how to flesh out tracks?

[Syni]

hello forum. I need some advice on figuring out how to flesh out my projects.

Lately, whenever I have a good idea for a track, I work on what essentially is the climax or most exciting/essential part of it. And I just keep layering it with new tracks, but... I always hit a brick wall. I'm not sure how to flesh it out into a full song.

I'll have a beat going with every element of the beat playing at once, in its fullest form, as well as a melody or two and the bassline, and any additional effects that sound good... but it's essentially just a loop. How do I make a track evolve into that? Where do I start? And most importantly, how do I progress from an intro to these loops?

heres an example of what I mean, I've been just doing loops like this recently and just leaving them at a certain point...

http://speedy.sh/JFVWC/61113-yeahokay-2.wav

That's just a loop I've been working on, but I'm stuck now. That last part is a quieter part I liked because of the ringy ambiance. But I don't know how to turn this into a song from here. I used to make trance music, and I got pretty good at it. But I found trance music to be way too formulaic, and constricted by a specific track layout. You could customize the flow of energy a little bit depending on how it was laid out, but it was still essentially the same; a formula. I find that dubstep/garage/the stuff I want to make now isn't so much of a formula anymore, and while I love that (it's why I stopped making trance after all, need more expression) it's much harder to grasp how to pull things together in a way that works.

To be clear, I'm not asking what order project workflow should be done in. I'm more asking what kinds of things should I be adding to turn a loop like this into a full song... I need possibly new melodic lines, new effects, but I don't know where and when to have them...

[__________]

With dubstep, many song structures are acceptable.
Why not try Coki's?

e.g:

16-bar intro
drop in to main loop
repeat main loop for 4:30 mins

[titchbit]

Lyrics.

[fragments]

There are thousands of examples to listen. Go listen to them and take notes.

[Add9]

There are thousands of examples to listen. Go listen to them and take notes.

This. Literally count the bars out and note when each new element is introduced or what points the track changes significantly. The best thing I ever did to improve my production skills was to start downloading professional tracks into my DAW and trying to remake them.

[Syni]

There are thousands of examples to listen. Go listen to them and take notes.

This. Literally count the bars out and note when each new element is introduced or what points the track changes significantly. The best thing I ever did to improve my production skills was to start downloading professional tracks into my DAW and trying to remake them.

Okay, I'll give this a shot more often. thanks!

[antman]

Its all about finding your own workflow/style. What works for one, will not work for others.

[ieatfunk]

I usually start with choosing a key, knowing which keys give off which emotion. Then I go to Absynth or FM8 and play around trying to make a thick pad then create 4-8 bars of pads, then I'd probably introduce a more top melody or percussive element, then after another 4-8 bars introduce some groove, normally in the form of drums, then I'd build it up to the drop/chorus depending on style of track.
Then after 16-32 bars of that I'd bring it back down, reintroduce elements from the intro and make a break or breakdown for 8-16 bars, either introduce some new melody or build up to drop again for another 16-32.
Then outro for 6-8 bars.

That'd be my starting frame, usually I'll change it up a bit depending on how the track feels and how much inspiration I have to draw out longer sections.

[Gewze]

Key has emotion aswell? say wha

[mtl6]

Key has emotion aswell? say wha

I wouldn't necessarily argue that each key has its own designated emotion. When I first started producing I liked to read about the traditional emotions some people assigned to keys a long long time ago, but I've found that it's mostly just bs... However, if you take all the notes in a melody and transpose them up or down a few tones, you can definitely feel a difference in the overall mood of the melody. This phenomenon is way more complex than just saying C major is happy and cheesy and so on.

[Add9]

A flat minor is the best key ever IMO

[titchbit]

I think it's scale that has an "emotional" aspect to it, not key.

[Add9]

Well at least in classical music keys were said to have emotion... like D minor is the key of vengeance or of death, C major is the key of happiness, D major is the key of joy, E flat major is the key of the heavens. Composers like Beethoven made very careful choices about what keys to write in because they believed them to convey specific emotions. I dunno if this is actually true, but it's interesting nonetheless

[ieatfunk]

^^^ and Beethoven wrote Moonlight Sonata, so I'm inclined to follow his beliefs.

[twilitez]

Something ive had to learn the hard way: no synth or sample is holy.
No matter how long youve worked on a particular one; if it falls out of key/ style/ general ambience or whatever at some point, replace it. I sometimes find myself finetuning a certain sound to 1/100s of a semitone for a while, but how dumb is that really. Thats just me though ive no idea if that ever bothers you. Generally speaking of arrangement though, dont overthink it. Its fine to stick to a general format but not everything has to be completely 'DJ-friendly' either. Unless your working in a crazy time signature, competent DJ's will be able to mix your stuff.

That said, to get out of 'loopitis', lay down the elements of your track that sound alright in a logical way, and stretch it out to something close to a full song length, THEN worry about dull moments and spots where you need to grab peoples attention. There are a million ways you can do that with little sweeps, stabs, fx and some drum (rhythm) modulations.

[Huts]

I always found this pretty helpful when choosing keys http://www.gradfree.com/kevin/some_theo ... l_keys.htm

[ehbes]

Lyrics.

This, or at the very least cut up vocals.

[Capture pt]

Something I like to do is load in a track into your DAW from an artist you like.


In your track sequencer stick down little empty tracks as notes for when shit changes etc. (or write it down.)

Then copy paste your existing loops to fill up the track. You now have 6 minutes of the same 32/64/whatever bars.

But you have your notes to see where you want your intro, and where you breakdowns are, and so on etc.