Struggling with arranging your music?
- Jan 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 2
How to improve your arrangements through better decision-making and storytelling.
Arranging your musical idea into a complete track is the crucial stage that can make or break your piece of music. Many artists, including myself, hit a wall when they reach this point, often overwhelmed by questions like:
How do I get out of being stuck in a loop?
How do I structure my track over time?
How do I create a compelling breakdown and drop?
How do I know when to add or remove elements?
In practice, the answers to these questions are deeply intuitive and highly context-dependent as you'll see in the rest of this article. It’s an area I frequently help artists navigate during my 1:1 music production coaching sessions.
That said, there are general principles and specific techniques that can help you approach arrangements with more confidence.
Arrangement: showcasing the Essence of your track
First, it’s important to recognise that there is no single “right” way to arrange a track. Instead of thinking in terms of good or bad decisions, think in terms of strong or weak decisions.
Your loop can be arranged in countless ways, some of which may resonate with you more than others. However, no arrangement is inherently “the best”, it’s about what works for the idea you want to convey.
This process requires stepping back from your loop, which encapsulates the full identity of your track, and deconstructing it.
Your goal is to introduce the key idea of the music to the listener gradually, over time.
Think of your track like a movie
A movie introduces its characters and develops their dynamics over time. These interactions create anticipation, tension, humour, or wonder. Each character’s role and relationship to others influence what happens next.
Music follows a similar pattern. You introduce different elements and effects throughout the track. The way these elements interact creates emotional responses—anticipation, tension, release, or surprise. Each sound plays a role in shaping the listener’s journey.
Most tracks, like movies, follow a variation of the basic structure:
Intro - Introduces the story.
Verse & Chorus - Develops the main themes and adds new elements.
Breakdown - Introduces something unexpected that breaks up the flow, creating anticipation of it coming back.
Drop - Resolves the tension in a satisfying way.
Outro - Brings the story to a close.
Of course, some tracks break away from conventional structures entirely, while others adhere to them strictly. As always in art, there are no fixed rules, only guidelines.
Making better arrangement decisions
A key skill in arranging music is tuning into the purpose of each element, as well as the essence of the track as a whole. When I start arranging, I always focus on understanding the role of each element:
Which elements form the foundation or backbone of the track?
Which elements build or release tension?
Are there elements that interact in a call-and-response manner?
This is important because understanding the roles of your elements helps you create a more coherent and engaging musical journey. When you know what each sound is contributing, you can make more intentional choices about when to introduce, remove, or modify elements.
This approach helps prevent your arrangement from feeling random or disjointed, ensuring that each section flows naturally into the next.
This method also allows you to better control the emotional arc of your track. By strategically managing tension and release, you can craft moments of anticipation, surprise, and resolution, keeping your listeners engaged and craving more.
How can you apply this yourself? Try this when working on your music:
Listen critically to your loop and identify which elements are essential to the groove or creative idea and how the elements interact with each other.
Label the role of each element: Is it part of the foundation, building tension, or responding to another sound? Try using a colour or name to help you remember it.
Experiment with removing or muting elements during key moments like the breakdown or intro to see how it impacts the track’s energy. Quickly A/B test how the music sounds when certain elements are removed. Removing an element can be as powerful as adding an element.
Once I’ve identified these roles, I use this understanding to guide my decisions. This might look something like this:
Foundation elements are usually present throughout most of the track but can be temporarily removed during the breakdown to create anticipation. I can also playfully remove or change these between different sections to create variety.
Tension-building elements are effective during transitions, such as leading into the breakdown or drop.
Call-and-response elements can be manipulated by removing one part (e.g. the response) in the breakdown and bringing it back during the drop for impact.
Building a decision-making framework
This approach, tuning into what the music is saying and understanding each element’s function, has become my main framework for making arrangement decisions. It’s a skill, like any other in music production, that takes time to develop.
By applying this method consistently, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of my music and have hugely improved my arrangements. It’s an evolving and iterative process, but one that leads to more purposeful and compelling tracks.
Great arrangements aren’t about meaningless decisions or rigid rules, they’re about understanding the essence of your track, making intentional choices, and guiding the listener on an engaging journey of tension, anticipation, and resolution.
In a nutshell...
Arranging your music is a key part of turning an idea into a finished track. It’s like telling a story, introducing sounds, building tension, and creating moments that keep listeners interested.
There’s no single “right” way to do it, but by understanding what each sound is doing, whether it’s part of the main idea, building excitement, or adding contrast, you can make smarter choices.
Try listening to your loop, figuring out the role of each element, and experimenting with adding or removing parts to see what feels best. With practice, you’ll learn how to guide your track in a way that feels natural and keeps listeners hooked.
Big love
Eryk Kabay
Ready to improve faster? Whether you’re feeling stuck or looking for that final professional polish, I’m here to help you cut through the confusion and make your tracks shine. Let’s get your music sounding its absolute best and ready to be released into the world.
Comments