Music Lesson: Structuring Your Track

Introduction

Okay, welcome back. The next stage now is to start structuring what I've got here. I need to:

• Delete unused tracks
• Ensure things are named properly
• Make it look a little less cluttered

Saving Your Work

First off, I'm going to save it as a different version. We can label it Sampling - No MIDI. This means that any amendments I make to this track, I can go back to the original if I accidentally delete something. I still have all the original files in place.

Cleaning Up the Tracks

Deleting Empty Tracks

• I'm going to take away these two empty tracks here.
• We'll call this track Percussion Delay.

Reviewing Audio Channels

• We have a microKorg audio channel that we haven't used.
• I think I've got enough in terms of sampling, so we don't need this track.

Managing Hang Drums

• This is the freeze track of the MIDI part of the hang drums that I've frozen.
• I've extracted the audio and have two versions of that, so I'm going to delete it.

Organizing Instruments

• Let's have a listen to this track; this is the Hang Drums and it's going to be Part Two.
• Let's also give it a different color.

Naming Other Instruments

• Kicks & Snare: Fairly straightforward.
• Grand Piano: Used to get the chromatic tuning and pitch correction; I don't need that anymore.
• Shakers: Still unsure what this is.
• Strings: Let's call this Soft Strings.
• Tambourine: This track will just be called Tambourine and Hats.
• Brush Drums: A jazz brush drum loop.
• Cymbal Crash: Labeled fine.
• Bass Line: Present.
• Flutes: There's another string part coming in a minute.

Eliminating Unused Tracks

• We have some Dead Space (nothing on this track) that we don't need.
• The Hang Drums - Part One will be given a different color. I made them green, but I'll choose a slightly different green.
• We'll put these next to the originals for clarity.

Organizing Structure

Now, let's organize everything chronologically:

• Hang Drums
• Kick and Snare
• Shakers
• Tambourine
• Flutes
• Strings
• Bass Line

Adjusting Levels

The next stage is to get a rough level sorted out.

Playing the First Part

• I'm going to turn the hang drums up a little bit to make them more obvious.
• I also need to delete the other hang drum tracks because they'll be at the original volume.

Balancing the Mix

• Kicks: A little bit low in the mix; let's turn it up.
• Shakers: Sound okay.
• Strings: Turn the volume up a bit.
• Tambourine: Increase the volume here; I have a lot of headroom in the simpler device.

Structuring the Track

Duplicating Scenes

Now, I want to start thinking about structure. The first thing I'm going to do is duplicate this first scene quite a few times (let's say four).

• I think an obvious starting point is the Hang Drum Sample, a really nice loop.
• I'll take everything else away initially.

Layering Sounds

• When I launch the first scene, only the Hang Drums will play.
• I'll duplicate the next scene and try to bring something else in, maybe the shakers.

Integrating Instruments

• I'll copy the settings down if I've turned something up, to avoid the volume jumping back to what it was originally.

Finalizing the Arrangement

Adjusting Instrument Placement

• The next layer needs to be a bit different. Let's introduce the main drums now.
• I'll move some tracks around for better organization and impact.

Adding the Bass Line

• The bass line should come in when the main drums enter for maximum impact.

Building Towards the End

• Begin calming things down; we'll make the track smaller and start to remove elements.
• Adding the Brush Drums and ensuring everything fits well.

Conclusion

To summarize, I've created this pre-structure. The idea now is to get this recorded into arrange view. By pressing Tab on my keyboard, I'll switch over to Arrange View, where the proper structure will take its form. From that point on, we can mix the track.