Aphexs grasp of song structure

I’m kind of amazed by how tight and well structured some of aphex’s early tracks are. Take something like Xtal for example,  likely made when he was a teenager. It has a very solid typical pop structure. Admittedly nothing ground breaking but I still think it’s very mature to craft something so perfectly at the very start of your musical journey, especially when you specialise in experimenting. 
 

does anyone have any idea where/how he learned this aspect which can take a lot of musicians many years to understand once the ‘pissing about’ phase is over. I don’t believe he ever played in a band either which is where a lot of musicians first learn about arrangement and structure. 

Talents, music nerding, trying to impress a girls, smonking weed

100% agree with your post. and my answer is i really have no idea... it may be a mystery. all i can say is that RDJ was attending DJ sets around Cornwall as Phonic Boy On Dope, and was stealthily playing out his own tracks alongside the typical line-up - this is how he got noticed by GWC and they soon set up the Rephlex label together.

so he was surely familiar with lots and lots of techno, and was able to incorporate a professional approach to song structure into his own music to a large extent. but this stuff was happening around 1990, and i would say he *already* knew how to structure a track.

this is mulberry bush - RDJ tells us this track (and "nutcrapper") were the first two tracks he ever recorded, just after he got access to his own casette recorder. if that is true, then they are arguably the earliest possible points of reference when it comes to tracks by aphex

look at that shit it's about as structured as a collection of samples + drum loops can get. he would've been 13 or 14 right? maybe it's reincarnation. or aliens 

Wouldn't it just be from, you know, having listened to music before and knowing how music goes?

I think Richard is a talented story-teller. His music tells a story—he manages to make sounds characters  in that story, and make them talk to each other in diverse ways. I think the dude simply has a lot of imagination, and he chose to materialize it with music. So, for someone trying to achieve it, and doesn't has the confidence of believeing in his own stories/imagination, I'd point out to read novels instead of "playing in a band".

  On 3/17/2025 at 11:02 PM, perunamuusi said:

Wouldn't it just be from, you know, having listened to music before and knowing how music goes?

aliens

  On 3/18/2025 at 12:39 AM, geosmina said:

I think Richard is a talented story-teller.

Richard, tell us a story

Richard:

AFX is a genius 

  On 3/17/2025 at 10:13 PM, Dragon said:

.this is mulberry bush - RDJ tells us this track (and "nutcrapper") were the first two tracks he ever recorded, just after he got access to his own casette recorder. if that is true, then they are arguably the earliest possible points of reference when it comes to tracks by aphex

Which would be 1985? Did he have a sampler that early? 

Even the "affordable" Mirage would have been an expensive bit of kit at the time. Especially for a teenager.

  On 3/17/2025 at 11:02 PM, perunamuusi said:

Wouldn't it just be from, you know, having listened to music before and knowing how music goes?

Not sure if you’ve ever dabbled in making music but it’s not always that straight forward. Jamming coming up with great ideas, being musically gifted with harmony sound etc is one thing but arranging/structuring takes quite a long time to master even if copying off other songs. 

No one needs to convince me he’s a genius and that this is just another aspect of that. Just interest if there were any clues as to how he developed this aspect. 

obviously his structure and arrangement got more experimental over the years but still think what he was doing from early on (for some tracks) was very precise mature for a bedroom experimental musician. 

Also this is a slightly different topic, does anyone know of any source that suggests he ever edited music after recording. I know this was a technique used by people like vibert and dmx krew. 
 

from what I’ve read and to my ears Aphex tracks have always been either  precisely sequenced or loose live jams. But would be interested to know of any other arrangement/structure methods he might have used early on. 

I guess editing pre hard drive recording was pretty inaccessible. So probably not

  On 3/18/2025 at 6:51 AM, psn said:

Which would be 1985? Did he have a sampler that early? 

Even the "affordable" Mirage would have been an expensive bit of kit at the time. Especially for a teenager.

possibly not a sampler. sounds like he was simply playing out another cassette tape to use the samples. he also mentioned on soundcloud that while he eventually built his own mixer using a breadboard/electronics kit, until that point he used to "twist all the wires together" to mix multiple audio sources.

  On 3/18/2025 at 12:22 PM, Dragon said:

possibly not a sampler. sounds like he was simply playing out another cassette tape to use the samples. he also mentioned on soundcloud that while he eventually built his own mixer using a breadboard/electronics kit, until that point he used to "twist all the wires together" to mix multiple audio sources.

There is no doubt we're hearing heavy aliasing from digital re-pitching at the start of nutcrapper. The quick retriggering at the very beginning is another indication.

yes

His early stuff is very repetitive, and the structure of Xtal is just "lalala bit - descending chords bit - lalala bit - descending chords bit"

This is the sortof song structure everyone just knows from 'listening to stuff', as perunamuusi points out.

