My Arrangements Sucked... Then I Did This

arranging a song used to be the number one thing that I struggled with as a songwriter and then I literally found a song Arrangement cheat code that even the most beginner producers can use and that Arrangement cheat code is what I'm going to show you in today's video so if you ever struggle with turning your Loops into a full-length song or simply making an arrangement that's actually interesting watch this entire video from beginning to end and I guarantee that if you do that your Arrangements will come out sounding at least 20 percent better by the end of this video okay so the secret to arranging a song is to start with a vocal acapella this acapella sounds like this how do I say this I've been here waiting just laying in my bed hoping you would call me up I have this full-length vocal acapella from my new vocal acapella pack that is not yet complete but in the meantime you can demo this vocal for free it's in the description of this video stay tuned for the full release of this acapella pack you do not want to miss it the magic of using a full-length acapella like this is that it's already arranged so all we have to do is follow the structure of the vocal and the song pretty much arranges itself watch me arrange a song in the easiest way possible first thing I'm going to do is start with a set of chords I'm going to make a four bar Loop I'm going to use the Spitfire audio soft piano it's a free piano plugin sounds absolutely gorgeous let's go ahead and write a set of chords that harmonize as well with our vocal this will take you some trial and error to come up with a set of chords that you really like when I'm harmonizing I always start with the bass note of the chords and just see if they work before I waste my time building the whole chord how do I say this I've been here waiting just yeah they work so I'm going to take these pull them up a whole fifth I'm going to add some extra notes to make these chords mine and I'm going to extend them by four more bars I feel like it'll follow the vocal more so for this acapella I use these chords that is electric so when you come up with a set of chords that makes you feel that good The Magic of using this acapella is that the song is already arranged we just didn't write it yet here's what I mean every vocal acapella has about three sections before the song repeats our vocal has a verse a pre-chorus which is right here and then a chorus or a hook I'm going to color code these to help us out so the verse to the pre-chorus is usually a subtle change so we're going to figure out what we're gonna do there and then the chorus is usually a bit bigger of a change in your arrangement so let's go ahead and go to work here the energy of the vocal increases in the chorus since the energy increases in the vocal I'm going to match the energy with my instrumental by increasing the energy of these chords so I'm going to duplicate them and put them down here on another instance of the lab soft piano but this time this soft piano has a bit more Reverb I'm going to show you a cool piano layering trick here's what the piano sounds like on its own with more Reverb but when you're layering piano you can get a way prettier sound if you take the same chord notes I'm going to take the leading notes and put them up a whole octave and we get this but if we take that with our main piano now foreign you get that Heavenly sound that is a Heavenly piano sound right there so if you're feeling really confident in your production skills we can layer this piano again and make it even more vibrant so I'm gonna take the main chords I'm gonna drop them on to a synth sound this is a very basic synth sound that you can find in most synths I'm gonna put a whole bunch of heavy Reverb on it the Hella vintage verb it's a very heavy Reverb now let's listen to the energy shift from this piano to this piano foreign wow that is heaven okay so now we have two sections we have our verse in pre-chorus and then we increase the energy for the hook there's another section here that we didn't energy match yet this is all about energy matching our instrumental to that vocal from the verse of the pre-chorus is a subtle change so I'm going to do a subtle change from here to here I'm going to do that with drums all right I went and got some drums so I'm going to give us a make a little house beat I got this little Tom here I'm gonna make a nice chill relaxed rhythm with it it'll act as a little Bass because we're in the intro of the song I'm going to add an EQ and take away some of the kick because we don't need all the kick I have this very relaxed snare I'm gonna put one of these on every other kick then our drum Beetle sound like this All I'm gonna do to energy match this vocal is put that snare under the pre-chorus I also added a couple other perks just to emphasize that snare so now our transition from verse to pre-chorus sounds like this okay so now we have a big section here a big section here and we're due for one more big change and that's right over here when the vocal takes a break so after the chorus your song's gonna do one of two things it's either going to go back into the next verse or you're gonna go into a draw I'm an EDM guy so I'm going to go and do a drop alright so to start my drop I'm just going to take these drums and move them over to here I'm going to take the same kick but I'm going to open it all the way up so I'm going to get rid of this EQ that we had in the intro so now we have a nice big kick I'm going to take our main chords add them to a new instrument I heard a song by petite biscuit and he used the coolest mellow synth sound that I've been dying to steal so let's go ahead and try to remake it all right it's the wrong wave I'm gonna make another oscillator point to the right ear now the synth is going to get weird we just put this side up an octave that's strange that is a strange sound I love it let's add some new harmonics to emphasize the drop chords I added some rc20 to add some noise to these chords here's it without the rc20 now here it is with rc20 so it kind of detuned them and added some wobble then the noises make them all fuzzy it's going to enhance them a little bit also I'm going to take shaper box too and add some ducking to them oh yeah we need a base now for the drop right so where do we go for base bottom of the chords I have this bass sound that sounds like this we have to separate the drums in this drop from the drums in this intro I need the drums in the drop to be stronger than the intro drums because remember we're matching energies of that vocal acapella the drop is when everything has to get loud and big let's keep adding to it I got this hi-hat that's going to go in between each Kick and here's our original snare it doesn't carry a lot of weight so I got some more layers that we could use to enhance it like this big snap now I have this weird sounding thing here and I'm just going to put it before every other snap uh-huh just like that now we have some drop drums that sound more like Drop drums so once we have our three main sections laid out this song's practically done all you do from here now is take these sections copy and paste them they will automatically line up with the rest of the vocal but before I copy and paste my sections I like to add Transitions and little atmospheric effects just to make them sound as good as they can I added this gorgeous atmosphere here floats over the piano game over I did some transitions to connect sections together so I'm going to play this back for you I feel stupid I thought that mellow drop really worked well with everything so yeah I'm pretty proud of that stay tuned over the next couple weeks with me so you can get the rest of this vocal when I drop the full vocal pack thanks for watching guys

Channel: Alex Rome

Views: 13,758

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Id: -EIjHn68oBM

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022