First Question is "Why am I writting about this? or Why are YOU even reading about this?"... I will have to admit that's a very good question to have.
If however like Me and many other Artists,You have been working on Your Music tirelessly and eventually You learned the DOs and DON'Ts of Music Production, You would have realised at a certain point in Your production stage or will realise soon enough that no matter how good the parts of Your tracks individually are,if they don't flow perfectly or artistically into each other...the track is doomed.
Jay Hardway,Martin Garrix and Avicii are some of the most famous Bedroom Producers to have made it,here is what they all said about arrangement( https://youtu.be/-dIcuU58Oy8 )
In those video's,Long as they may be...a lot of very valuable Production is concealed...but Today we are talking about Arrangement...not only can the right arrangement help inspire You creatively and Artistically as a Producer according to Avicii but it can also help with Your Mixing...how is that so? You may ask and very rightly so.
Here is HOW, when the song is fully and properly arranged,You have sections where individual sounds and elements on Your track play on their own and where they play simultaneously...This let's You,"Go in and Fine Tune everything" knowing exactly how each section should sound... It's very difficult to mix 70 sounds all playing at once but Mixing 1 sound at a time is relatively easy...having them all in the channel rag raging at once not even knowing which sound will play when can be pretty pointless... See where I am getting at?
Arranging a song is an expansion of Your artistic blueprint,imagine a scenario where a Drop comes,intro next and then Build-up...pow! The track is over...the sound of that makes me pale...just the thought...I don't wanna hear anything like that in My Life. But now that we think about it,subconsciously we expect the track to follow certain Fundemental Principles in arrangement...it's true arrangement will vary according to Genre,style and Artist but at the end of the day there are Basics.
Intro
The Intro is the Beginning of the track that INTROduces the concept of the whole track,there are 2 or 3 popular types of INTROs...the first 1 is the slow building Intro that plays relatively chilled and easy while also building up energy gradually to the Drop,till BAM! You are Raving Your head off,or singing along like a mad man.
The second kind of Intro is Bang...TUTZ!TUTZ!subdrop and then a build up to the actual Drop.
The intro can be done with a kick or without one,but usually it is either a low cut kick or a smaller kick just to keep the energy up...like I have said before it is an artistic expansion of Your Vision as an artist,Loops,arps and semi-kicks are all that You can play around with to create the atmosphere You want to build till the actual drop.
Length
How long is the usual music intro?
Usually it's ±4 Bars or 12 seconds in usual time...this is and will never be a rule of Thumb as it is always upto the artist but that's the basic time,be creative about it.
The Build Up
Is Usually 4-8 Bars long and this is the space of the track where You build the anticipation of Your audience or crowd towards that Drop You spend soooo many hours perfecting.
Usually Snares,Hats,Claps and Effects are used to build up the anticipation and most of the time the melody is introduced to induce familiarity.
Here is a lil excersize...get a snare onto the channel Rug,first make a pattern with snares hitting on the 8th or fill up each 8th step,then on the next pattern hit on the 4th,2nd and all steps...notice how the build up snares You hear on Your favourite Hits are made?now like every aspect of music,You are most encouraged to get creative with it...oh! And 1 more thing,if You use FL or whatever DAW You use,set the pitch to either 12 or 24 respectively and set an automation clip,such that when the patterns build,the pitch bends upwards too...pretty neat right?
Let me clarify,at this moment that alot of language difference may tend to confuse the reader for example,You might come across terms like Break,while I generalised and spoke about the build up...the truth is,The Break is part of the Intro and the build up,it's just that some producers will intro and then drop a little of BREAK and then build up,hence the term Break but all in all it is owing to the creativity and the conceptualisation of the general song idea.
I am not going to talk about the Drop here on this article because I want us to break it down to small understandable pieces as it is sometimes said to be the Make or Brake point of any song and deservately so...We have to talk about Midbasses,Subkicks,Subbasses and so many more,going into details as to their importance and how to get the most out of them...sooo in the Next article,let's talk about the Drop.
As usual,You can get all this and more at ( http://www.youtube.com/c/Waproduction-samples )
Thank you for reading.
Your W. A. Production team.
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