His early stuff is good because of the spirit, the vibe, the sounds, his intuition for combining things together. Structurally and in terms of musical progression its not that great. But the repetitiveness is a strength in a way, he was just doing his own thing. Thats why (at the time) it sounded so different to everyone else

IIRC he didn't make use of stuff like key changes till the ICBYD era. I think the early acclaim he got inspired him to really try and develop and progress as time went on

  On 3/18/2025 at 7:29 AM, katmat said:

Not sure if you’ve ever dabbled in making music but it’s not always that straight forward. 

I have dabbled yes. 

I would say structuring a song is the really easy bit. Like you say, you can just copy that bit, bar for bar, if you need to. 

His Syro, Collapse, Soundlab era stuf has such a satisfying song progression too though, less conventional but a bigger payoff imo.

Just my personal theory but I think Richards songwriting progressed a lot simply because he wrote a lot of music in general. His soundcloud dump is pretty good proof of it. A lot of those tracks sound like earlier versions of more classic tracks. It seems like he wasnt afraid of reusing material to make different tracks, exploring ideas over and over until he got the best version. Probably that  combined with mixing striaght to DAT allowed for a lot of early exploration of writing music without being super hung up on the production aspects.

I feel like AE might be similar to some degree. I've read Sean Boot talk multiple times about how they often just record two to stereo and mix while they go etc. I think this approach can lead to a lot more focus on creating material. The more material you create, the more likely you are to stumble upon something good from a songwriting process. Obviously Richard is outstandingly talented and that is a big difference but if I wanted to level up in that area that is what I would do.

IDK, his committment to more conventional song structures is sometimes a turn-off for me.

The moment that sticks in my mind here is 2:40 of PAPAT4. I love the first 2:39 of that track, but the transition at 2:40 is bad. It it always felt to me like that transition was done because it fit into some preconceived "song structure".

I agree with some of the other commenters that these structures are not hard to grasp.

Just to be clear, I’m only really talking about his very early stuff, obviously he developed an lot along the way. 

Kudos, i think a lot of people find jamming/experimenting an idea very easy but structuring a very labour intensive task.

I think thats one of the things that turns people on to Richard's music insofar as it shares a lot of the same sonic ground as techno/electro but wheras they are generally just long, building, slowly modulating loops, Aphex shit often has like a-sections/b-sections, almost verse/chorus pop song structures that make some pretty out there sounds quite easy to digest. He is normally quite economical and theres never a lot of fat (obvs there are plenty of exceptions). Often it feels like he is holding your hand thru the sonic madness.

I mean he has a good intuition about a LOT of aspects of his songs. Not surprising song structure is one of them.

been thinking about this thread today and i'm pretty excited and delighted to notice some of the skill and focus that RDJ put into his early tracks.

a really good example is GAK 2. with this being written with very simple/minimal melodies and drum patterns, it makes sense that the real strength of this track can be found in the structuring.

so much going on there, especially from around 3:30 onwards.

73-yips is one of my all-time favourites. RDJ has said many times that he usually likes to use setups to sequence tracks in real time. this is a prime example of the hardcore heavy-duty damage this approach can do...the heavy beats and electro-shock synths are all ready to use but it's that timing, precision and wildly abrupt changes of pace that give it life. it definitely has a feel of a live/improvised instrumental, yet it's all achieved by operating the live mix.

those last 30 seconds man!!!!   

i've also been thinking about the structuring of Actium. we already talked about Xtal but this one also feels like a free-flowing, improvised track. it never seems to do the same thing twice, it feels like a track which is constantly exploring itself and where it can go. it takes a lot to realise that it's being done with pre-programmed drum patterns, samples, and alternate versions of the main melody which all come into play during that live mix.

thanks for starting this thread katmat  makes me think.

IMO Richard composes melodies, pads and harmonies first and then he adds beats to it and then he expands tracks to maximum, at least it can be heard post-drukqs era (hate to use word era for anyones music, sorry about that), not the other way round. That's the biggest mistake Aphex lame imitators make, they're happy with making fast Aphex beats and they add some boring melodies to it...

I'm 100% sure the abundance track for instance was started with outro melody and then created with the rest till the very beginning of the track.

  On 3/28/2025 at 12:28 AM, Adamovich said:

IMO Richard composes melodies, pads and harmonies first and then he adds beats to it and then he expands tracks to maximum, at least it can be heard post-drukqs era (hate to use word era for anyones music, sorry about that), not the other way round. That's the biggest mistake Aphex lame imitators make, they're happy with making fast Aphex beats and they add some boring melodies to it...

I'm 100% sure the abundance track for instance was started with outro melody and then created with the rest till the very beginning of the track.

 

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I'd agree that working from a melody is easier than from the beats.