If you've ever created an 8 or 16 bar loop and you just don't know how to take it out
to a full song, you are not alone. We have all been there before, and today I'm going
to go in depth on EDM arrangement and how to arrange your loop into a full track
my name's Will from EDM Tips and I run an online music production school teaching bedroom producers
how to get to a professional level today we're going to be going into song arrangement this is
something i've been asked about so many times over the years and i've never actually made a
youtube video about it so i wanted to do that for you today so this is what we're going to be
covering today i'll be going into the terminology and describing exactly what the different names
for the different song parts are i'll be showing you the most common track structure for almost
any genre of modern music i'll be showing you how to create and use your own energy maps and
we're going to be going into five huge edm tracks breaking apart their arrangements so you can use
those techniques in your own music to finally take those ideas into fully finished tracks
huge shout out to one of my students jesse who has just released this track and i absolutely love it
so if you do want to produce music of that high quality you can check out my masterclass below
this video and remember to subscribe to my channel if you want tips like this each and every week
okay let's do it so most modern music and especially electronic dance music is done
in 4 4 time and that means there's four beats on every bar and then the track is a combination of
those bars taken out over your three four or five minute arrangement now you also get phrases which
might be perhaps two or four bars for instance you might have a build up that has two phrases
in the build up you might start hinting at the main melody but the second part of that build up
you might get a snare roll coming in as well and they are the basic terminology that we're going
to be using today now i'm going to show you a few arrangements over seven different styles
of electronic dance music to show you the similarities in the actual arrangements that
people use first let's take a step back and talk about what the different parts of each arrangement
are in a nutshell you have an intro you have a verse you have a build up and you have a drop and
then you might have an outro as well there are a couple of other phrases in there that we're going
to be using like a bridge and i'll explain that all very shortly so the general idea is that you
want to take your listener on a journey throughout the track so you've got to keep that interest
alive you've got to take people up to the highs you've got to take them back down and then build
them up for the most exciting part of your track which would usually be the chorus or the drop
now a quick note on that people sometimes confuse these terms they think chorus and
drop means the same thing but if you separate it out into two kind of sets of terminology one is
talking about the music and the other is kind of talking about a song for instance you might have
a chorus in the build up but then your drop will just be an instrumental so technically it's not
the chorus but it's going to make more sense when we go into this music so the first track
we're going to look at is this track by galantis and david guetta and little mix and it's 124 bpm
so you can see i've split it up here into a b c d b c c bridge which we'll get to in a sec and d
and these are the different sections that we've just talked about now so a is the intro
b is the verse c is the build up d is the drop and then we go back to the verse
then another build up then another twist on the build up and then the drop again now in terms of
that emotional rollercoaster i was just describing here is how you can analyze tracks that are
already out there because this is a great way to get ideas for what your arrangement should be so
i've just created this extra channel here and i've put on just an any plugin it doesn't really matter
but i put on a gain plug in here and i've just automated it and if we listen to our reference
track we can see that this energy map here is following the energy of the song so it starts out
quite low in energy as you'd expect because it's the intro then we get the verse
now we've got the vocals coming in now we get the second part of the
verse so this is what i was talking about phrases
and then we're going to get to the build up here and you can see the energy is going to grow
filters opening up so the energy is increasing and now we get the drum intros
so let's have a quick look at what's going on here in terms of the song structure
and the arrangement of the music itself so we've got the verse
she's singing there and there but here she's actually singing the chorus in the build-up
you know the track's called this ain't a heartbreak anthem or something like that
so when the drop happens she's still singing that chorus
and then we go back down to the verse the second verse
which has got a bit more energy than the first verse and that's very common as well
this is still reverse but the energy is building so this is kind of the second
phrase of the second verse and i'll explain exactly what's going on here with this build-up
goes back down she's singing
now the bridge is when it might go away from the main chord
progression for a bit or do something a bit different from the rest of the track
the second drop
in fact i'll label this differently and i'll explain why in a minute
so i call these the post drops this d2 here and we've got a couple down here as well so
now the energy changes even more this is the highest energy part of the whole track
there's no intro there's no outro on this track it just finishes like that
cool so that is the main way that we look at structure the main parts of songs and the main
parts of song structure so now i want to show you in a couple of other genres still electronic dance
music some older tracks and newer tracks as i said before so you can see that these patterns
still apply and this is a very common pattern here bit of an intro the verse the build the drop then
the verse the build the drop and then the outro that's a very common structure now let's look
at this tiesto track the business and you'll all know this tune of course so we've got the intro
you can hear it's already hinting at the main drop of the bass line it's just taken way down
in volume and the low end has been taken out of it and now we've got the first drop here
