sample there might be something I really like about it and something I don’t, and some basic EQ and compression will bring out the parts I like. I’m more likely to focus on the really unique parts of a track – samples, bassline, synths, whatever. Basically everything except drums I want to save drums for last because it’s soooo easy and inspiring to make the drums sound good when there’s a good-sounding track there, whereas if I spend a lot of time on drums now I won’t necessarily have the motivation to make the rest of the track work. That’s a personal thing though of course.
Create a new folder in your user library and call it “basic processing” or something, and drag your clips into it. The neat thing about user library is that these clips are essentially free, any samples that you use were already copied to the library as part of the first time you saved them. Clips contain all the instrument and effect information, so at any point you can bring these clips into a live session and have your basic compositional elements with the basic processing you did. Pretty cool.
Now go wild! Pick a unique part of your track and process it to hell and back (this is also where you might replace stock sounds with custom synth sounds, or layer sounds, or whatever). Create an effects rack, map some knobs, and record from session view into arrange view while tweaking the knobs like crazy. The point here is to turn those compositional elements into really interesting sounds. You might do this 3 or 4 times per part, using totally different processing on each one to get a wide range of sounds based on the original sound and composition. Either freeze and flatten, freeze and copy to an audio track, or export the audio. This is going to make up your audio material that you arrange later. Do this for each of the really interesting parts of your track. You can drag the big huge audio clips into a “renders” folder of the user library if you want, or just move on to the next part.
Okay, so you’ve got composition and sound design done. You’ll probably have anywhere from 5-60 minutes of audio material for each track you did, depending on how much fun you had processing the sounds and tweaking the knobs Now you want to find the special bits for each part. Go through the audio clips and find loops that sound really good. Pick 4 of your favorites, or 10, or whatever. The more the better, really. Just make sure it’s stuff you really like! These will be the bits that you sequence and mix. Use command+e to split a loop from the rest of the clip, then highlight the loop and command+j to consolidate it. Drag these loops into another folder in your user library.
Right, so you’ve taken the compositional elements from both sections, made them sound awesome, and then picked out the best-sounding loops. Time to sequence. It’s up to you how you do this but again I’d suggest working section by section, creating a foundation for each section. It might go something like this:
- sequence 16 bars of one track of section A. This should really flow since you have lots of good sounds to work with, and now you can have some things be repetive (a good thing) while breaking them periodically (another good thing). But it’s not haphazard, because you’re picking from the best-sounding versions of the compositional elements you wrote before.
- repeat this for 2-3 more elements of section A. That’s your foundation
- do the same thing for section B
- consolidate each section separately, and drag those clips into your user library folder
Now you’ve got a foundation for sections A and B that should sound pretty damn good (although maybe with weak drums since we’re putting that off for the time being!) Lay them out in a basic arrangement by just copy-pasting the sections. A B A B A A B A A B B A B A A B B A A or whatever. Now go through and start removing clips from each section to get the basic structure going, and keep it interesting. At this point you’ll have a decent-sounding tune with some structure to it, the sounds are good, it has distinct sections, it has varying levels of energy. Once you’ve got this basic structure in place you might want to make each version of a section subtly different from the other. So if you have an A A sequence, maybe add a new part to the second 16-bars so it has more energy / sounds a bit different. Then in a later A A sequence you might leave the first one the same, add a new part to the second (same as before, or different), and replace some clips at key points. So the listener is rolling along, they get to bars 7 and 8 and they think they know what’s coming but you drop in a different sound.
At this point you have a basic song structure with distinct sections, and each version of the section with its own distinct character. It should actually sound pretty good at this point because you put work into creating good sounds and selecting your favorites and sequencing them out. You’ve got an overall character to the track but it moves in its own way and isn’t too repetive.
Now for transitions! Start with simple stuff like filter sweeps and risers. Just something to get you from one section to the next, let the listener anticipate what comes next. This might be a nice place to break out some of the other sounds that you created before and use them for the transitions. Take one of the loops you made but didn’t use, filter sweep it with some LFO and build a crazy riser out of it, while filtering out the rest of the track. Use your imagination.
Now it should sound like a proper tune that flows along and has transitions to keep things moving. Now you can do some more detailed work, like adding fills, making little edits, screwing with warping at certain parts. Maybe drop in some more samples or stabs or whatever. The ear candy type stuff.
Mix it down...EQ, compression, delay, reverb. Done!
