It starts with creating a catchy and professionally arranged song that will take care of the listener and tell the song’s story. Music is a powerful platform to spread a message, it is able to relate to people’s various stories in life. A catchy and memorable song or jingle helps artists and brands stick in the minds of the audience. In order to achieve excellent music production, these 10 rules for arranging music are commonly used by professional music producers to craft music to perfection.
Step 1: Ensure if the Song Works With Musical Instruments
Does the melody work alone on the off chance you sing it on the piano or the guitar alone? If the song is not already “great,” then no amount of production or arrangement will fix it.
- Do you have a solid melody?
- Is the primary tune line set up?
- Do you have a decent melodic or consonant “snare”?
Work on your melody until you give it a splendid “bare” sound with a piano/guitar and voice. It is essential to honor these steps. A lousy song will remain lousy, even with the best arrangements and production.
Step 2: Check the Genre(s) of the Song
Before the course of action/creation season starts, you ought to ask yourself – what class is the melody in?
Whenever it is fixed, it tends to be valuable to discover a couple of reference tracks. Reference tracks are unbelievably significant in both the plan/creation and blending/ace phases of any recording. Some people may say, “I don’t want to copy anyone because I want to be completely original.”
But the truth is, even the uppermost professionals – who are very original – are constantly referencing other materials.
Step 3: Confirm if the Rendition of the Song is Good or Not
This part falls a bit into Step 1, “Does the song work independently?”. However, the manager/producer wants to modify the look of the song for recording. Sometimes the way an artist plays the song can be different from the studio version. For the recorded rendition, the melody must be pretty much as effective as could be expected.
Step 4: Ensure You Have a Good Lead Vocal
“At the point when I begin masterminding and delivering a tune, it is fundamental to have a fair scratch lead vocal to work. Without it, you can settle on some awful choices.” – Dawa Julian.
Recording lead vocals will help you in your dynamic while sorting out. For example, you can easily make the arrangement dense without hearing the vocal. This will not only result in lowering the final recording but will also make your mix engineer work harder. The best-recorded songs have an arrangement that has the right balance of product density.
Step 5: Drums and Other Rhythmic Components
Apart from the lead vocals, the drum/rhythmic component of the song is one of the most critical rules for arranging music They take up the most sound space, “grooving” to the listener and deciding a large amount of how the song feels.
First, should the drum be acoustic (absolute) or sampled? This step does not apply to the striped arrangement (such as piano/vocals, voice, guitar, strings, etc.). Once you know this, you will want to listen to one of your reference tracks.
Where should the drums come from? Where should they come out? What will common patterns be responsible for drums? If the track employs an actual drummer, then your system should find the general direction of what the drummer should play? Programming doesn’t fill or feel. A decent drummer will settle on those choices for you.
Step 6: Bass Element
Once the drums are mapped to your arrangement, the bass (or bass element) – most cases are encountered.
- Where does bass on the system come from?
- Where did the bass fall?
- In what range does bass ring and chorus ring?
If this is a standard pop song, you want to make sure that the bass on the chorus “opens,” meaning the bass is not playing quietly in a high register when the refrain falls.
On the chance that you have a “genuine” bass player following right after you, it is essential – like a drum – that it be recorded and played proficiently. If there is a lack of bass clarity, low-end frequencies, and groove, then nothing could be worse for your track.
Step 7: Main Driving Harmonic Component
When learning to organize a song, harmonic information comes forward: guitars, keyboards, sinks, strings, etc. It is a good idea to look at your reference track to see which instrument you want to use. Is the main driving harmonic component of the song a keyboard instrument or guitar? Many of the songs have guitars or pianos as the main complement to the lead vocals. This instrument will occur more often than not throughout the song. Once you find out, this option is about implementing the arrangement with the content.
Step 8: Contemporary Pop and EDM Considerations
A note about sync and contemporary pop and EDM: It is imperative to listen to this music a lot and learn how all the parts fit together. The best synthesis stuff and EDM can seem very dense (and sometimes it is), but more often than not, all the sinks are working together in a sophisticated complementary fashion. Although there can be many patches and “sounds,” it’s tied in with being consecutive with them, which implies you hear them consistently, not simultaneously.
Step 9: Production Dust
What is the last step when learning how to arrange a song? Production dust. For an acoustic arrangement, it can add percussion to different parts of the structure. The classic example would be a shaker part coming in the second verse and a tambourine on the bridge.
Step 10: Background Vocals
Assuming that the lead vocals have been very “fixed” throughout, while in the arrangement/production stage, coming up with some background vocals (often called BGVs) spices up a track and gives it life. As a producer/manager, you may have your thoughts on what a BGV should be, but I found from my own experience that it is better to work directly with the singer(s) in the studio. However, it doesn’t diminish the chance for online music producers to craft the perfect song remotely, especially with good planning, structure, and communication with the artists, musicians, and clients.
Why you need rules for arranging music
By following the rules for arranging music, you will not only ease the music mixing and mastering processes but also help in the songwriting stage. Music arrangement can guide you to determine the structure of a song and the best parts to highlight. While experimenting with music is encouraged, these rules act as a guideline in the music production process. Without these rules, one might wander off too far from excellent-sounding music.