and then we've got a break here which doesn't yeah i mean you could just call
this break because it doesn't actually have a verse yet and then here's the verse let's get
down let's get down to business so you can see we've got the investors exactly here the verse
just like this and we're just gonna
it's a lot more subtle than the last track because it's a slightly different genre
so you always need to be listening out for references in the genre
exactly like in the other track that we looked at
and then the build well this is this again is another break so the build really starts here
are very subtle it's just like
and there is an outro on this tune
and it just fades out but this is a slightly different arrangement this track this is
the extended mix if it was the normal radio edit or spotify edit it would be a bit shorter and it
would match this arrangement of the glances track more closely so now let's have a look at an older
track let's go to this calvin harris track with florence welsh absolutely love this tune
this is 128 bpm i think bit faster but this one goes straight to the verse
but again the same chords that are going to be in the drop same chords that are in the
build up as well here's the build and again this is the chorus
so quite often nowadays the chorus is actually not on the drop it comes just before the drop
so that the drop can be instrumental second phrase of that build up things
are getting up a bit energy's coming and then the drop same chords as the rest of the track
which is slightly different instrumentation and then the energy goes back down
same as the exactly the same as the other tracks so this is the most common arrangement when it
comes to edm especially kind of on the pop side of things but this even works in the
more kind of club oriented stuff so if we look at this getter and morton remix of ghetto and
sears track titanium and again let's just have a quick look at it before we listen to it we've got
the intro it's all a bit longer because it's for a nightclub rather than the spotify playlist uh
we've got b which would be the verse we've got c which is the build up and also the chorus i
believe in this track and then the d which again is an instrumental drop so the chorus is coming
before that let's so let's have a quick listen we've got the intro just a beat setting the um
key of the track just holding on that one note the root note to the track then we got the break
which could actually be labeled like break because there's no singing yet
and that's the first we all know from titanium
so this is the chorus now
which is actually not in the build this is before the build
it's still the break really and then we have an instrumental build
going into the instrumental drop
and then the post drop where there's a bit more instrumentation there's the hi-hat
some more white noise riser in the background
and then we get again we go back to verse number two the chorus again the build and the
instrumental drop now i'm gonna throw in a wild card here and if you want me to cover different
genres like techno because there are slightly different approaches to genres like techno and
melodic house so let me know in the comments if you do want me to cover those things this is more
on the edm and the pop tip but let's look at this track by dj snake and little john
from a few years ago and this is a bit of a wild card because if we look at
the arrangement here we basically go build up drop post drop build up drop post drop build
up drop and a longer post drop and then the outro so this is a really simple arrangement
and let's have a listen to it like there's no core no verse you just go straight to the build
and then the drop
the post drop which is kind of the second phrase of the drop with more drums and instrumentation
there's a track flaps in there and then we go straight back to build
just remind me of the video of this brilliant and then the second drop is different from the first
drop you know it's a slightly different vibe on this track and i think that was why it did
so well part of the reason it did so well and then you've got your post truck with the claps
and then back straight to another build so there are a couple of different ways to arrange the ones
that i showed you first are the most common and remember these are all about bringing out one
idea to fruition so in all of these examples there are elements that are in the intro so
let's go back to the original galantis track so listen to the chords and the strings here
the piano chords
they're exactly the same as on the drop
now the only difference in this is when we switch on the bridge and the chords change
so what do you do when you've done your 16 bar loop well it depends on which part of
the track your 16 bar loop should fit to most of the time people will produce an idea and
it turns out to be the drop now if that is the case you've got everything that you need there
to start building out your track you can copy and duplicate all of the clips in your block across
your three four or five minutes and then start taking them out following this structure here
so you could even follow this energy map so if you've got everything in here on your drop in
the build up you can have exactly the same chords but maybe you filter them down and open them up
and then you've got your drum intro as well and then your intro again even less going on in that
so when you're building out from a drop that's the easiest way i find if you've created a structure
and perhaps it's the intro or the first verse then take it to the drop as soon as you can and
start building out everything that's going to be in your track like whatever you start or wherever
you start in your track if you can get that drop in as quickly as possible then that is the main
idea for the track pretty much so anyway i really hope you've enjoyed this video today guys i've had
so so many requests for this over the past few years so i thought i really wanted to to kind of
build it out for you obviously there's a lot of detail and nuance and professionalism in these
songs taking that energy map where it needs to go that's exactly the kind of thing and the depth
that we go into in my eight week edm production masterclass so if you enjoyed this video please
share it with your friends you can download my edm producer's starter pack if you want some free
samples and cheat sheets and stuff like this and yeah you can also check out my masterclass below
this video as well thank you so much for watching and until next time cheers and happy producing