The nifty thing (to me) is that you should never really get stuck. If you start laying out a basic arrangement and feel like it’s missing something, you haven’t lost anything and you haven’t committed to a structure yet. By consolidating the clips and saving them in your user folder, you can sequence a basic arrangement in just a few minutes. Go back to step one above, but using this new foundation as the backdrop for any new parts. Compose your new parts, get them sounding good with effects, then pick out the good stuff and sequence it into your section. At some point you’ll realize you have enough and it’s time to move on to the arrangement and transitions and edits and mixing.
Now this is basically how I worked before, but two features in Live make this WAY easier and faster and remove some mental blocks for me. One is the user library, where I can store clips as I work on them, and not have to save a live set each time I start a tune. For whatever reason, having a bunch of half-finished live sets was depressing for me, whereas having clips in the user library to mess with at will is liberating and inspiring to me. Second is the really nice “duplicate loop” feature of midi clips which allows you to really easily take one idea and create a bunch of variations of it quickly.
Well, I totally didn’t set out to write a 2000 word essay, but I hope you find this useful in some way.
Basically there are four high-level activities I need to perform when working on a tune:
- composition
- sound design
- arrangement
- mixing
Ableton lets you work non-linearly so you can kind of do things in any order. Meaning you could do some sound design, then compose something from it, then mix that part down, then work on an arrangement in the context of the rest of the tune. For the purposes of this post I’m going to talk about them as if it’s (mostly) linear in the order I presented above, but with the nifty trick that you never get “stuck” anywhere. I’ll get to that a bit later.
Okay, so you know that any tune is going to have multiple sections. To start things off you want to create something resembling a foundation, and you want to compose at least two sections so you have some interest and contrast in the tune. Basically we’ll create a foundation for each section, comprised of just 3-4 tracks. We don’t want to do too much layering at this point because then you get stuck in that 16-bar loop problem. Create a foundation for each section before adding stuff. Let’s work on the first section.
- Create a midi track for the first part of your foundation. It can be whatever you want but a reasonable starting point might be drums...
- Create an empty 1-bar midi clip in ARRANGE mode. Drag this out to 16 bars
- Drop an instrument onto the track. Keep this simple - a sample you like, a basic synth patch you program, a synth preset, or some factory content. Not the final sound, just the right vibe
- Program or play your 1-bar midi loop
- Use the “duplicate loop” button in the midi clip to turn this into a 2-bar loop
- Change the second bar of the 2-bar loop
- Duplicate again! Change bars 3 & 4
- Keep duplicating and changing the new bars until you have 8 unique bars, or 16 if you want
Try to have some call and response in the bars but don’t worry about it too much yet. The point here is not to commit to a drum track yet but just to give you some compositional ideas to play with later when it comes to arrangement. It’s a lot easier to put together an interesting arrangement if you’ve got some variations on your basic drum beat rather than having a single 4-bar loop that you repeat everywhere and have to modify later.
- Move on to the next element of foundation. Create another midi track, maybe for percussion. Follow the same process as above, making each bar play off the drums a bit
- Do the same for 1 or 2 more elements - maybe bassline and lead, or bassline and arp/pad
Of course once you’ve got some drums and percussion going, you’ll probably have a decent idea for a bassline. You don’t have to do the 1-bar and duplicate thing here if you don’t feel like it. Just go ahead and play it in and record it if you want.
Okay, so now you have a foundation of 3-4 elements forming 16 bars that work together (sorta). If you listen to it on loop you’ll notice that it’s a bit hectic because of all the variations and how they change after 1 bar each. That’s okay, again the point here is to come up with some compositional ideas that are related to each other and work together. You’ll have a chance to make everything flow nicely when it comes time to arrange.
That’s the foundation for section A! Now repeat for section B. Make it contrast with section A in some way. Maybe the beat is different, or the percussion pattern or sounds are different, or you change something about the bassline or use a totally different one. Whatever, just follow the same process to compose a second section.
Now that you’ve got the foundation for two sections, go ahead and add more character to the track. Drop in some samples, write new parts, whatever. You have two distinct sections to work with, each containing multiple compositional ideas, so you’re not going to get stuck in a loop later on. Again this will sound hectic and not really like a tune at this point, but you are finding ideas and sounds that kinda work together.
Name each of the clips and drag them one-by-one into a folder in your user library. Name them like “A drums” “B drums” “A bass” “B bass” etc so you can easily lay them out. I really like the new user library feature because it lets you easily just store and organize clips, so you don’t actually have to save a live set until you get down to a detailed arrangement and mix.
Now you have two sections with plenty of character that are related to one another but contrast in some way. Cool. Move your clips into session view. Highlight the section A clips, copy and paste them into a session view scene.
So that takes care of our basic compositional part of the process. We selected basic sounds and wrote ideas for parts of the track. Now to get things start to sound good...
