hello and welcome to busy Works beats.com
today we're going to put our Arrangement skills to the test I'm going to show you guys
in a project we made some time ago with kav's loops how to arrange a beat so let's hop
straight into it so let me show you the raw beat before we get into the ideology
here's what it is right now G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ]
yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we on gay [ __ ] yeah we on gay [ __ ] yeah we on gay [ __ ] yeah we G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we [ __ ]
yeah we [ __ ] yeah we [ __ ] yeah we sh [Music] yeah yeah g yeah g yeah g [ __ ] yeah we
on G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G all right so as you can hear the sample goes all the way
through it's saying we on gang is okay so the issue that I had was how do I take this Loop
that makes the entire Vibe of the track and make it different throughout the track so I went
from just normal and then introducing this like long sustain base so we're still introducing the
track with the dark Vibe which is the Bas to give us that 21 Savage type sound but then we're moving
into the actual base which is that distorted 808 so listen to the beginning it's very sustained
smooth base it does have harmonics but it's very smooth and sustained so it's I'll say it's low
energy base even though it has harmonics in it and then we move into the high energy base so
think of your sections of your Arrangement as energy blocks instead of thinking of it like
hook needs to be here verse needs to be here Bridge even though people don't really use Bridges
and all this type of stuff instead of thinking of it that way think about what does the energy need
to do for the artist to like tell a part of the story that sounds esoteric until you try it so
in the beginning I usually start with the lower energy it's like a roller coaster we're trying to
go up the hill okay you don't start on a roller coaster going down you start going up to build
anticipation for the down so the intro of the song is building that anticipation in this case
we're at 135 BPM so it's four bars it visually it says eight bars but really it's four bars if you
count it out um leading up to the uh we'll say the precourse in this case Okay so without worrying
about the names think about what is happening behind the scenes so it's low energy lower energy
and then it's higher energy I have a distorted Ada weight going through decapitator okay it's adding
harmonics it's making it very sizzled okay so we're now going straight into it that's the quote
unquote drop even though it isn't the drop it's getting ready for the drop so we're going up the
roller coaster okay now you hear the click click click click click this is the click click click
part this part right here you're getting you're building up anticipation to hear where this beat
is going to go so I layered the kick and the 808 with saturation uh right here in harmonics and
then we move into all the drums so it's low energy lower energy I'll say then it's introducing the
base and then it's all the instrumentation for this what I'll call the hook now at this point
I was like okay the loop has gone on forever so I need to make it change somehow and for the
vocal let me find the actual track I added gross beat and the preset under one beat gate and I
moved these around so that it only said what I needed it to say so now it's like stuttering like
like that as if I'm like a DJ scratching it or something so I'm truncating the sample to
add more bounce if everything is sustained you're going to have less bounce that's why
in the beginning when you have that sustain base you don't perceive bounces [Music] as
because of that sustain Bas staying steady the whole time once all the drums come in and
we need this bounce then I start truncating the vocal so it's not saying it's phrase all
the way through and it adds the [Music] [Music] bounce I think I'm even using a different
yeah so this is a different [Music] yeah so hopefully you're following this guideline
guys it's the intro has the lowest energy of this beat then we're moving into again like a roller
coaster you go up the hill on a roller coaster as you're climbing up the roller coaster you
hear the click click click okay and then it goes down the roller coaster so here's where all
the instruments come in the truncated sample to sound different so that we have more bounce
okay so this is where all the movement comes in the excitement comes in so it's a buildup
to that point so most people they'll have all their stuff in the beginning and then they'll
take it away like I said that's like starting at the top of a roller coaster not going down
and just ending the ride there's no fun there's no drop there's no you're taking away too much
energy and it never goes back up to another Hill they're like why am I on this roller coaster okay
so we need to start at the ground level go up the roller coaster drop the roller coaster and then
we need to bring it back and then do it again [Music] [Music] so what I'm going to do so let's extend
this idea those are the three sections we have lowest energy buildup energy drop energy
you can copy and paste these however you guys like I know you guys want rules and hard rules
there are none um if you studied some of the billboard charting songs that I have done for you
in the BeatMaker blueprint at busyworksbeats.com beat maker you guys will see that it's wildly
different um there is a certain uh what do you call it a trend and pop to use a two bar
transition but outside of that in hip-hop you could have like 16 Bar intros 17 bar intros it's
really weird once you start studying hip-hop it's really random um so anyhow let's copy the sample
over and we need to do something to the sample so that it doesn't feel like the same sections over
and over and over again so what we could do is add a filter and this is in production Okay so this
is not a mixing thing let's add our EQ let's do a low pass filter so this is also going to give
room for the vocalist to come in and not have to compete against the vocal sample so that's another
thing that producers don't really understand because it might not record a lot is you know
you don't want to be fighting a vocal in the beat so the sample still there but it's just
pushed so far back that it's not now competing with artists and now it feels different but all
we did was just add that low pass [Music] filter that was kind of hard I did that by accident but
