Techno Music Arranging Tutorial: Turn Loop Into A Full Track (2 Easy Techniques)

Do you struggle with finishing tracks? Do you have 
hundreds of loops, which could be transformed into   techno bangers if you only knew, how to do that? 
I will show you two simple techniques: subtractive   arrangement, and the staircase technique which 
will get you out of any loop. We will also take   a look at the arrangement curve, which will be 
the foundation of your track structure. On top   of that, I will give you a few suggestions which 
will help you finding the best track structure   for yourself. This will be the starting 
point for most of you – a 4-bar long loop: You will know your project is ready 
to be arranged once that single loop   sounds decent and full. If you are not sure, 
whether your loop sounds decent or not,   it's best to compare it against your reference 
track. It could be a track in your subgenre made   by a producer you like and favor. In your 
DAW, load your loop, and a reference track   and listen to both things switching back 
and forth.

You will quickly feel whether   something is missing from your loop. If you 
feel that your loop doesn't sound decent,   it's best to return to the sound design stage 
and polish these sounds. I personally took   already care of all the individual channels. For 
example, here I have a synth channel with applied   reverb and multiband compressor to make the sound 
full and rich. The kick drum channel has already   thrown two saturator effects to make this kick 
sound heavy. Also, you can add more sounds,   but from my experience, the more sounds you have 
the more difficult the arrangement gets. How   many sounds should you have in the project before 
starting the arrangement? The better the sounds,   the less of them you need.

You can get by with 10 
sounds if they are already full. For me, an enough   amount is: a full hi-hat pattern, a kick drum with 
a bassline, a synthesizer or main pad sound, and a   few extra one-shot effects. And later, during the 
arrangement if you feel you can't push forward,   you can always add an another sound, whether 
it's a synthesizer or a simple riser. We will   arrange this track with the use of a subtractive 
arrangement technique. I will select the whole   loop, and click ctrl+d to duplicate the loop 
for around 50 times. The result should be a big   block of sounds and MIDI clips. We want to remove 
individual MIDI clips and add or remove the sounds   to form desired track sections. But what are 
these track sections, and how long they should be?   We need to use some kind of a template. This is 
my own invention – an arrangement curve. I like   to think of an arrangement as the representation 
of tension or emotions during the time.

Most of   the tracks start out with an intro. A purpose 
of the intro is to introduce the listener   to the individual sounds and also it prepares 
the listener to the main part. The main part,   which has the most of the energy and tension will 
not be as powerful as without the intro. Without   weak and calm parts of the track, there are 
not hard and exciting sections. Generally,   having an idea on what the main parts should 
sound like, it will be much easier for you to   arrange the breakdown, intro and outro.

After the 
intro, there comes the main part, where you use   most of the sounds. These parts of the track 
have the biggest amount of energy and tension.   They usually last for a minute or two. This 
main part is later followed by a breakdown,   which serves a few purposes. If you want to 
have your track DJ friendly, it's good to   introduce the breakdown, because most of the 
DJs when they mix two tracks with each other,   they are going to do the transition during the 
breakdown. Also, people who are dancing to your   track on the rave – give them some of the rest by 
introducing the breakdown in the middle which is   supposed to be calmer than the main sections. 
So, having the breakdown in your arrangement   is quite beneficial.

That is why most of the 
drum and bass, techno, dubstep tracks has one.   This breakdown splits the two main parts which 
give you more possibilities to arrange the track.   The second main part can be slightly different 
from the first one. Here, I can add an extra   sound or have a more exciting melody which will 
make this second main part even more exciting   than the first one. The last section of the track 
is the outro. Tt usually has the least amount of   energy, tension, emotions in the whole track. Most 
of the times people don't pay lots of attention to   the outro when they arrange it, which I find bad. 
As two main parts of the track can be different,   you can also create a different outro 
than the intro. The listener already   knows the atmosphere and the set of sounds 
you have used. You have a great chance to   create something experimental or totally different 
in the outro.

This is going to surprise the   listener in a pleasant way, and because the 
listener already knows the vibe of the whole   track, it will not give off a feeling that the 
outro belongs from a totally different track. My name is Marcin. I put out sound design 
tutorials every second Sunday. I create everything   from scratch, and I show you step-by-step, how 
things get done. If you don't want to miss such   videos, then subscribe to my channel. If you want 
to learn music production on a professional level   fast, contact me for private music production 
lessons. This arrangement curve shows you what   sections should be present in the track, but 
it doesn't answer the question of how long each   section should be. This naturally depends on a 
few factors. If you produce an aggressive track,   you might want to have a short intro.

