arrangements, composition, song structure?

Anybody have any resources for song structure and compositional layout techniques from the greats we love? Know what I'm talking about? I want to see something that's laid out that describes how the arrangements are put together for a noob like me to learn from. Anybody? Is this a lame question? Thanks people.

it's interesting to me as well though, it's funny because when i listen to music i don't think technically at all ... even if i wanted to , i can't. i just get hypnotiosed by beats and melodies etc, you'd be surprised how simple it can be though, you can learn from simple music, like beatles or beach boys and shit like that, pop songs.

it would be sweet if people posted screen shots of their work though

just get some graph paper and figure it out.

Start out playing with the pop structure. I wouldn't look at other peoples music for help, just get a music theory book and mess around.

  nuclearaddict said:

Start out playing with the pop structure. I wouldn't look at other peoples music for help, just get a music theory book and mess around.

That's pretty much what I'm doing. Just would love to see some stuff graphically represented, like the old diagramming of a sentence from 6th grade... I know there are no hard fast rules to this stuff.

you mean, like sheet music? or do you mean breaking it down into simpler terms, like pop music formulas? in that case i'd suggest you get some theory books and learn what classic chord progressions are. be warned though, once you learn these you might not be able to turn back. i find it rather difficult to write chord progressions on a guitar simply because i mostly know the really typical open chords.

scroll down my ekt threads i posted a nice music theory site a few weeks back i think. books will inevitably be more thorough though.

You don't need to know theory to know song form. Hell, you don't even have to know how to read music.

Just listen for when stuff repeats and doesn't repeat. A lot of songs I write these days are just A, B, C, D, E, F, etc. structure where all of the parts just keep going and don't repeat back to earlier sections. Aphex Twin has pretty simple structure. If you want to know exactly how he transitions between sections through the use of tonality and cadences, it gets a bit more complex, and you'll probably want a working knowledge of music theory.

Cool cool. I'm definitely trying to do more involved things than typical pop progressions; I guess I shouldn't have labeled myself as that much of a noob. I will look into all of your suggestions though, thanks.

An obvious technique that 2 of my friends use is to basically take a song that you really like, drop it into logic or something similar, then make blank midi clips under the song to outline the areas where sections of the songs begin and end. What you will find is pretty surprising. Lots of music has repetitive sections, even electronic music artists like afx, squarepusher, and prefuse 73.

Anyways once you have a blank song structured like the song you like, you can put your own music into it.

One thing that I think will be helpful to me once I start something new, is something I read in this AFX FAQ I read a while ago.

He mentioned that he'd basically start recording MIDI, and then basically slam the MIDI keyboard in the timing/rhythm he liked, and then painstakingly go through it and sequence it into whatever composition/song that he wanted.

It sounds kinda stupid but I think it'd be a really effective way to build the structure of a song, I haven't actually tried it yet, but it definitely seems like a good idea to me.

Oh and what acid1 said, is a good idea as well. What I find helps me learn a lot from the greats, is if I don't have any ideas, I'll just take a song I like, and try to reproduce it exactly. It teaches you a lot about ways to make synth patches that work together, and also gives you a good idea about the way lots of great electronic music songs are structured. It's good practice either way when you have no inspiration.

  acid1 said:

An obvious technique that 2 of my friends use is to basically take a song that you really like, drop it into logic or something similar, then make blank midi clips under the song to outline the areas where sections of the songs begin and end. What you will find is pretty surprising. Lots of music has repetitive sections, even electronic music artists like afx, squarepusher, and prefuse 73.

 

Anyways once you have a blank song structured like the song you like, you can put your own music into it.

thats a fucking terrible idea

  Tamas said:

He mentioned that he'd basically start recording MIDI, and then basically slam the MIDI keyboard in the timing/rhythm he liked, and then painstakingly go through it and sequence it into whatever composition/song that he wanted.

this is a good idea, when im recording midi i dont normally worry about hitting the right keys, so much as getting everything in the timing i want and then i go back and arrange it