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Features Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters!

Track Arranging 101 - from loops to magnum opus - Part 1. Reported by voodoobass / Submitted 28-01-09 17:18 As part of our expanded focus on helping new and emerging producers via the forums and features section, Voodoobass, part of the HarderFaster Production Team, has secured the services and writings of US breakbeat producer, remixer and engineer Tarekith. No doubt taking on some of the ideas here, this two part special will help you in turning your ideas into showstopping tunes! A major hurdle for new producers is getting a collection of great loops, samples and other track ideas together into a finished product that will rock a dancefloor. Arrangement can make or break a track and while most people with an interest in electronic music or DJing will understand the basic structure of a track, there's quite a lot more to it than just an intro, a breakdown and a fat drop. Tarekith has put together this excellent guide which is just what the doctor ordered to take your work to the next stage and contains some great tips for both new and experienced producers alike. This tutorial is based around Ableton Live, but the techniques and principles contained herein will obviously apply to any sequencing package. So without further ado, I will hand over to the man himself. Tarekith's Guide to Song Arranging One of the most common issues I see new producers having is turning that 8 bar loop they made into a full-fledged song. You've spent hours crafting a funky groove, you can't stop bobbing your head to it and all your friends assure you that it's easily the greatest sounding bit of audio (all 2.3 seconds of it) they've ever heard. So, how do you take this little bit of an idea and turn it into something that people will want to listen to over and over again? In this article I'll look at different ways I've found to speed up the process and make it a lot less daunting than you might think, however, never take what I say as gospel, don't be afraid to try new ideas of your own, or tweak the ideas presented here to suit your own style of writing. Before getting into the ways that you can turn a loop into a finished song, let's take a quick look at why it is that so many people get stuck in that "loop creation" phase in the first place. I think the main reasons are two-fold: - The gear dictates it. - Pre-made loops are increasingly popular. Many people using hardware groove boxes know the concept of the "pattern", short musical phrases typically less than 32 bars long. These are then arranged into longer songs, which are basically nothing but collections of patterns. So from the get go you're already being trained to work on writing music that works as a shorter sections of repeating music. And it's not just hardware where this mindset is in use, software manufacturers have mimicked the way these devices work too, for good or bad. Programs like Reason, Fruity Loops, and Acid all have the pattern concept at their core. As these are typically the type of programs beginners are likely to purchase and use, it's easy to see why people have trouble getting out of this stage. The other reason I think people get stuck in this loop mentality, is that more and more people are turning to pre-made audio loops in the song creation process. It's relatively easy to fire up a program like Ableton Live or Sony’s Acid and start combining a bunch of loops into a good sounding groove. You can get something that sounds like a finished section of a song in no time, without really needing to think about things like song structure and keeping people's interest up over the length of the song. So then, how do we take these elements and turn them into something we could call a finished product? The first thing you need to do is think about what you're trying to say with the song, what is its purpose? Is this something that will be a full on dance tune where you want the energy level up the entire time? Is this a song that you want to build gradually, or is it a closing piece on a CD that needs to slowly fade down in intensity? Or do you really not have an idea yet, just some cool sounds you want to make into a song? Either way, write down your intentions, and keep them handy. A lot of times it's easy to get distracted once you start, and being able to refer back to your goal while working can save you a lot of headaches later on. The first thing I'd recommend is setting up your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) so that each of the sounds are on its own track in the arrange/project/timeline view. This lets you easily move the different parts of the song around to form the outline of it. It can also help you visualize the layout of things as well, which can be a big help when you're just starting out. It doesn't matter if you're working with MIDI or audio, the premise is the same in either scenario. Decide on a length for the song next, at least a rough idea anyway, you can always change it later if you want. For most dance music, I'd say 7 minutes is a good starting point. Other types of music can probably get by with 5 minutes initially. Again you can always change this later so don't feel too constrained by your decision and stress over it. A lot of times people try and write huge epic songs, and end up with a track that doesn't progress very well, so don't feel the need to create a 12 minute journey all the time. Keep it short, keep it sweet and you'll likely hold people's interest much better. So now we have our blank canvas (the empty song project, zoomed out to show the whole song length), and we've got our song elements (the parts of our loop) spread out vertically. It should look something like this: I think this is where a lot of people get stuck, or just confused on where to go next. It's sort of similar to writers looking at a blank page and not knowing where to start, or a painter looking at a blank canvas and being afraid of making that first brush stroke. So we're going to get past that stage right away and just fill up our canvas with colour, as it were. Go ahead and copy all of your loops for the entire length of the song. Fill that canvas up with all your parts so you're not looking at a blank page anymore. You should be seeing something like: This is a technique I call subtractive sequencing, where we start with all the song elements and remove bits and pieces to form the structure of the song. We'll come back to this, but first let's talk about song structure. In its simplest form, this is nothing more than how your song progresses from start to finish. What elements are playing at the same time, when do they each sound, how long do they play for etc. It's how the energy of the song is laid out in relation to the song length, which is one reason it helps to have a good idea of how you want your song to be structured when starting to arrange it. But even if you don't have any ideas on this, there are some simple guidelines that can make it all much easier to figure out. Take your loop for instance. In all likelihood, when you are playing all of the elements of the loop at the same time, this is the most energy your track will ever have. You're not adding anymore audio information since you're using all the parts, so it's pretty safe to say this is the 'peak' part of your track at this point. You can build up to this, or you can take away from this and reduce the energy, or you can build and release from this point many times throughout the song. It's really up to you and this is one place I can't tell you what to do. But for the sake of learning, let's say we want to create a tune that gradually builds up to this peak for most of the song, then rather quickly fades out at the end. One of the things I used to do early on in my writing, was sketch out a quick graph to help guide me as I arranged all the parts. I'm not graphing the parts of the song, but rather how the energy or excitement of the track progresses over the length of time. For instance: You can see that the song starts out rather tame, builds up for the first few minutes, almost peaks, goes into a drop section, then comes out of the drop into the peak, after which we slowly bring back down the energy level. Hopefully all in a way that's interesting enough to make people want to listen to it all over again! Using a chart like this as a guide can really help you visualise how the song will look when laid out in your DAW. And yes, this is music and we should be using our ears as well as our eyes, but let's be honest and just admit that we're going to be visualising a lot of this work initially. And remember this is just one way to lay out a song - just a mock-up example to show you the process. There are millions of ways to progress a song when you think in terms of energy, so don't take it that this form is the best or right way to do it. Next week we’ll look at how to move from graph and chart to chart topper. In the mean time get your parts together and prepare yourself and your song for the next session. Harderfaster would like to thank Tarekith for allowing us to reproduce this excellent guide. You can find other helpful tutorials and all kinds of goodness on his website Share this :: : : : Follow HarderFaster :: Other Features By voodoobass: Notes from Glade 2012 The HarderFaster guide to Production: Reason - Part Two The HarderFaster guide to Production: Reason - Part One Track Arranging 101 - from loops to magnum opus - Part 2. There will be mud! Waveform Festival: Reviewed The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable. Comments:

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