How To Turn Your Loop Into A Song #2- Arrangement and Production

do you find that you often have a really good idea maybe like a cool drum loop or a really nice bass idea but you struggle to turn this loop into a full song with a lot of variety interest and structure if you do struggle with that don't worry you're absolutely not alone and almost all musicians and producers struggle with the same thing we have hundreds of cool loops cool ideas and we can sometimes struggle to turn them into songs the good thing is there's loads of practical things you can do to help turn this loop into a song and I'm going to be sharing three of them with you in this video the first one is all about arranging your song so that it can have structure variety and interest the second one is about how to play along with your song jam along with it whether you're by yourself or with friends that you can add sort of creative musical parts to your song and keep it interesting and the third part is all about how to mix refine and organize your project as you go so that you stay motivated to work on it I'm Michael and today I'm going to be sharing these three strategies with you they're all a little bit into woven but don't worry because I'm going to keep it straightforward and simple so let's get right into it so this is my project inside FL studio this is where I've left it I only have a bass and drum lip so the drums sound like this really simple the bass is like this and together they sound like this it sounds okay but it's certainly not a song a song is a story a journey it takes you from the start to the end this is just one kind of feeling or one emotion locked into a loop the first thing that you can do to get a loop into more of a song format is to actually just structure it like a song so I'm gonna take this and I don't really think this is how my song should start so I'm gonna place this further over and this is gonna be part of my chorus so I'm just gonna drop it over here you can see that these columns are sort of distinguished into light sections and dark sections these mark out each four bars so I'm just going to drop it over here into one of the light ones and that's going to be the start of my chorus and I'm actually going to label that so I'm just going to select that area press Alt + T I'm gonna name it chorus 1 now what I'm gonna do is add a verse before this no verses are typically 8 to 16 bars long so in this case it's 4 8 12 16 so my verse is going to start just here it's gonna select that verse before that verse I might just have a little introduction here then I'm gonna have my chorus last for 8 bars long which would just be copying and pasting that to there then I'm gonna have my verse start again just after here there are loads of different ways to structure a song but it's very common to get sort of a 4 to 8 bar intro 8 to 16 bar verse 8 bar chorus then a verse then a chorus again sometimes there's chorus bridge then chorus sometimes before each chorus you have a pre-chorus or there's some kind of hook study the genre that you're producing in C if you want to fit into the way that other people are structuring their songs if you don't want to that's perfectly fine but having a structure to work with lets you know which pieces you still have to fit in so let's work on the extra pieces now so we've got a great big blank verse how do we fill out the verse using what we have here because I don't want my bass line and my drums knocking away throughout the whole verse that's not the kind of idea I have I would like a little bit more variety which is the first point I mentioned in the arrangement the arrangement needs variety and it's dynamic and contrast between loud and quiet if my verse starts like this then my chorus is never going to hit hard when that comes in if you know music theory this will be simple you want to elaborate on this bass line using chords but if you don't know music theory don't worry I'll show you exactly how to get the chords out of this bass line so the first thing you're gonna do is open up the piano roll for the bass line ctrl a ctrl C to copy the root notes of this bass line these are going to be the root notes of the chords that we create now I'm going to load open an instrument so I'm going to use a piano to start off with I'm using addictive keys because of the piano that I know and trust I'm going to create a new pattern and then call it chords I'm just gonna make it four bars long and paint them across throughout the verse there I'm gonna press f7 to open the piano roll and I'm gonna start creating my chords so I'm just gonna start by pressing ctrl + V to paste in those root notes of the chords from here you'll want to make sure that you know the key of your song you may already know the key from when you start it but if you don't know the key and you don't know music theory just head to a site that helps you figure out the key based on the notes input your notes it'll tell you what key and then what you can do is click down here go helpers scale highlighting and highlight the key of your song in this case C major what I want to do is use this root note to create a chord but if you don't know how