ARRANGE TRACKS LIKE A PRO

Taking the time to work up your sketches into fully-fledged tracks can be a tricky process. That's why it's important to understand how an effective arrangement works to take listeners on a journey...

In 2023, computers, phones, and tablets are readily accessible conduits to the music-production process, and all of them can host some kind of DAW (digital audio workstation) within which all manner of tracks can be crafted. However, having access to the right software is only the beginning; if you want to end up with a piece of music that might change someone’s life, we need to really focus on building our track’s arrangement. Learning how to bring out the key areas of the song is often what’s needed to imbue our compositions with the maximum, lasting impact that most of us aspire toward.

In this feature, when we refer to arrangement we mean the process of creating a song structure that effectively supports a melody and chord sequence, and assembling a finished piece with a beginning, middle and end. The raw material that you’re working with can be quite diverse – a song with vocals and lyrics or just an instrumental that came from an improvisation. Arranging music, like mixing, combines both a technical mindset with an artistic drive. We should also recognise that rules are sometimes made to be broken (but maybe not all in the same song)!

In times of old, the entire professional music production process was divided between several different roles. The composer would write the melody and lyrics, while the arranger had the job of adding chords, rhythms, and different combinations of instrument parts. Ultimately, they would shape the song to suit their briefed style, making it ready to be tracked or performed.