that sounded hard so that would be something you would do create change UPS so that people don't
get used to the same thing going on and on and on again let's change our snap de grid to a beat
or a bar and I like that by just dropping out the 808s here at the end that was a complete accident
but it sounded [Music] dope I was just trying to make sure we didn't have overlapping [Music] hoit
I think I dropped out the this too so let's chop this slice tool hit shift to do a vertical slice
right click and hit shift to delete the smallest area so now I'm getting rid of everything
except for that area that I soloed before sh we can even get rid of the [Music] vocal now usually any kind of dropouts hard
dropouts I would leave that for post- production you want to wait until the artist actually
has the lyrics because then you can pull your instruments away as part of the uh punch line
okay so it depends on what the rapper says or artist says that's when I would usually do these
Cuts as a post-production technique [Music] sh [Music] sh and let's change something about this
so what we're going to change is the 808 so let's go in and let's switch up to 808s so
that's the change even though we're keeping the same ingredients or the same categories I
should say we're changing up the ingredients so instead of like table salt we're using
Himalayan salt on the second half [Music] now here's where I would introduce my
grow speed automation okay where it it chops the vocal up so let's hit shift
pull that over just to switch up the beginning half of the vocal from
the second half so think of just how can I make subtle differences to
make these sections not feel [Music] repetitive so I'm not hearing my groc spe
let me figure out why okay now it's on [Music] and then here we need to build up the roller
coaster again so let's copy this section over without any filter we need to turn the filter
off okay so the fruity filter is now turned off parametric EQ I should say and the grow speed
is turned off okay so now we're moving into the building up to the next drop now what I like
to do is chop the section so I'll grab the slice tool H sh shift left click to do a vertical slice
of all my elements in that section that way I can just copy and paste everything hitting control
left click to highlight I'll grab a pointer tool pencil tool hit shift left click and drag it over
so now basically we just copied everything uh over here let's start from the beginning and I'll point
out different things again don't worry about bars and all this just worry about the energy of your
track most stuff is in 4 to a bars but I'm not giving you guys hard numbers because I don't
want to create rules that will probably change okay so here's eight bars which remember
we're in double time so that's really four bars of an intro G [ __ ] yeah we
G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we okay [ __ ] yeah we
G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we sh [Music] [Music] sh okay so in the beginning
with the lower energy okay then we went to the buildup now we're in the hook or the highest energy of the roller coaster now
we're we're going down the roller coaster I kind of speed through just to save
time here and then we're moving into the verse where we tuck the vocal to
the back so we're making all these small tiny [Music] changes so now the vocal
got truncated so now it's more bounc [Music] and then now we're doing the buildup and then
we're going to do the drop like we did before and then here let's say you you the track needs
to take a break or a pullback point we can go back to the intro or a lower energy point of the song G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah sh now in this case I'm going to turn
this let's make this unique this EQ shouldn't be on at this point this point so I'm not sure how
I got filtered right there okay so now basically we're rebuilding up the energy so we we went up
the roller coaster and dropped went up the roller coaster dropped now we're slowly in the beginning
of the ride we're going to go up to another Hill and then we're going to go back down G sh yeah we
G sh G sh and here's the hook and then we can end the song on usually the hook repeats twice at
the end so in this case we're going to repeat the hook it depends on what kind of producer you
are how the song goes but you can also make small changes in these second hooks so that they're not
completely the same um that change could literally be anything so I'm not going to tell you guys what
to do it just small changes between each and then usually the song ends on a lower energy and Fades
out so again as a recap we have intro four bars we have a buildup four bars we have a hook eight bars
we have uh the verse eight bars we have another uh buildup four bars we have a hook uh eight bars we
have a cool down four bars we have hook number one which is eight bars and hook number two which
is eight bars so that's 16 bars of the hook at the end and then an outro which is four bars you
don't need to copy that but that's it's all about the roller coaster going up and down and up up
and down and up and down that's it all right so I would let I would play this track but I feel
like it's eat up so much let's play this track all the way through G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we
G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah [Music] we G sh sh G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] we G [ __ ] G sh G sh [Music] yeah yeah [ __ ] yeah we [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G
[Music] [ __ ] g g g yeah g yeah g yeah G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah
we G [ __ ] yeah we gay [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] G [ __ ] [Music] G [ __ ] we G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] G [ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] sh [Music] [Music] sh yeah we G yeah we G
[ __ ] yeah we G [ __ ] [Music] always keep in there more than [Music] oneu
if you want pre-built structures I studi the uh billboard um I have Drake I think bad bunnies
in there doic cat um Morgan Wallen Taylor Swift so go to busyworksbeats.com BeatMaker
I pre-made structures for you guys and what's called the BeatMaker blueprint
go to busyworksbeats.com BeatMaker uh but that's one structure and one
way to think about arranging your tracks hopefully that helps subscribe if
you're new it's busyworksbeats.com peace