Here I want to do some basic processing. Just EQ and compression on individual parts to tweak them and make them sound how I want. I’m not really mixing at this point and I’m not even EQing in the context of other parts. Particularly for a sample there might be something I really like about it and something I don’t, and some basic EQ and compression will bring out the parts I like. I’m more likely to focus on the really unique parts of a track – samples, bassline, synths, whatever. Basically everything except drums
I want to save drums for last because it’s soooo easy and inspiring to make the drums sound good when there’s a good-sounding track there, whereas if I spend a lot of time on drums now I won’t necessarily have the motivation to make the rest of the track work. That’s a personal thing though of course.Create a new folder in your user library and call it “basic processing” or something, and drag your clips into it. The neat thing about user library is that these clips are essentially free, any samples that you use were already copied to the library as part of the first time you saved them. Clips contain all the instrument and effect information, so at any point you can bring these clips into a live session and have your basic compositional elements with the basic processing you did. Pretty cool.
Now go wild! Pick a unique part of your track and process it to hell and back (this is also where you might replace stock sounds with custom synth sounds, or layer sounds, or whatever). Create an effects rack, map some knobs, and record from session view into arrange view while tweaking the knobs like crazy. The point here is to turn those compositional elements into really interesting sounds. You might do this 3 or 4 times per part, using totally different processing on each one to get a wide range of sounds based on the original sound and composition. Either freeze and flatten, freeze and copy to an audio track, or export the audio. This is going to make up your audio material that you arrange later. Do this for each of the really interesting parts of your track. You can drag the big huge audio clips into a “renders” folder of the user library if you want, or just move on to the next part.
Okay, so you’ve got composition and sound design done. You’ll probably have anywhere from 5-60 minutes of audio material for each track you did, depending on how much fun you had processing the sounds and tweaking the knobs
Now you want to find the special bits for each part. Go through the audio clips and find loops that sound really good. Pick 4 of your favorites, or 10, or whatever. The more the better, really. Just make sure it’s stuff you really like! These will be the bits that you sequence and mix. Use command+e to split a loop from the rest of the clip, then highlight the loop and command+j to consolidate it. Drag these loops into another folder in your user library.Right, so you’ve taken the compositional elements from both sections, made them sound awesome, and then picked out the best-sounding loops. Time to sequence. It’s up to you how you do this but again I’d suggest working section by section, creating a foundation for each section. It might go something like this:
- sequence 16 bars of one track of section A. This should really flow since you have lots of good sounds to work with, and now you can have some things be repetive (a good thing) while breaking them periodically (another good thing). But it’s not haphazard, because you’re picking from the best-sounding versions of the compositional elements you wrote before.
- repeat this for 2-3 more elements of section A. That’s your foundation
- do the same thing for section B
- consolidate each section separately, and drag those clips into your user library folder
Now you’ve got a foundation for sections A and B that should sound pretty damn good (although maybe with weak drums since we’re putting that off for the time being!) Lay them out in a basic arrangement by just copy-pasting the sections. A B A B A A B A A B B A B A A B B A A or whatever. Now go through and start removing clips from each section to get the basic structure going, and keep it interesting. At this point you’ll have a decent-sounding tune with some structure to it, the sounds are good, it has distinct sections, it has varying levels of energy. Once you’ve got this basic structure in place you might want to make each version of a section subtly different from the other. So if you have an A A sequence, maybe add a new part to the second 16-bars so it has more energy / sounds a bit different. Then in a later A A sequence you might leave the first one the same, add a new part to the second (same as before, or different), and replace some clips at key points. So the listener is rolling along, they get to bars 7 and 8 and they think they know what’s coming but you drop in a different sound.
At this point you have a basic song structure with distinct sections, and each version of the section with its own distinct character. It should actually sound pretty good at this point because you put work into creating good sounds and selecting your favorites and sequencing them out. You’ve got an overall character to the track but it moves in its own way and isn’t too repetive.
Now for transitions! Start with simple stuff like filter sweeps and risers. Just something to get you from one section to the next, let the listener anticipate what comes next. This might be a nice place to break out some of the other sounds that you created before and use them for the transitions. Take one of the loops you made but didn’t use, filter sweep it with some LFO and build a crazy riser out of it, while filtering out the rest of the track. Use your imagination.
Now it should sound like a proper tune that flows along and has transitions to keep things moving. Now you can do some more detailed work, like adding fills, making little edits, screwing with warping at certain parts. Maybe drop in some more samples or stabs or whatever. The ear candy type stuff.
Mix it down...EQ, compression, delay, reverb. Done!
