Stuck with arranging

[hydrogen]

get the movie dub echoes and watch it. I love thier method of arranging... once you understand dub this element of mixing the music becomes really easy and inspiring. Whether or not you doing dub techno... these techniques are some of the most intuitive ways to lay down this kind of music. imo.

this is also a good reference for mixing dub: http://www.interruptor.ch/dub.shtml

[AK]

Recording the jam live for me too. At least to get a good feel for the arrangement, you can record several versions and if you like to do a bit of post editing afterwards, at least you get a good working canvas of the track. I could never go completely into a live jam without first setting up bits of what I've done like loops, phrases, drum fills or whatever across a keyboard range via a sampler as I really don't like the kind of thoughtless arrangement that can be possible with a pure live jam. There's always room for post editing and stuff but sitting there and getting bogged down with small details early on is a serious creativity killer in my book.

Be sure you are not confusing arrangment with actual writing. You may have a great loop or whatever but trying to stretch it out for 6+ minutes is mindnumbing for some. Fill yourself full of ideas and variations, as much alternative parts as possible and when you have a lot of stuff to work with, narrow them down to things which flow well together. Jamming live with those ideas shouldn't be a problem at all then. At least that's how I get on best anyways.

[simonb]

+1 for live jamming, it definitely helps me get the bare bones of a track in place.

[steevio]

nowadays i don't do any arranging whatsoever, because i can't with my modular synthesizer, the arrangement happens naturally and stems from the time i put into setting up the system. this can also be done with software no doubt.

but when i was using software sequencing, i would just jam for hours and record absolutely everything, and any arranging i did was after the fact. i'd listen back to my jams and find the cool bits, then edit them down to a manageable length.
this kind of arranging i found very satisfying, effectively chopping out sections of music that werent really evolving and jumping to the next interesting section.

this way you dont get the cliche'd 32 / 64 bar type arrangements, the music changes when it feels right, this can happen absolutely anywhere, and you can even jump quite drastically to a fresh section as long as the edit sounds natural, and you can bring in the element of supprise.

[AK]

i would just jam for hours and record absolutely everything, and any arranging i did was after the fact. i'd listen back to my jams and find the cool bits, then edit them down to a manageable length.
this kind of arranging i found very satisfying, effectively chopping out sections of music that werent really evolving and jumping to the next interesting section.

this way you dont get the cliche'd 32 / 64 bar type arrangements, the music changes when it feels right, this can happen absolutely anywhere, and you can even jump quite drastically to a fresh section as long as the edit sounds natural, and you can bring in the element of supprise.

I've done this and it's great, recording a jam for ages and just getting creative on stuff is a real sense of freedom for me. I tend not to write 'live' though, I often need phrases/licks/whatever in place before I can do any sort of jamming. S'pose it's totally different with the modular approach?

Must admit, as much as I welcome listening to other types of music, the 32/64 etc etc bar measures is something I like to do as I work on my ( and others ) expectations of 'something' happening with multiples of those measures ( assuming I'm in 4/4 time ) It's something I have tried and for me, that's where I enjoy being co's it just works.

[steevio]

Must admit, as much as I welcome listening to other types of music, the 32/64 etc etc bar measures is something I like to do as I work on my ( and others ) expectations of 'something' happening with multiples of those measures ( assuming I'm in 4/4 time ) It's something I have tried and for me, that's where I enjoy being co's it just works.

the 32/64 thing was one of the first things i gave up when i started with electronic music, basically because i could, whereas iin a band you usually have to follow those structures so that everyone stays together.
i'd much rather have a change on say bar 63, so that it comes as a supprise, because you're anticipatiting it on the next bar.
its the equivalent of syncopation on structural level. bar 60 works great too, because 60 is a very natural number for us, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 6 X 60 degrees in a circle. its a cyclical number. (3x4x5) , 3,4, and 5 are very musical / rhythmic numbers, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30 too, if you stick to 16 /32 / 64 you're wasting lots of possibilities.

i'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with writing music that way, some of the best music ever written is based on the 32/64 format, and you're right it absolutely works, but we have the potential to do much more with electronic music. for me that expectation thing is actually more like predictability, something i try to avoid at all costs.
maybe i'm just weird, and DJs probably hate me.

[oblioblioblio]

The most interesting structures I've found for arranging have been totally 100% improvised. Just playing, real time. But having said that I'm at a crossroads myself... My live jams have too much wasted space and I cannot bring myself to chop them up. So I'm thinking about jamming with ideas and getting everything worked out in my head, and then doing takes of it while recording till I get one that's right. That might not work though, I'll have to see. But definitely those happy accidents of arranging where things come together in a more or less unplanned way are where the magic is, IMO.

I think "real time" music is something that should be explored, and DAWs can often force you away from that approach and into timelines.

DJing other peoples music in Ableton helped develop a real time instinct in me actually, to see how peices of music you like work, and then to cut them up and layer them in real time. That's kind of beginner level (although it can still be challenging whatever level you're at)

Also, playing with other people live really forced me to work in real time. It can be hard with electronic gear becuase often you need to prepare heavily before you do anything, but sometimes it can work. Just messing around with acoustic instruments and voices and simple machines like delays was plenty of fun and inspiration for me... some of the interband conflicts can be challenging but overall it was really healthy for me to do on the side as well as my solo work.

[AK]

Must admit, as much as I welcome listening to other types of music, the 32/64 etc etc bar measures is something I like to do as I work on my ( and others ) expectations of 'something' happening with multiples of those measures ( assuming I'm in 4/4 time ) It's something I have tried and for me, that's where I enjoy being co's it just works.

the 32/64 thing was one of the first things i gave up when i started with electronic music, basically because i could, whereas iin a band you usually have to follow those structures so that everyone stays together.
i'd much rather have a change on say bar 63, so that it comes as a supprise, because you're anticipatiting it on the next bar.
its the equivalent of syncopation on structural level. bar 60 works great too, because 60 is a very natural number for us, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 6 X 60 degrees in a circle. its a cyclical number. (3x4x5) , 3,4, and 5 are very musical / rhythmic numbers, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30 too, if you stick to 16 /32 / 64 you're wasting lots of possibilities.

i'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with writing music that way, some of the best music ever written is based on the 32/64 format, and you're right it absolutely works, but we have the potential to do much more with electronic music. for me that expectation thing is actually more like predictability, something i try to avoid at all costs.
maybe i'm just weird, and DJs probably hate me.

I'm certainly not knocking anything that differs from the 'norm', for me, it's just more of a personal preference than anything. I do like that structure and although I'd definitely be up for experimenting, my current focus is with the actual music as opposed to the arrangement and bar divisions. I'm trying to put a lot of effort into coming up with material that ( to me ) sounds fresh and which contains musical elements that I haven't really explored before, so yeah, I'd definitely be up for trying stuff like that out. Whenever that may be!

On another note, I'm not too sure how that would work for me, I have a tendency to write ( naturally ) and play in 4/4 time, those bar divisions obviously come naturally as multiples of the time sig. So it's always going to fit and sound right. From what I gather, you like to use different time sigs and polymeasures/polyrhythms and with that approach, you are always opening up that type of possibility for experimentation. In a strict 4/4 piece of music, I'm not quite sure how it would work without doing peoples heads in. ( maybe that's a good thing though! )