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Arrangement Continued

OK. So previously, we looked at arrangement and now we're going to have a look at arranging a radio edit and also a club edit. So if you're making an electronic song, these are really the two types of edits you will want to make, if you want your song to be played on the radio, you will generally have to make a radio edit. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, radio edit songs are between three and four minutes club edit songs which are designed to be played in the club for dance music. It can be really as long as you want, it does depend on what you want your music to be for. If you want this to be played in the club, if you want it to be played on the radio, of course, the points I talk about in this lecture should be useful. However, if you're just making this music for yourself or if you're just making this music for people to listen to at home, these kind of edits don't matter as much. So the club edits, the DJ has to mix your music in. So you don't ...

really want any tempo changes in the song at the start or at the end because the first part is where the DJ will mix your music in a lot of the time, the club edit songs, it's just a drum part or something that doesn't really have any harmony, any chords or any melody. So the DJ can easily mix this in so they can beat, match the beat and then just gradually fade your song. And of course, there's other tricks and stuff they can do with the mix. But generally speaking, they just fade it over. So you don't have too much going on at the start apart from really a drum beat that can easily be mixed. Same at the end. You want to have drums at the end. So the DJ can mix this track into another one for a radio edit. However, this isn't needed. You could just start with the riff. You could start with the melody. You could start with the track with a radio edit though. You will want your chorus to enter quite soon. This is normally around about minutes in, in radio edit songs, the chorus will enter. So this is the main hook. This is the main melody. If you have any vocals, this is normally the vocal hook. This will be the chorus, the club edit song though. You could go on for five minutes before the chorus enters. You don't necessarily need a chorus in a club edit song in a radio edit song, stuff that becomes popular. Generally, the masses will want a chorus. They want something that they could hook onto, they want something that's memorable. It depends. Do you want your music to be played to the masses or do you want your music to be played in a club? Do you want your music to be played at home? It really depends on what your music is for. So, before creating your song and definitely before arranging your song, think about what is this track for? Who are you trying to get to listen to your track? Do you want it played on a radio station? Do you want it played in a nightclub? Do you want it played at home? Do you want it for a, a movie? Do you want it for moving picture? It really depends on what you want it for. But for this, I'm gonna focus on a radio edit and also a club edit. I like to actually start off with the club and it start off with the long arrangement and then I've got that sorted and then I find basically the juicy bits, the catchy bits, the hooks and I turn it into a radio edit. You can also use the time feature on Logic Pro we have an arrow here and just click on this and change it to beats and time. Now we can see time wise where we are in the project, for example, the radio edits, I normally have the chorus come in at that minute, but the club edits, it doesn't really matter. It's nice to see the time. It's nice to see actually how long this is. So when the kind of r enters here, this Arpeggio this enters uh about 30 seconds, then we have the main hook of the song which is here, enters about a minute, 55 seconds going along. We have more of the track for now, I'm gonna actually drag this over to here and we're gonna go through it and continue arranging, actually turn this into a club edit. I'm gonna turn off this loop and now let's go through and create a club track. So right now it's only two minutes, 41 seconds. Not really long enough for a club track could be for perhaps a radio edit, but still cutting it a bit short for dance music. Repetition is important. Repetition and layers. It's about building up layers, taking out elements, adding elements, slight different changes. So the listener knows it's the same track, but they know there's movement, they know stuff is changing. So that's really what it's about. So we're going to continue editing and arranging this track now and we're gonna start off with this club track. So let's just play about here. Obviously, we need to make this longer. We probably need a few more elements as well. There's not really enough here for a long club track, but of course, less is better than more. So let's have a listen and try and isolate some of the main points and drag this out in a good way, not drag it out in a boring, long way to find the most interesting parts and then continue building the song. So we have definitely do have a B section here where the cause change. I'm gonna actually wait a while