If your 
project doesn't involve lots of sounds, it will be   difficult to arrange a 2-minutes long breakdown. 
If you are totally clueless on how to start,   it's beneficial to have some kind of a template. 
And again, a reference track will come handy. I   have already duplicated that single 4-bar 
long loop to get a big block, which lasts   for six and half minutes. On the top channel, 
I have thrown my reference. I have listened to   this reference track, and pointed out where each 
track sections begin by using the markers. Later,   I'm going to use the same markers to split my big 
block into individual track sections. This is just   a starting point. Later during the arrangement, 
as you will add and remove the sounds,   you will want to adjust the length of the 
track sections. In Ableton, if you want to   make a section shorter, you select a 
part which you are interested in removing   and hit the "delete time" from the edit window. 
If you want to make some section longer, it might   be useful to insert a silence, an empty space 
between some of the MIDI clips.

How should you   cut out the elements and what could be your track 
structure? Now I will give you a few suggestions.   Again, if you want to produce an aggressive 
track, it's okay if you already start with a   full percussion and bassline combo. If you 
produce a melodic techno or an atmospheric track,   you can start off with a single synthesizer or 
a pad sound. If your project has over 30 sounds,   you might want to think about splitting these 
sounds into two groups, and using the sounds   from one of the group only in one section 
of the track. This is something you can hear   in the "sdb – symphony" track. The sounds played 
during the breakdown are not going to be present   in the remaining sections. Talking about the 
breakdowns, sometimes the simplicity is the key.   If you have a very groovy and rhythmic track, you 
want to make it sound hypnotic in the breakdown,   just play the main beat and take out the kick drum 
or the bassline.

This is the same project after my   arrangement. I will give you some commentary 
to show you my thought process and insight.   I'm used to making a second part, the second 
main part of the track different from the first   one. The easiest thing to differentiate these two 
sections is by introducing in the second main part   some sounds which were not used before. For me, 
this synthesizer channel serves this purpose.   I have introduced this sound for the first time, 
at the very end of the breakdown. Both the intro   and breakdown were arranged using a simple 
staircase arrangement technique. We start out   with a single sound, and after a fixed amount 
of time, let it be 8 bars or maybe 16 bars,   we add another sound. And after next 
8 bars, we add something more. So,   we have started out with the kick 
drum. After that, I am adding the FX's.   Later, I have the hi-hats, and even later we 
are introducing the bassline. As you can see,   all of these look like stairs.

If you want to 
help your DJ even more, remember to put some   rhythmic elements in the intro and a breakdown 
sections. For a DJ, it's very easy to beatmatch   the track with another one because he doesn't have 
to find any cue points. He can start beatmatching   right from the beginning. Another example of the 
staircase arrangement is in the outro. We start it   out with most of the sounds playing, but after 
first 16 bars, I get rid of two sound effects,   and also the hi-hat pattern is becoming simpler 
and simpler by removing individual hi-hats from   the percussion loop. Aside from simple adding or 
removing sounds, I also manipulated the tension   or the energy of the track by switching the 
drum patterns or introducing different rhythms.   The best example of it is in the second main 
part section of this track. The original kick   drum pattern is very dense and we have lots of 
kick drums: So, to easy manipulate the energy   and make some of this part of the track less 
exciting, we can simplify the kick drum pattern: Let's listen quickly to these 
two 8-bars long pieces of audio: And here comes the advice for the future: 
never remove any loops, samples, rhythms,   drum patterns which were in the primary version 
of your track.

Later if you try to arrange such a   tune, and you will get stuck, these "leftovers" 
will be very useful and beneficial. Very often   you will find out that switching immediately from 
the intro to the main part can be difficult. Often   thing which producers do is by introducing some 
kind of a bridge or a build-up, and this can be a   4-bar long piece of audio which is put between the 
intro and the main part. I have used this build-up   to introduce the bass sound, and we both know 
that is a bridge because here I don't have the   kick drum playing. The second example is naturally 
between the breakdown and the second main part. I   want to introduce that synth channel. If I simply 
add this sound without unmuting all these hi-hats   and bass channels, the second drop would not 
be this impactful. Also, this synth channel,   this synthesizer sound couldn't be introduced that 
well. This is what does the arrangement curve look   like after arranging the whole track.

As you see, 
that transition between the intro and main part   of the breakdown and the main part now is much 
more fluid, thanks to both staircase arrangement   which is here in the intro, here in the 
breakdown or here in the outro, but also   with the use of the build-ups. If you 
want to listen to this arrangement,   I have put a link down in the description box.

You 
can close your eyes and listen critically to get a   feel of what is happening during the 
time. Some sections of this track   could be made even more interesting, and 
this is what we will take care of in the   next arrangement tutorials. In the beginning of 
July, we will return to the sound design and to   the Klangkuenstler music. That's everything for 
today. Thanks for watching, and see you next time!.

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