The nifty thing (to me) is that you should never really get stuck. If you start laying out a basic arrangement and feel like it’s missing something, you haven’t lost anything and you haven’t committed to a structure yet. By consolidating the clips and saving them in your user folder, you can sequence a basic arrangement in just a few minutes. Go back to step one above, but using this new foundation as the backdrop for any new parts. Compose your new parts, get them sounding good with effects, then pick out the good stuff and sequence it into your section. At some point you’ll realize you have enough and it’s time to move on to the arrangement and transitions and edits and mixing.
Now this is basically how I worked before, but two features in Live make this WAY easier and faster and remove some mental blocks for me. One is the user library, where I can store clips as I work on them, and not have to save a live set each time I start a tune. For whatever reason, having a bunch of half-finished live sets was depressing for me, whereas having clips in the user library to mess with at will is liberating and inspiring to me. Second is the really nice “duplicate loop” feature of midi clips which allows you to really easily take one idea and create a bunch of variations of it quickly.
Well, I totally didn’t set out to write a 2000 word essay, but I hope you find this useful in some way.
-
Matt_Quinn
- Posts: 540
- Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:47 pm
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Really great post pergesu. Thank you.
the_planet wrote:Trap music is not supported in the current version.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Awesome post pergesu - so much to absorb!
A couple of questions:
* what advantage does dragging your clips into the User Library have? I've never done this before, and would have thought that just saving your clips into Session View achieved much the same result.
* Approximately how long are you spending on each part of this process?
Thanks again, really great post.
A couple of questions:
* what advantage does dragging your clips into the User Library have? I've never done this before, and would have thought that just saving your clips into Session View achieved much the same result.
* Approximately how long are you spending on each part of this process?
Thanks again, really great post.
-
schullermusik
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2013 4:09 pm
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
I load up clips/scenes in Session View and then manually run through the different scenes. When it sounds like there's enough there to carry a song, then I start bringing the bits into Arrangement view. I also hold off on automating until I have the song structure laid out so I can hear how the pieces fit together.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
It's personal preference, really. The main thing for me though is that by saving my clips to the user library, I don't have to save a Live set until I get down to arrangement. I also don't like having a cluttered session view. That tends to happen when I'm recording lots of stuff, whether it's the MIDI for new parts or recording those parts to audio with lots of FX tweaks.Citizen wrote:Awesome post pergesu - so much to absorb!
A couple of questions:
* what advantage does dragging your clips into the User Library have? I've never done this before, and would have thought that just saving your clips into Session View achieved much the same result.
For whatever reason, I prefer to just keep generating and selecting musical ideas until I get to a point where I just *have* to arrange and mix. The new User Library works beautifully for that because I can work iteratively. If I save a clip to the user library, I can create variations on the clip or sample easily, and store those as well. This might be a simple variation on the original idea or something completely different.
As long as you want, really. I find I need to work fast to not get bored or bogged down. I might write those core parts in about an hour, then spend another hour or two adding new parts. At that point I really can go in a lot of different directions. I can work on an arrangement, or create sound variations. If I do an arrangement then I get to a song faster, albeit one that sounds a bit cheesy because it doesn't have much production behind it. But it has sections and a theme and progression. If I mess with sounds then it will take me longer to get to an arrangement, because I have to generate and select the sounds first!* Approximately how long are you spending on each part of this process?
I think I'm going to focus on arranging the parts before I do sound tweaking with the parts...that way I can get to an arranged tune quickly. Once that's done I can produce it as much as I like. Once *that's* done, I can remix it however I want. Basically I want to go from empty canvas to working arrangement in 4-8 hours, to have a decent tune in place. Then once I've got the tune written I can record it and mix it as many times as I like. Treat it the same as any songwriter or composer - first you need to write a song, then produce/record it, then mix it. This can all blend on the computer of course and production/mixing tends to (for me), but having a notion of "the song" is still important.
Also keep in mind that you can work even more quickly if you have good sounds at your disposal to begin with...so let's say you don't want to / can't work on a tune when you sit down (not enough time or energy) then just make a beat, or a bassline, or program a synth patch or whatever, and bounce the sample to your sample library. Then at some point you combine a couple of those blocks and write new stuff around it. If you have good sounds you like they might work as-is. If the sounds are weak they might serve as inspiration only, a sort of sketch, and you use that to quickly lay out a tune idea and then rebuild the parts with better sounds.
Glad to hear itThanks again, really great post.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
There are some talented guys who skip session view and start right with the arrangement.
Take a look at Youtube (MrBill, Sadowick). And I've never seen Tom Cosm using the session view (at least the videos I watched)
Some vidz on YT show the whole process from start to finish.
