What do I need to do to after the first 8 bars?

[robogone]

I often wrestle with this problem. Where appropriate, my solution is to sit down and work out the whole song on piano before beginning any orchestration.

Yep. If you have a completed framework it makes it much easier to arrange around that.

Piano, guitar - whatever works - good to sit down with just one instrument and play.

[wrench45us]

I often wrestle with this problem. Where appropriate, my solution is to sit down and work out the whole song on piano before beginning any orchestration.

my only issue with this is, if I sit down with a piano for too long I begin to fill in a lot of spaces that should be arranged/orchestrated and assign everything to the keyboard part
(This may be in part becauae my skills are so weak that it takes me a long time and I end up investing in my 'arrangement'. If it could all happen in a day or two, I don't think there'd be as much necessity to re-arrange)
so then it's a matterpf breaking things apart
but it really is the best way I've found to work out the whole song structure, esp the transitions

[deastman]

I often wrestle with this problem. Where appropriate, my solution is to sit down and work out the whole song on piano before beginning any orchestration.

my only issue with this is, if I sit down with a piano for too long I begin to fill in a lot of spaces that should be arranged/orchestrated and assign everything to the keyboard part

Well, you don't need to work out all the rhythmic and melodic variation on piano. Just get the basic chord progression down. After you figure out the whole progression, try sequencing just one short chord stab each time you move to a new chord. Then add your bass. Add a couple of additional parts to help carry the harmonic and melodic progression. Now remove your original chord stabs. You should be left with the bare bones of your song, with bass running all the way through and a few other little bits to help guide the way. I suspect you can take it from there.

[tapper mike]

It just takes time to develop the mentality. Although less time with that thing.....a band.

We all carry an inner listener and an inner voice. The secret is to use your inner voice to fill the void. What will happen is you'll also retain much of what the "inner voice" performed. Now when you go back and play what your inner voice told you, there might be an arguement or two. You might discover that it's not going to work like you imagined. But it will also give you the chance to make it better. Sometimes your first idea isn't your best idea.

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[jancivil]

generally I make decisions as to the sound once an idea begins to take shape, the orchestration, and I weigh things in my mind. densities, what will be transparent or dense, balance and contrast.

for instance if I'm starting with a synth, it's the sound of the synth that's the very first consideration really.

when it suggests other things, and I have build patches over a long time to suggest parts of an orchestra, I decide on the palette of colors, and character, identities that follow what an instrument does. the qualities of a 'voice' tell me how it will speak, idiom, so I try to put together a group of personalities for a conversation and find the lines of communication. the form is more like a narrative than a building.

I have dozens of templates for groups I've found to work before so there's often like an ensemble thing to go on as a basis now. So the idea and the manifestation are not really very separate proceses.

[jancivil]

Sometimes your first idea isn't your best idea.

that's true and it's best not to get married to an idea even if it's a really good one if being stubborn with it is in the way of the next one.

[jancivil]

I never read one thing in a book about how to compose in my life. One piece of advice in my first master class (and at the time I was carrying around a book just for vocabulary, "20th Century Harmony") I'm grateful for is 'never write with a book in your hand'.

we need the mechanics, part-writing, even counterpoint - chops - we need to build the technique like you build muscle... but I don't think composition can be taught. My musical partner-in-crime in my most formative years was a composition major, his teachers were John Adams and David Sheinfeld, who required him to do counterpoint essentially. I recall in classes Adams would occasionally talk about style to a point... I had Alden Jenks who stayed out of people's way and said very incisive things that stuck: 'There is a lot of energy here! SUBTRACT FROM IT'.
I don't think people can be taught to write poetry or prose either, but taught how to handle form and syntax and style. And given models to study.

I had a great instrument coach who criticized what I played (frankly and directly) and helped me shape an interpretation not by telling me what or how to but 'well, that doesn't work, maybe look at this phrase which is awkward following that one', or something. Learning to shape a story on an instrument, make it communicate is invaluable.

With the computer age, so often we see that people expect to bypass the whole prccess of making something work by your own muscles. That is not how you get strong at this.

