I find that very often its hard for me to "pace" my songs. Most of the tracks i have made so far do not really have a breakdown and seem to just pile on/take away layers until the end of the song. can anyone link me a good guide on breakdowns or just sequence elements in general?
or give me some advice if you have any tips :D please and thank you
skyhunter
Any links to your tracks? I think I get what you are saying but hearing some audio helps a lot.
Some cool stuff you can do is remove parts mid song, often with removal of the drums. Sorry to link to one of my tracks but it shows what I mean.
There are three times in the song when I cut to all synths, a snare, and a hi hat. In between those I am doing the layering on more and more things. Then, after the final cut, the track hits a very small climax then strips down.
I'm guessing you have an excellent climax and build up, but are having problems going out of the box with your arranging. So go ahead and try dropping drums occasionally, adding and removing the same synth multiple times in the same song, and simplifying parts then adding in the whole parts.
Hope that helps. :)
runawaywaffle3
your song is a very good example of what you are saying haha.
thank you for the advice
Osmodiar
With the track i'm working on at the moment, when I got to the breakdown I did as mentioned above initially, stripped out some elements and changed some layers to have a mini-buildup approaching a break to silence.. then i've used the Harmony Improvisator plugin to experiment with different chords in the key of the bass note I already had, and created a chord pattern from that.
Once you have a chord pattern you can paste it over a few bars and experiment with adding layers to it as it approaches the main drums again (ideally with some new elements to it to gain some more drive).
It's taken a while to come up with layers over the chords that i'm happy with but for the most part that is the fun creative stuff, writing melodies and leads over the chords. How easy and fun it is will depend on how strong your chord pattern is. The improvisator can help with that, but it can also make things harder if you don't choose chords that flow together nicely.
If I get stuck with what layer to add i'll listen to a few breakdowns in my reference tracks and usually get an idea to try something similar from that, but often just coffee and experimenting will go a long way.
Once you've got some layers that you're happy with play around with automating some filters and effects over them as they build up to the drums.
That's my approach at the moment anyway but there's certainly room for improvement as always! Good topic would like to read some more people's approaches to this..