to do this there's a straightforward way here which you can use when you're starting out which is a this is a D note so what I'm gonna do is click up here I'm going to select a major or a minor chord depending on which one you want let's say I want a minor chord click on that D note and then it fills in the chord for you the next one I might want it to be a major chord so I'm just gonna hit the F and then G I'm just going to finish it on a major as well so those are the most basic versions of the quartz now I would recommend elaborating on this you can see from the scale highlighting which notes are in my key so if I want to elaborate on these chords or voice them differently I can sort of rearrange the notes in the chords and find some more exciting or interesting ones but for now we just want to keep the momentum going I don't really like that piano so I'm going to swap it out for an instrument that sounds a little bit more interesting so I ended up finding this looping piano inside a pulse engine called signal that I like so I'm just going to be playing the chords using that instead of the piano and it sounds like this so it's given us sort of like a sense of rhythm so now what I'm going to do is go to that third point which is about refining organizing and just cleaning up your project as you go so I'm just going to quickly rename this piano at the side give it the color of blue and I'm gonna right click Auto named clips the next thing I'm going to do is send it to the mixer so in this case insert seven ctrl + L the piano will be sent there now so what I want is a contrast between this piano and this bass when this bass kicks in I want that to actually feel huge so in order for that to feel big I need a dynamic change I need the piano to be quieter so I'm just gonna lower this down a little bit maybe not too much but when that change happens I want it to be quite drastic and right now it just sounds like two parts of two completely different songs there's no journey transitioning us into that chorus and we'll work on that in just a moment but before we do that I'm just gonna copy over this piano into the second verse at least for 16 bars it might only end up being 8 and what I'm also going to do is copy this chorus over after 16 pop it over their faults T and then I'm going to call it chorus 2 and this way we already have a little bit of a structure going so we can see our verses we could see the choruses and we know that we need to add some more in what I'm gonna do to add a little bit to that journey is to give myself a bit of an introduction so instead of my song just starting with just straight in with the chord I'm gonna load an audio recorder onto the master I have just a regular piano playing now and I'm just going to record the first chord okay cool now what I'm gonna do is reverse it so alt and the left arrow key to reverse it now I'm going to press ctrl + R to add some reverb to this so now what I'm gonna do is just drag this onto the playlist like so I'm going to reverse it into the first chord just gonna reverse but now I'm also going to rename it to reverse chord something like that give it a color sounds good green Otto name clips I'm also going to send this somewhere on the mixer so let's hear what we have at the start now it should be a little bit more flowy getting us ready for that journey I suppose now what I'm also going to do is add a riser before that chorus just to kind of throw us into that chorus a little bit better so I have this one riser that I like it's quite short I might want to pick a longer one but I'm just gonna reverse it into this chorus here chop off the end and we're left with something like this okay so what I'm gonna do instead is actually cut it off a little bit earlier so I'm gonna just cut it off right here and I'm also gonna cut off this chord just there okay so it needs a little bit of refinement now what I'm gonna do is cut off all that volume on the piano so I'm going to go into the piano on the mixer I'm going to automate the fader just here and I'm just going to simply drag that down [Music] that should help that kind of pull away and then sort of slam into the chorus I suppose now what I'm going to do as well is I'm just going to group this with the above track right clicking and pressing G and then I'm also going to auto color that group it's going to call this volume Auto and in that clip now everything's staying organized [Music] I'm also going to add a riser halfway through the chorus and one just at the end of the chorus sort of slingshotting out into the next verse another thing that I'm doing as I'm going is sort of setting levels and sort of mixing everything in together a little bit the better it can sound the more motivated you will be to keep working on it and if you open up next time it's not going to sound like quite so much of them a massive ideas it might sound a little bit more structured a little bit more balanced now the next thing I'd recommend doing is layering a little bit so the piano here what I've decided to do is layer it with another instrument so I've just copied the MIDI across to another instrument it sounds like this on its own it's a lot more