Ah, the intro, the bane of every melodic producer. You have to have one, because otherwise a mediocre DJ can't mix it, but you also have to somehow make it interesting enough to hook the attention of casual listeners and label managers.

In my experience, there are usually three distinct "schools" of intro composition (everything interesting comes in threes, ya know):

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Atmospheric
An atmospheric intro is stuffed full of pads, FX, sweeps and swoons, maybe even noise, drowned in reverb and delay, and peppered liberally with various kinds of modulation like phasers.

I'm not implying that you should throw these things together randomly - there absolutely must be a coherent order to it - but as opposed to the meat of the track, which delivers drive and direction, this intro is focused on a sense of mystery. The idea is to experiment with the sound while leaving subtle clues as to what the track is really going to be about.

Eventually you do have to bring in the drums and thin out the atmosphere, otherwise the track will be unmixable, but you'll find that this is pretty easy to do because the listener will naturally want the track to "breathe" and some minimal drum work takes care of that nicely. Think of it as being analogous to a drop/cooldown, but usually without any coherent chord progression and much less intense.



Percussive
Having a catchy, driving, fresh groove is absolutely critical to pulling this off. The idea here is that you just dive right in with the drum work and introduce the bassline soon afterward; if it doesn't make you want to dance within about 15 seconds then you've failed.

If you've had some practice creating minimal tracks, you should find this easy. If you're good with fills, glitches/stutters, slick filter work and other rhythmic effects, this is an ideal place to go nuts with those (but again, there still must be a sense of order).

Transitioning into the buildup usually involves bringing in stabs or melodic fragments, creating variations in the bassline, and/or switching from a single-chord rhythm to an actual progression (which may only exist in the bassline early on).



Scrambled
Not literally of course; the technical term would be more like misdirection. Imagine chopping up all the main hooks and rhythmic sections of your track, beat by beat, and carefully processing and rearranging them so that it sounds almost like the original track (and has flow), but is only recognizable as tiny bits and pieces.

It's hard to pull this off. You'll normally want to bring in both the drums and melodic elements (but not the actual melody or progression) in early but keep both of them very minimal so as to leave a lot of "white space". You'll want to use both melody fragments and FX as rhythmic elements. You'll want to have a healthy amount of mini-build-ups and/or dissonant passages that don't quite resolve; these function as teasers.

The final transition from intro to hook/groove/buildup is sort of the reverse of this; it's un-scrambling the elements, gradually removing the effects, reordering melody fragments into coherent progressions, and/or filling in the percussion to form the basis of your main rhythm.

If done right, you'll have an almost spooky feel, and as a listener you will want to listen to the whole thing and not skip ahead. Like I said - it's hard.

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And of course, if you get particularly good at it, it's possible to combine elements from some or all styles into one, but don't make a mess of it.

I haven't taken the time to root around for what I'd consider to be perfect examples of each of these - maybe I'll do that later - but hopefully that gives you a starting point.

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Solid post mein fuhrer.. also Aria - Dido (Armins Remix) has one of the best intro's of all time... OF ALL TIME!

..and im gonna let you finish

I either go for a completely melodic intro where the bass and general progession start right off, or I go for a DJ friendly intro.

For the DJ friendly intros I generally do it in 8 bar measures, and imagine I was playing it in a club. My favourite tracks to mix are those which start with no kick drum and then bring in the
kick (bar 9) >>plucks/upper melody(bar 17)>>bassline(bar 25)>>breakdown/main riff (Bar 33).

Hope that makes sense. No melodic elements for as long as possible is good, and fewer low frequency elements early on is also good from a DJ's perspective

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I mostly try to make as Diginut describes: an atmospheric intro. I try to set a mood, prepare them for what's coming.

So I think that is completely personal, you should make what suits your style best

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Im a fan of the atmospheric intro and one of my particular favorite intro's is tiesto's 10 seconds to sunrise , wether of not Tiesto actually wrote it im not sure , but its quite a good intro.

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Thanks for the replies guys!

You gave me a lot of things to try, I guess my intros are like Digi said atmospheric but they aren't good enough, or even weak and needs more layers and effects...

I'm very interesed into the third style Digi mentioned if you could post any sample of the three kind of intros (specially the third) would be great!

thanks guys!

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quote:

Originally posted by Tijne I mostly try to make as Diginut describes: an atmospheric intro.

Doesn't that get boring and repetitive after a few songs? Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging you, just asking the question because, to me, "trying" to do the same thing with intros song after song would become very stale after a while and would unnecessarily limit my compositional flow, might not fit very well in many instances, etc.

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I prefer tracks that get right to the point. i don't see the point of long intros when beat-matching isnt' an issue anymore. I also think producers could make more of a living if they stopped making tracks so inaccessible by the long bloated intros.

start with the baseline

u know what track has the best party-factor in the opening? marmion - schoneberg, and u know how it starts? with the baseline only. it gets boring after a while though but that intro fucking rules.

judge for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB-Q66ZhJS8

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Doesn't that get boring and repetitive after a few songs? Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging you, just asking the question because, to me, "trying" to do the same thing with intros song after song would become very stale after a while and would unnecessarily limit my compositional flow, might not fit very well in many instances, etc.

I think atmospheric intros have the most potential for being different between eachother than intros that start with the percussion, then the bass, then the minimal melodies/harmonies, etc.

I'm sure he didn't mean he does it exactly as Diginut described every time, but even if he did Diginut was pretty vague in his description.