How to turn your loop sections into a full Psytrance arrangement
Today we’re looking at taking the loops you’ve created and fleshing them out into a full Psytrance arrangement.
If you’ve been following the production tutorial series, you would have probably noticed that I’m a big fan of breaking down the more daunting processes in music production, into smaller and much more easier-to-deal-with tasks. Today we’re following on in a similar vein, applying that logic to creating a full Psytrance arrangement. The idea is to visualize the final structure you want to achieve with your track, sketch it out in your project and then build your existing loops into a full track according to your original sketch.
For many years I was using the more popular technique of using the DAWs marker track to sketch out my Psytrance arrangements; however I always struggled to describe in words exactly what was happening in the reference material. Then I discovered the arrangement track which is built into Cubase, and that was better as it provided the ability to set different colours for different sections, it’s also a handy tool for auditioning different arrangements, without having to deconstruct your track, however I still felt it wasn’t as suited for Psytrance arrangements as I desired.
I realized I was just over-complicating the entire process…
After doing circles trying to find an effective technique for creating my Psytrance arrangement, I realized the answer was right in front of me since the beginning! I started using a series of regular audio tracks, with blank “placeholder” clips to represent different elements in the arrangement. I prefer this technique because you can create varying colours to represent changes in the amount of energy in the final arrangement, you also have the ability to name each clip individually, and finally you can create as many audio tracks as your DAW will allow, meaning you have the ability to sketch out layers much more effectively.
Anyway, enough talking – let’s check out the video:
