I have heard about professional music arrangers who are capable of completing his arrangement task within 2-5 hours. Most beginners are amazed by the speed and quality of those final products –beautiful music arrangements of simple pop songs. Don’t be surprised, every musician with enough practice can do it too. Here, I will give you some guidelines how I can do it within 60 minutes.

Preparation and skill requirement

In order to be able to complete a full pop song music arrangement in 60 minutes, you must have these abilities and pre-arranged requirement:

1. Familiar with your sequencer software: - I am using Cakewalk Sonar. There are others very powerful DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Cubase, Logic Audio, Protools etc. Just use the one you are familiar with. You must learn the most frequently used short-cut keys. Knowledge about MIDI programming is the basic before you can use the mentioned sequencers.

2. The song is already written completely: You might want to arrange one of your own compositions, or some other songs which are completely written. I won’t touch about song writing here. Before the arrangement works get started, I will at least had the demo ready. The demo can be a roughly recorded version, with or without any instrument accompaniment. The important part is the recorded material can reveal the song melody clearly. If there is no recorded material, a lead sheet will be fine too.

3. Know the basic theory of harmonization and chord progression: If you don’t know about this basic requirement, it will be a nightmare for you to do music arrangement. It’s almost impossible to get the job done. Music arrangement is about harmony, rhythm, and composition.

4. Capable to play keyboard or guitar well: Keyboard is more powerful in music arranging. Guitar would be secondary. If you know both, it is even better!

Start working!

If you already possess the above requirements, congratulations! You are qualified to complete a music arrangement within 60 minutes if you follow my tips. Yes! It can be done for a normal pop, radio friendly song which is 3 to 4 minutes long. When you are facing tight deadline, this tips will be helpful to you. Here is how I do it:

1. Open a customized template file (1 minutes) – I have a few templates saved with the regular settings I use. When I open the template files, Sonar loads all the MIDI tracks, the plug-in effects, plug-in instruments, and also the window views I preferred. All the regularly used sound patches are loaded together too. For a normal pop song, the frequently used patches are acoustic drum, bass, piano, guitar, strings and some other solo instruments. You must get these templates ready. It will save you a lot of time.

2. Set the tempo and record the melody line (8 minutes) – I tap the tempo and find the most suitable speed for the song. Then I will record the melody guide track by referring to the recorded demo or lead sheet. I will do it phrase by phrase — listen and memorize a phrase, and then recorded it in Sonar by playing the phrase at my keyboard. If you have perfect pitch and relative pitch ability, this part will be a piece of cake for your. I normally use flute as the melody guide because the sound is sustainable. Play the audio file to listen to an example of melody guide:

Melody line
full pop music arrangement sample-melody.mp3

3. Lay down the chord progression and the sequence of the song (14 minutes) – this is the most time consuming step. Here I will finalized the chords I use for each bar and beats. I will write it down, by drawing the chord at the melody score. I do it using the “staff view” in Sonar. It is also necessary to determine the structure of the songs: intro–> verse –> chorus –> interlude –> verse2 –> chorus2 –> bridge –> chorus 3 –> outro. This is the normal structure of a pop song. Use cut and paste function to save time.

4. Choose the appropriate music instrument patch (3 minutes): Sometimes the template patches might not be perfectly suitable. It is important to finalize the patches I use in the song. I might change the drum kits, or some solo instruments.

5. Build the foundation – drum, percussion, bass (9 minutes): The rhythm section is the foundation of a song arrangement. I lay down the drum track using “piano roll view”. You can also use drum loop to save time. Most of the time, I start programming the final chorus part, which is normally the fullest part or the climax of the song. Then I copy the drum track and paste it at the verse. Reduce some layers of drum hits and it is done. After laying down the percussion, I will play the bass line by referring to the chords written in melody track.

Drum full pop music arrangement sample-drum.mp3

Bass added full pop music arrangement sample-bass.mp3

6. Build the harmony – piano, guitar etc (7 minutes): I normally use piano more than guitar. I am very good at playing the piano. Normally it is only 1 or 2 takes to complete the piano tracks. After laying down the piano track, the song is almost done!

Piano added full pop music arrangement sample-piano.mp3

7. Fill in the solo instrument (5 minutes): I will fill in the empty part – where the vocal won’t be present with some solo instrument. I use some synthesizer leads, or other acoustic solo instrument like saxophone, violin etc.

Flute added full-pop-music-arrangement-sample-flute.mp3

8. Add the sustaining patch – pad, strings (5 minutes): I always lay down the strings or pads only after I completed all the above. By adding sustaining sound patch, it will increase the warmth of the song. It will make the song sounds soothing, rich, and full.

Pad added [audio:full-pop-music-arrangement-sample-pad.mp3]

9. Listen for the final adjustment (5 minutes): Find and modify out-of-tune notes, and fine tune some parts that are necessary.

10. Export to a wave file (3 minutes): I use 100% software plug-in nowadays, so that I don’t need to mix down the outboard gear by recording them into Sonar. It really saves me a lot of time waiting for the recording to complete. Exporting a wave file from Sonar takes a few minutes only.

Full arrangement

full-pop-music-arrangement-sample-final.mp3

This is how I complete a full pop song music arrangement in 60 minutes. I used to do this when I got a lot of projects on hand and the due dates are near. However, in order to deliver a great job, 60 minutes is never enough. If you can do it less than 60 minutes, please let me know in the comment.

If you want to learn more about music arrangement,you should get this book:

Technorati tags:music arrangement , pop music , pop song, MIDI arrangement