song structure

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:55 pm

...i can't be arsed

somebody write a clever program to structure my songs for me...

BLista · Post by **BLista** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:24 am

i've heard the PS2 is a really powerful music maker, try that one

northernlight · Post by **northernlight** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:30 am

take drugs and lock yourself up for two days

BLista · Post by **BLista** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:36 am

buddhaboy wrote:take drugs and knock yourself up for two days

self insemination.....

what about the tunes tho?

ahh...make sweet music yeah

northernlight · Post by **northernlight** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:54 pm

B-Lister wrote:
buddhaboy wrote:take drugs and knock yourself up for two days
self insemination.....

what about the tunes tho?

ahh...make sweet music yeah

Joebot · Post by **Joebot** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:02 pm

i know what you mean!

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:06 pm

buddhaboy wrote:take drugs and lock yourself up for two days

drugs are bad, mmkay?

then again, somebody did send me a couple of tabs for my birthday, i guess it's my duty to dispose of them before they fall into the hands of innocent kiddies

foxington · Post by **foxington** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:27 pm

nah it's dead easy if you put your mind to it - find a song you like the arrangement of, whack it in a spare audio channel in your sequencer, copy the arrangement roughly then remove the song and tweak as necessary

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:35 pm

strategy wrote:nah it's dead easy if you put your mind to it - find a song you like the arrangement of, whack it in a spare audio channel in your sequencer, copy the arrangement roughly then remove the song and tweak as necessary

good tip

cheers!
i've been listening to tunes with my brain switched on, to get ideas, but hadn't thought of loading them into my sequencer for easier plagiarising

alex_virr · Post by **alex_virr** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:57 pm

strategy wrote:nah it's dead easy if you put your mind to it - find a song you like the arrangement of, whack it in a spare audio channel in your sequencer, copy the arrangement roughly then remove the song and tweak as necessary

thats a nice tip James - I find being able to count to 8 helps too.

northernlight · Post by **northernlight** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:26 pm

youthful_implants wrote:
strategy wrote:nah it's dead easy if you put your mind to it - find a song you like the arrangement of, whack it in a spare audio channel in your sequencer, copy the arrangement roughly then remove the song and tweak as necessary
thats a nice tip James - I find being able to count to 8 helps too.

good ones!

listening back to the tune i wrote this weekend the drugs idea isn't that good

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:43 am

buddhaboy wrote:the drugs idea isn't that good

mmmkay.

i've got as far as the first breakdown, which i'm actually looking forward to filling out

and the drop even more so... then after that it shouldn't take so long to lay the rest out as i have most of the elements in place, just need plenty of tweaking and some added extras to keep it interesting...

*edit* oh, quick opinion poll, even tho i haven't taken the time to reach my own opinion yet... so far for the breakdown i've got the sub bass line under it, without the lead bass... is that alright, or would it generally be better to lose the sub for the breakdown to make more of a rumbly impact for the drop?

hayes · Post by **hayes** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:31 am

hippy dave wrote:[. is that alright, or would it generally be better to lose the sub for the breakdown to make more of a rumbly impact for the drop?

if it works go with it but its generally about having some "whooomph"left to throw in at that drop and the deeper tones will do that.

but if the sub noise has enough character to carry in a more soloed area of the tune it could have areal good impact but often subs sound a little odd on there own.

but then i dont know, how does it sound to you?

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:27 am

dunno, it does have enough of a twang to it to make its presence felt on its own, think it would make a nice backing to layer all the fancy buildy shit over (can you tell i'm still drunk?), but yeah i'm still worried about losing the opportunity for "whooomph" on the drop...

*edit* experimenting with highpassing the sub for the breakdown, so there's still some extra lows for the drop, but i'm not sure if there's enough scope without losing the feel of having it there in the first place. then again maybe it'd work if i nudged the volume up while it's highpassed....

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:16 am

yeah i'm going with that (hp & volume), works nicely - & still a big impact on the drop

foxington · Post by **foxington** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:18 pm

never forget, you've got to take it out to put it back in again

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:44 pm

for some reason the word 'fnar' springs to mind...

djmoose · Post by **djmoose** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:26 am

To me, and again, I'm no huge producer, but I had to sit down and say, ok, I'm going to write out the arrangement for these tracks. Lately, I try to do one monkface! or so a week. I have an excel spreadsheet with different colored cells that represent different parts, intro, outro, buildup, chorus, bridge, etc etc.

I take it a step further and add on each part what comes in and what comes out, what kind of fills, etc etc.

It hard to think about that stuff unless you make an effort to especially listen. I'm assuming that after a while you'll learn things to do, etc etc.

I was excited to see arrangement on the cover of a Future Music mag a few months ago...however the article was lackluster and didn't help too much.

hayes · Post by **hayes** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:32 am

djmoose wrote:T
I was excited to see arrangement on the cover of a Future Music mag a few months ago...however the article was lackluster and didn't help too much.

aye, that was pants and only went through basic and traditional structure.

I have great problems with actually finishing track, partly due to lack of quality kit at home but mostly because i never get around to completing the structure in full.

Essentially i get a bit too excuted and complex in writing all the parts that the sequencing and layout can seem an overcomplicated chore...

I normally have the key breakdowns/fills/timings in my head when writing so lately Ive been getting these down first then forcing myself to structure the rest in a pretty traditional fashion.

Its the bit i hate most but i have found that after forcing myself through that hurdle i can get back to the enjoyable bit of creating the changes and builds to fit astructure that will work better as a record.

Otherwise im always stuck with 3 different bits in a sequencer and they never get stuck together.

Seems to be working so far in that im actually get ma sh** nearer to completion....

foxington · Post by **foxington** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:35 am

as soon as i've got a few parts layed down that i'm happy-ish with, i try and get a rough arrangement down - it's much easier to add to your arrangement as you go along rather than wait til you've got 25 tracks then try and arrange it all, plus it's easier to see what you need to add in if you have a rough layout to work with