Arrangement

[Opuswerk]

been reading a pretty tensed discussion about arragement on dogsonacid.com which you can read here :
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Unfortunately, and due to some heavy trolling, the thread on doa was deleted by the mods. I'm going to try and resume it as good as i can.

Thread was basically started on the assessment that a good arrangement was the solution to mixing issues most of the time.
A second opinion then swiftly arose as to how mixing skills where a necessity and more important than arrangement. Hence the lot of us so often talking about mixing, sound engineering techniques, and spending so little time talking about musical elements and chords progressions for example.
What arose from the discussion came about what musicians try to express with music. One party being heavily against the producers aspect of musicians (producers in the way that they are engineers to make people dance and no longer artists trying to express their views through their music).
What also came up was the importance of excelling at both department, mixing and arranging in order to purvey the message of the track in the best possible way. Maybe they could be compared to vocabulary and grammar ?

So what do YOU think is important to make a good arrangement ?
How do you get your tracks to tell what you want them to tell ?
What are your favorite words, sentences ?

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Bear in mind i'm not looking for hard rules here, but more for a discussion about arrangement tips, and how to maintain the tension in a track.

[oblioblioblio]

i have found that skill for arranging seems to come from practice and instinct.

i think that through careful practice you can develop a natural sense of your music, where you don't look at the bigger picture too much or think 'what makes a good arrangement', you just know what works for you and the effects it has.

the musician robert wyatt described his feelings on the matter really beautifully. he said something along the lines of:

"i just nose about, i mean I watch animals nosing about, you know, in the leaves and so on... hedgehogs and dogs... you see them all at it. they're not working to a... a career plan. they're just sort of, following their nose really.

i think that if something is organic, and going in the right direction, it will have a form, that you will feel by instinct"

[Stomper]

I think tension is kept mostly by doing alot of automations, mute and unmute tracks..
unconsciously, the brain reacts to changes in music.

[4am]

reading this may also be interesting http://tarekith.com/assets/arranging.html

[Sequel]

After some years strugling with this problem I usually go to work like this:
Produce an 8-bar loop with the climax of the track, main sequence and all percussions
Then just arrange all the track with only kick and snare, place the breaks and buildups
Then see how to work the melody into it and start arranging all the percussion works and tweak a bit more.

But it works best for me if i have the arrangement already done before i start working on the melody.

Not always offcourse, some tracks I just work like however it comes out of my head. But usually its good to keep a certain structure in all of your tracks. This will also help to develop your own style(for me it does).


Hope this helps

Cheers,

[sven laux]

well, i think it's more interesting to work without loops, although this seems to be very hard in some ways. just set the beginning and the end of the track and try to start the improvisation. at the end it's more fun and creativity for me.

[Menno]

i must say, i follow my nose too,
just try, by trying alot you'll get somewhere..
i'm still searching though...
dont follow rules, they're there to be broken

[Opuswerk]

well, i think it's more interesting to work without loops, although this seems to be very hard in some ways. just set the beginning and the end of the track and try to start the improvisation. at the end it's more fun and creativity for me.

This is also my opinion, as if you work in such a way you tend to compose the track as you feel it, instead of writing it how you think it. ie per pattern, or 8,16,32,64 bars at a time.

I had already read that tarekith tutorial, and as great as it is to get you out of loopitus, i find it also somehow confines you in a (pattern-like) structure. Minimal is indeed a "genre" that builds on repetition, so it is also loop-based, but i want to see it more as phrase-based. Where there's no loop, but a phrase being repeated often enough to put you in some kind of trance in order to take you on a journey.

unconsciously, the brain reacts to changes in music.

This is key in minimal imo. however small the change, even if you don't acknowledge them yourself, your brain will.

Maybe I should refine my question, as to what do you think in an arrangement helps you take the listener on a journey ? How do you make that journey interesting in the lans of repetitiveness ? What tricks do you like to use ? How do you avoid big buildups, huge reverbs and white noises, but still manage to create excitment through the arragement?