6 tricks for adding movement and tension to your arrangement

Reverse it!

1

Reversing sounds can be a real ‘get out of jail free card’ at the arrangement stage. The sound’s ‘rising’ nature means it’ll smoothly sweep in, so it’s great for patching gaps between song sections. Try flipping any atonal cymbal or ‘impact’ sound back to front for a riser effect, then place the audio so it leads into your build-up. Reversing also works well with tonal sounds such as vocals, chords or synths, as the harmonics of the sound will fade in and act as an additional melodic component.

Work with what you have 2

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.

Silence is golden 3

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.

Emphasise an impact

4

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? 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.

The washout

5

One of the most common yet creative ways to build and release tension in a dancefloor track is through the use of a ‘washout’ technique. This is where a particular sound in the mix – or the entire mix itself – becomes more and more effected with reverb or delay over time, building and building towards some kind of drop moment, whereby the entire effect is removed to slam everything back in.

What to automate? 6

There’s pretty much no limit to what you can automate or modulate. Filter cutoffs are one choice, allowing you to ‘reveal’ a sound as you adjust the cutoff of a low- or high-pass filter. Volume automation is another one – even subtle changes in the level have an effect. Try automating the threshold of a sidechained compressor, to increase or decrease a rhythmic ducking effect. Or play with spatial awareness by automating the size, depth or dry/wet of a reverb or delay.