Sup fellas? Question about turning a drop (or whatever) into a full song

What’s up guys? Alright, I apologize in advance if this is beating a dead horse, but I ran a search, and did some additional browsing through here, and I found one topic that was started last year, that asked the same type of question I have, but it didn’t have any replies. And I read through several “guide” posts, but I’m having trouble with a pretty specific issue at the moment…

So, there are some times when I start a new track, and everything just naturally falls into place, and fits together nicely. Unfortunately, those times are few and far between haha. My problem is that I can sit down and start working on something (usually a “drop” section, sometimes an intro-type part if I have an idea that pops into my head), and I can take that specific part, and get it sounding pretty good, and then it’s like this mental collapse happens, and I have no idea where to go next. So I have those "finished’ projects, where everything just clicked from the start, in a folder… and then I have a HUGE amount of random drops, or various intros and build-ups, that just keep adding up, and I can’t seem to progress with them in a way that sounds right.

If any of you have any advice, or any kind of recommendations for taking (for example) a 16 or 32 bar “brosteppy”-type drop, and creating an intro and a break that actually fits, and feels right, I’d definitely appreciate any tips or examples of how you guys build off of parts like that.

Thanks in advance guys. I appreciate any advice or knowledge anyone is willing to share. And, again, I’m sorry if this is one of those “gets-asked-on-the-regular” questions here, and I somehow just missed it when searching.

I usually just make the drop first, then pick one sound from the drop and carve something buildup-ish out of that and start adding other shit on the top of it. Results aren’t usually anything fascinating tho.

1 BigUp

Just mute the key drop elements and build new parts around the drums and some chord progression or a melody. From there you just need to mix and match to get an arrangement going.

3 Likes

Awesome. Thanks guys. I appreciate the input. I don’t know why that particular part of the process is so hard for me sometimes, but so easy other times (rarely though haha). It’s just a mental thing with me now, knowing that I’m gonna get stuck there before I even get to that point. It’s frustrating as hell though.

Thanks again for the advice!

I’m interested to hear if anyone else has this kind of issue, or anything similar, and I’m definitely curious how some of you other folks “build” your projects, and make parts fit together.

Just re-watched Rusko’s masterclass and something he does is bounce several version of a 2-minute tune and piece them together as audio.

1 BigUp

umm there’s no way around it, you have to study song structures. the easiest way to pick up on that is to recreate some tunes u like, even if you didn’t get the sound design right at least try to understand how they are built. then learn from that

1 BigUp

Nice! Thanks for the link @Black_Cockatoo. I’ve never seen Rusko’s masterclass. Good stuff! I’ll check that out.

And I hear you @topmo3. I have studied some song structures (to a degree-- definitely not enough) of songs that would be in this same genre/category, but I actually haven’t really tried to recreate much of anything like that myself. That’s another good idea. Thanks!

Again, thank you all for the help! I really do appreciate the insight!