for this to come in this B section. They turn off this loop. I don't really like loops when they're ranging a lot of the time I find them, they get in the way. So I'm just gonna get rid of all the loops and just manually drag these over, loops can be useful for putting ideas down. But when it's arranging, you're chopping and moving stuff around, I personally find that they get in the way, let's move this over. So this is kind of the B section gonna have that come in round about here and the outtro, I'm actually going to have the same as the intro, but in reverse. So let's try that. That's another trick you can use. So I'm gonna have this here. You stay here, just drag this over like, so it's a different drum part. Let's put that A t the end and drag that over. So it's kind of reverse and this is kind of where it all builds in. So maybe this should be even longer. Really, we could have even more bars, we could have this as a 16 bar ending. So let's move that over, drag that, that. So this is the B section and here we're gonna add this over as well and just looking at this arrangement, just gonna move this back so we can fit one more of these in. So if I'm just looking at this arrangement, I can see that this looks a bit too abrupt, it looks too heavy. I think we need to build it in a bit more. So I'm gonna create a bit more of a build up here. So maybe not enter the basin straight away, maybe not enter this cello, maybe not even uh the piano. So we can just build it up, maybe not even the ref until here as well. OK. So we're getting a bit more of an arrangement. Now, now the track is about four minutes long. We could make this a lot longer. This could be the radio edit like this. So I probably wanna make this section even longer. Cos the club track. I would want it a bit longer than performance personally. So I'm gonna add this er over and then I'm actually going to move this B section over as well. If we look at this, it has 34 bar phrases, I think four for arthritis evens up a bit more. So let's just do this and take out a few elements here. Now we have a bit more of a build up. I'm just going to copy this section. Are you working again? We could always add new elements here. So now this is about 4.5 minutes. I think this could be good for a club track. Of course, we do have to listen back and find the key elements. I will be adding a new melody on this as well. A vocal melody later on and we will actually be rearranging the whole track around the vocals. Again, this at the moment is just an instrumental track, but a lot of the time it is important to put vocals on. It depends what you want your track for. If you want it to be commercially released, most people do resonate more with vocals than without vocals. I think it's because most people aren't music producers. Most people aren't electronic musicians, but everyone has a voice, they can listen to the voice and they can relate to the voice because they have voice, it tells stories, it tells lyrics when I listen to a song. I don't always listen to the lyrics or the vocals, but I do believe people who are non musicians will lock onto the lyrics and the vocals a lot more. So it depends. Do you want this song for musicians or do you want this song for non musicians? Do you want it for the ma do you want it to have popular reach it really does depend on what you want your track to be for. So, let's have a listen to this from the start and then we're gonna go through and arrange it a little bit more and that's pretty much it. That's the club arrangement you can arrange just by looking at ideas a as long as you know, what the things do, for example, and it's the drums and it's the bass part and then we have the Arpe Gator, we have the pad, we have the strings, we have the piano and that's really it. At the moment. There is a lot more we can add. But for demonstration purposes, I think this will be fine for a club edit. Of course, we do need to go through and mix the track and make it sound a lot more polished and professional as well because songwriting isn't just about writing music. Now. It is about production, especially for electronic musicians. OK? And that's where the DJ can mix in the other songss. There was a few mistakes here, for example, this section wasn't quite right. So we can always go in and just correct our errors. That's the thing you won't really know until listening back. But I think actually going through without actually hearing that and arranging it just by ear. I think those are some uh good ideas. So I'm just gonna chop this up a little bit. Yeah, that'll do. OK. And a few other things. I thought these big sections here, it's very repetitive. It needs a new element. It gets very boring. I think we need to add some sound effects or something just to make it a bit more interesting. It is getting in there. There is quite a few more things it needs in terms of arrangement. These sections here, the repetitious sections, they really need more elements, sound effects, maybe even a new parts and the build ups, they need the drums to build up more. They need the instruments to build up more. There needs to be more going on to make it more exciting. So in the next lecture, we're going to be looking at build ups and effects.