exciting and interesting than just that standard piano we had now together it's a lot more interesting I suppose it just feels more like a song at this point I'm gonna leave the verse as it is the direction of the verse will probably be heavily dictated by what vocal goes on it their vocal tone might dictate what instruments you want to put in there if you have a pre-chorus that's when you're going to want to start increasing the energy you might want to introduce the drums more risers more followers that kind of thing now we're going to go back to the chorus and try to make this just a little bit more exciting and interesting so the easy thing to look at is the drums because right now it's just a kick and a snare what I'm gonna do is add in a shaker to this or like a hi-hat and what I'm going to do is insert a track here I'm gonna create a new pattern by pressing f4 I'm just gonna call it shaker I'm gonna paint it in at the second half of the drop I'm gonna group this with the above track also color the group call it shaker then I'm going to auto name the clips there we go so they're all colored I'm just gonna paint these across here this would be a lot easier if I had my Akai fire here but unfortunately it's still in the storage from traveling and it's gonna sound like this I'm telling you setting those velocities using fire is a lot quicker than clicking away like this so I'm just going to do that just for now and what this does this gives quite a contrast between the first half of the second half of the chorus it's simple but again it sounds a little bit more like a song because we're getting that aspect of variety and and journey it's actually travelling through lots of different sounds the next step involves actually playing along jamming along with your song because right now this isn't that musical I've got basic course basic bassline basic drums there's nothing that sounds that authentic or original to me in the song yet so what I'm gonna do is play on MIDI keyboard now it doesn't matter whether you have a MIDI keyboard small controller or whatever just try and play along with it maybe you play guitar in that case you can grab a guitar and start riffing along but I would highly recommend getting hands-on with the music it will help you connect with it it will help you write and come up with something creative and beautiful what I like to do is play on instruments that are easy and fluid to play on one for me is this sort of brassy analog pad and for me for some reason when I use that on the keys it makes things a little bit easier for me I'm not a natural Keys player I play guitar and I play it pretty badly but when I play this on keys it just sort of feels quite inspiring to me I don't know everybody's gonna have a different sound some people would prefer just a piano or some kind of harsh lead so what I do is I play this pad it's when I trust even though it won't necessarily match this space and these drums I play along the chords now if you don't know how to play along the chords just see them in the piano roll and literally just just play them one at a time until you actually figure out how to play them once you memorize the shapes and which notes you can and can't hit is just gonna make life a lot easier for you and I'd recommend just giving it a go so let's try and see if we can come up with something a little bit more interesting just a basic chords so once you can play around the basic chords try adding in an extra note at a time and this will help you develop melody now this really is for beginners if you're a keys player just ignore this and skip to the next section but if you play a chord try adding in another note that works one it's time you'll figure out which ones do and don't work if you hit a wrong note it's gonna sound off like that so experiment playing around like that and that will give you the basis of a melody it's one of these things where it's gonna sound silly at first and the more you do it the better it gets [Music] and don't worry if you hit the wrong chord like that you know you'll find a way to make it work it's very easy to hear when you play a note that's that's wrong or off it's just gonna sound dissonant and wrong so don't be afraid of trying something out and a melody might come out of this for instance if I head to a higher octave maybe a lead might come out of this [Music] yeah like that [Music] and whatever you come up with you'll know that it was you and it feels like you it's got your signature to it the way you play will be embedded into that MIDI information and it's gonna not feel quite so plastic and quite so fake I suppose so I'm just going to create a new pattern call it melody and I'm just gonna play along and see what happens this might be a bit rubbish no one really comes up with a good melody the first time around anyway but let's try [Music] so let's see how that sounded [Music] so again I'm just going to name it melody I'm gonna give it a color and also name clips and I'm gonna make sure that it's centered a mixer here as well and again I'm gonna try and blend that in now going into the second verse what we might want to do is keep the energy high so keep the drums