Take a look at Youtube (MrBill, Sadowick). And I've never seen Tom Cosm using the session view (at least the videos I watched)
Some vidz on YT show the whole process from start to finish.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Okay here's another idea which is basically a simplified version of what I posted before.
* get a 1- or 2-bar loop going, with five elements - drums, percussion, bass, lead, pad
* run the individual loops through fx, modulating and recording to get lots of weird sounds
* once you've got your sounds, do stupid simple arrangement. Take the *basic* sounds from before and lay them out so it has some progression
* layer your fx versions underneath the arrangement. so if you've got 16 bars of drums, layer the first 16 bars of fx drums with them
it'll sound kinda wack because the fx are out of control at this point. But you won't get super bored, because at least there's some movement in the song. Listen to the arrangement a couple times to make sure that it works. If a part plays for too long, shorten it, switch it to something else, whatever. If you need new parts, you can always record new parts.
Now go back and give each section an identity. Find an fx loop or two that sounds groovy and use it for that section. Repeat for all parts in all sections. Then add transitions and fills, then mix down.
I'm experimenting and wanted to knock out a tune really quickly. It took me about 2.5 hours to compose the basic parts, create sound variations, and create a basic arrangement w/ crazy fx layered underneath. I'm going to call it a night for now and hopefully I can finish it off in one or two more sessions. I figure one session to smooth out the arrangement and add transitions and fills, and one to mix down, each probably about another 2 hours.
* get a 1- or 2-bar loop going, with five elements - drums, percussion, bass, lead, pad
* run the individual loops through fx, modulating and recording to get lots of weird sounds
* once you've got your sounds, do stupid simple arrangement. Take the *basic* sounds from before and lay them out so it has some progression
* layer your fx versions underneath the arrangement. so if you've got 16 bars of drums, layer the first 16 bars of fx drums with them
it'll sound kinda wack because the fx are out of control at this point. But you won't get super bored, because at least there's some movement in the song. Listen to the arrangement a couple times to make sure that it works. If a part plays for too long, shorten it, switch it to something else, whatever. If you need new parts, you can always record new parts.
Now go back and give each section an identity. Find an fx loop or two that sounds groovy and use it for that section. Repeat for all parts in all sections. Then add transitions and fills, then mix down.
I'm experimenting and wanted to knock out a tune really quickly. It took me about 2.5 hours to compose the basic parts, create sound variations, and create a basic arrangement w/ crazy fx layered underneath. I'm going to call it a night for now and hopefully I can finish it off in one or two more sessions. I figure one session to smooth out the arrangement and add transitions and fills, and one to mix down, each probably about another 2 hours.
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djadonis206
- Posts: 6490
- Joined: Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:23 pm
- Location: Seattle, WA.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
I just play what I feel, if it turns out to be a track so be it. If not, I start on something new.
The APC is good for this, when you feel it, jam it out.
I have a bunch of 2 to 3 minute snippets of a song I jammed out which really didn't lend themselves to adding anything more. I also have some "finished" beats. It just depends on what you feel.
Sometimes you're on and sometimes you're not.
But I think the forumla is to do minimal mixing until you have ample parts, already arranged in a basic structure for some time period. Then layer breaks and parts, then mix, then master. When you get too deep in the woods with mixing and little shit like fills or breaks, you loose the ability and or focus to add more significant parts.
The APC is good for this, when you feel it, jam it out.
I have a bunch of 2 to 3 minute snippets of a song I jammed out which really didn't lend themselves to adding anything more. I also have some "finished" beats. It just depends on what you feel.
Sometimes you're on and sometimes you're not.
But I think the forumla is to do minimal mixing until you have ample parts, already arranged in a basic structure for some time period. Then layer breaks and parts, then mix, then master. When you get too deep in the woods with mixing and little shit like fills or breaks, you loose the ability and or focus to add more significant parts.
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Do you find that sometimes a song ends up being divided into two or three songs?pergesu wrote:
For whatever reason, I prefer to just keep generating and selecting musical ideas until I get to a point where I just *have* to arrange and mix. The new User Library works beautifully for that because I can work iteratively. If I save a clip to the user library, I can create variations on the clip or sample easily, and store those as well. This might be a simple variation on the original idea or something completely different.
As long as you want, really. I find I need to work fast to not get bored or bogged down. I might write those core parts in about an hour, then spend another hour or two adding new parts.
Does filing everything into a User Folder facilitate this better than a session view approach - which would then have to be broken into two projects if two seperate ideas emerge during your brainstorming?
Re: How to know you are ready to move a project to Arrangement?
Heh...yup, some serious knowledge being dropped in this thread. 