[Aleatoriac]

I don't know. I haven't made any music nor practiced an instrument in over a month. But I'm workin on something else anyway.

When I do struggle around the 8th bar or whatever point, I usually just start screaming, record that, and see where that goes.

[deastman]

we need the mechanics, part-writing, even counterpoint - chops - we need to build the technique like you build muscle... but I don't think composition can be taught.

I had a great instrument coach who criticized what I played (frankly and directly) and helped me shape an interpretation not by telling me what or how to but 'well, that doesn't work, maybe look at this phrase which is awkward following that one', or something. Learning to shape a story on an instrument, make it communicate is invaluable.

It seems to me that what you are describing is your instructor teaching composition. Perhaps not in a dry, academic way, but teaching none the less. I think most people learn by doing (which I believe you agree with). However, that education can progress much more rapidly when you have a mentor to critique your work, offer guidance and share the wisdom of experience. That type of interaction is how skills are taught, particularly in the creative arts.

[jancivil]

I agree that a teacher to critique what you do can be valuable. as opposed to hoping to get it on your own from a book or an internet site partcularly in the vacuum I see often enough implicated by certain approaches.

the other thing I got from this brief foray into school was I was allowed a graduate course in "Form and Analysis" and left alone to write a paper analyzing the form of something I chose. I was presenting a Bach suite for jury and I wrote about that. I had no idea what was supposed to go into such a paper and had never so much as read one, but in making an argument for my idea of what happens I'm sure I got a composition lesson out of it.

both of these approaches were subtle and even oblique strategies which suited me. I am skeptical of 'how to' books about a creative process is my real point there in the top quote.

[jancivil]

Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Composition.

Don't be offended by the title.

core ideas
framework

Nothing wrong with an approach assuming you understand from nothing at first. It's probably true.

[neurobits]

Hi!

I'm into dance music production many year ago. But still need to learn a lot.

I had a writer's blocking period. Doing just 8-32 bars loops. But no structure at all.

I had nice results from preparing a structure template. Doing my 8 bar loop with drums, bass and some sweeps fx for section transitions. Then copy my Main Loop to every pattern/scene (working with Maschine). Then starting from the first scene, I strip down elements from the loop, dropping less elements as the scene number increase.

From that I start to jam, just to get familiar with the scenes and to feel how each scene work with the next one. You can record 20-30 minutes of jam. Experiment different build ups, fx, transitions. then listen to it and choice the best parts, and reorganize your structure based on that.

When you reach the structure you like. It's time to apply movement, surprises and may be some complemental layers. Run your sequencer or do it by hand, you have to add automatization to many or all elements. But putting all the elements moving at the same time it's a chaos. Maintain movement just in one foreground element at time, and one background element.

That is. Automate the hihat decay time, send shots of the snare to reverb, another shot of delay from another percussion. Assign LFOs to control the pwm/cutoff/decay of your synths. I recommend that you program sounds that can be transformed in various ways and still retain it's mass or soul.

Then add some big interesting sound effects to develop climaxes or explode at the end of a breakdown.

In my templates or frameworks I always configure 4-6 send fx buss, in order to have many options to create variations and build-ups.
I like electronic music performed live. So I never just push the play button and wait till the song is recorded. I run the sequencer, changing scenes, adding some percussion hits or synth notes.

I hope this helps you a little. Get your main loop as fast as you can (no more than one session). Take another session to make the basic structure and experiment with the interactions. And one or two more to get the thing moving.

(sorry, my english is not good)

[Sascha Franck]

I think anything that moves you horizontally in your song helps.
Sure, most likely the easiest way to get you there is to do it in whatever standard songwriting way (as has been mentioned already). Sit down with your main instrument and play and record the entire song. However, for some styles that's just not applicable. Or you may simply not be able to play a complete song at once. Still, there's always options to move along horizontally rather than vertically filling up one section.