going as well but what I'm gonna do is insert a track here right click and I and then I'm gonna go to my drum buss which I have an EQ loaded on and I'm just gonna filter the drums down so that in the verse I'm getting that kind of vibe out of it so I'm just simply going to create an automation clip for this so I'm going to keep it down during the chorus and then as soon as the verse comes in we're going to have that kind of filtered energy [Music] might be a little bit too much often in songs when the first chorus finishes you want to keep a little bit of energy going it might be that there's sort of a subdued baseline of the drums carry through often you'll want a faller to match the riser so I'm just gonna make the riser unique I'm gonna reverse it and we'll play it into itself like this there's a bit of a and this one I probably want to extend out and make it a lot longer again I'm just naming everything and keeping it all organized something that I also have is another instrument here which is on analogue strings which I loved what i have is this reverb sort of ping that sounds like this which i'm going to use to add a lot of texture underneath the chorus so I'm just simply going to print out that that D note which is the root note of the first chord I'm just gonna have it play through the whole chorus I'm just going to drag that straight into the playlist here and I'm going to just add it in here I'm gonna add another one as well so I'm just gonna make it unique and reverse it into itself so that it comes just there and then another one to match it and that kind of gives it a lot of texture underneath the track so now I want to just quickly recap what we have done and what we've done is we've taken a fairly simple loop that just had the drums and the bass line and we've arranged it and given it structure it visibly looks like more of a song now the verse is a bit thin but we have given it contrast some variety and definitely given a journey throughout the song we've sectioned off an intial verse chorus verse and a chorus now we might want another bridge in another chorus every song is going to be a little bit different so don't worry about being locked into that grid we've provided contrast by having quiet elements loud elements given it dynamics something you can do you know if you want a really wide drop sometimes the best thing to do is to make the verse more thin I could have this piano and pad be really thin in mono and then when the chorus hits it's gonna feel a lot wider because they haven't been used to that wide stereo sound the next thing we did was try to play the instruments so that we could sort of fill this out with something that felt a little bit more normal and natural you know maybe play the chords in on a piano or a guitar so that it has an element of you your your energy and your spirit in the music as well didn't necessarily work today but I'm not gonna beat myself up about it sometimes the best melody doesn't just come to you on the spot and the third thing we did was refine and mix the song as we go so most of this besides maybe this looks good makes sense hasn't taken too long and it means that when I leave this song and come back to it this is gonna make an awful lot more sense it's organized it's clean it's sort of mixed already so you know if I'm away from the studio maybe I'm traveling I'm gonna walk or maybe I'm working on a different song in the studio and then a really cool melody idea comes to me I can jump straight into this project put the melody idea in there's no clutter and mess the other benefit of keeping it organized is that I feel proud of this song it doesn't necessarily sound amazing yet but I feel a lot more proud of it than if it was just a load of grey and a mess I feel that this is something I want to come back to and work on and one thing that I would stress to you is to not hang around too long on ideas that aren't working the melody for me wasn't really working out great today I'm not going to spend half an hour 45 minutes trying to make my fingers play something awesome if not happening it's not happening give it a break come back to it and when it does work you'll know about it so don't worry about that at all so hope this video has been helpful I hope that this helps you sort of turn your loops into a little bit more of a song structure if you do have any comments criticisms questions please do leave them in the comment section down below I'd love to hear from you I hope you have a great day a great week and I hope to see you in the next video - bye for now

Channel: In The Mix

Views: 2,842,979

Rating: 4.936511 out of 5

Keywords: loop to song, how to turn a loop into a song, creativity, music production, fl studio, making a song, beat to song, 4 bar loop to song, fl studio looping, from loop to whole song, how I make beats, inspiration, whole song, tracks not loops, beat making tips, producer, fl studio 20, in the mix, turning a beat into a song, music production tips, music production (genre), how to make a song, song structure, fl studio arrangement, how to turn your loop into a song

Id: NwTPqJKoFW8

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 03 2018