Six quick transitional tricks

Struggling to join your loops together into a full track? Here are six arrangement techniques for you to try today

01 Place a creative effect (eg, an interesting reverb or delay plugin) on a return track in your DAW, then automate sends from your existing elements to shoot these signals into the effect and create spot builds and edits. Render the results and manipulate further for fresh FX material.

02 Use tiny gaps of silence to emphasise switches between eight- or 16-bar sections. For example, roughly truncate all your drums, bass and sounds just after the last snare of a bar, then whack everything in on the next downbeat.

03 If you’re about to drop a new element into the track, think how you can lead it in creatively. If your hook is about to go in, say, why not fade in a repeating first note to introduce the hook more gradually?

04 Alternatively, you may want to embrace the abruptness of your new sound coming in, in which case you can help the other sounds emphasise this. Perhaps volume-fade your drum bus, other sounds or master down a little in level before this impactful sound enters.

05 Before throwing in new sounds, be sure to get those existing track sounds working as hard as possible for you! Automate tons of synth parameters over time, alter sidechain threshold amounts, embellish drum patterns, tweak volumes and generally wring the max out of minimal sounds.

06 Above all, make sure you combine all of the above techniques in a way that fits your current track. Nothing sounds more amateur than a producer ‘showing off’ techniques with no real purpose, so know when to show restraint… or use nothing at all!