One of the main problems with working vertically might be that you can easily end up with, say, 8 bars that sound kickass. Now, let's imagine you have a chord track, a bass track, another comping track, maybe yet something else playing chords and finally a melody or so. It's really pleasant to listen to and all that.
Ok, now you want to continue to, say, the next 8 bars - and they should perhaps feature another chord change. As a result of that, you might perhaps be able to copy your drum and percussive stuff from the first 8 bars, but you will not be able to copy anything else. So, from all those nicely sounding melodies, chords, rhythm compings, basses and what not you'll have to make a step into something with just a simple beat going on. Obviously, that isn't exactly inspiring. And it will probably not result in some organic tune, either.

Think about how a painter is doing things. When doing a portrait, will he/she start with a meticulously exact painting of the hand alone? No way. There's gonna be a sort of sketch painting first, so you know how to fill up that empty canvas. Proportions, placement of objects, perspective - etc. Only after that things get filled with details.

Whatever, the best way to work horizontally is either being a "traditional" songwriter or having a band. Obviously a combination of the two would be ideal.
But there's other ways, too.
It is however a kind of conceptual approach that you need to go for instantly when you start a new song. For the aforementioned reasons, it doesn't work too well with that full 8 bar arrangement that you may already have.
And you can use any instrument - ok, perhaps minus drums and percussion, which IMO do a better job to serve as a frame and can easily be edited later on.

So, let's say you have a basic drum groove going on (or maybe just a click) and you've got that killer bass riff under your fingers (or well, in your editor - whatever you work like). Record it.
And now there's the important point: Don't add *anything* to that bass riff! Nothing at all. Just keep that riff.
Ok, of course there's exceptions, and one would be stupid to follow what I've just wrote dogmatically. When you have a great melody hook in your mind while the bass riff you just did is playing back, by all means, record it, before it gets lost! But it's a good idea to just record it and then instantly mute it.
It's pretty easy: The main idea is to not add anything vertically.

So, after that bass riff is recorded, it's almost obvious what to do: Proceed to the next section of your song. And now try to come up with variations of that bass riff. Or with an entirely different bass line. Do some slight variations or big changes. It really doesn't matter all too much - the only important things being:
- The basic "mood" of the first riff should either be captured as well or it should be, hmmm, "transformed" into something else, but that "something" should still be "in line" or so.
- Quantity matters! Oh yes, usually we don't want quantity but quality. But in this case quantity is quite a good thing - as long as the ideas still more or less suit the song. This will give you more to chose from and it might as well be good for the occasional surprise.

Once you have a bunch of bass ideas, proceed with whatever other instrument. Assuming you had a nice melodic idea (that you recorded over the initial bass riff), continue with that. In case there's just the bass, use whatever you feel like. But (should be obvious by now): Stick with that next instrument. Record something to your initial bass riff and then proceed to the next bass variation.
Continue like that with all other instruments. Make sure to only change that "plan" once a really nice idea comes to your mind (such as the mentioned melody hook). And then mute that idea (unless you have further ideas for the other parts to instantly follow) and go back to the instrument you just used.
You can start that "method" with any instrument.

For me, such an approach works ok-ish. Not always, but sometimes. It works best if I have a melody to start with. Or some really nice chord changes. Or a kickass instrumental pattern. But in general, a melody is what I like the most to start with. YMMV.

Alright, you may now ask yourself why I'm writing so much about what seems to be a rather easy to understand method. Well, I'm sure that at least many of you know what I'm talking about, so here goes: With all these great tools at our disposal, it's not just somewhat likely but sometimes even granted that we get distracted from the horizontal approach. Got that great bassline from Trillian? Oh, doesn't it just shout "Hey, please play that gorgeous Zebra pad over me!"? Or "Wow, I need to check out my new Rhodes library with such a fat groove already going on!". And not only that but also: "Hm, I just bought that new reverb, that sure sounds lovely over my vocal hook!".
And so on.
Hence, when you really want to get used to working horizontally, you need to be rather strict towards yourself.
Fwiw, I'm rather bad at it...

- Sascha

[deastman]

Sascha, this is excellent advice. I know from personal experience how tempting it can be to work in vertical mode, which inevitably ends with a useless 8-bar opus. Staying in the horizontal isn't fun, and it takes enormous discipline.