Structuring songs

Mudloop · 2023-04-11T15:09:35+00:00

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I’m fairly new to Maschine, and I’m struggling a bit with how to structure things. I realise there’s multiple ways to do things, so I’m curious how you would achieve something like this.

Let’s say I have a verse loop of two bars. I want to repeat this 8 times, but on the 4th loop I want a little fill in the drums, and on the last loop I want a different full, along with a bass fill.

Would you make a long scene where the drums are long patterns with both fills included, and the bass is also full length with the full at the end?

Or split it up into two scenes that are half the length? Or even 3 scenes (regular, version with fill1, version with fill2)?

Or would you have the fills inserted in the song view as clips?

The first option has the downside that I’d be repeating a lot of information within each pattern, making it harder to change things later. Second option means a lot of scenes which could get messy. Third option means I can’t really work on my fills or properly hear them in ideas mode (I think), but it’s kind of how I would do things in Logic, just working in the timeline.

There might be a better option that I’m not aware of. I was thinking that the ideal way for me would be to have a way inside scenes to say “play main pattern 3 times and then play full pattern”. Like a combo-pattern.

Thanks!

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LostInFoundation

As you said (and are aware of, since you already talk about clips and what else) there are multiple ways to arrange songs.

In my opinion there are no “best” or “worse” way…the one that clicks with you will be your personal best.

Be aware that there is one very useful function when duplicating Scenes: you can simply duplicate them (creating a practically identical version of this scene with the same structure that when modified will reflect the modifications in all the copies) or make a Scene Unique, which allows to modify something in this scene without the modifications affecting other scenes (very useful for example to modify a pattern without touching all the other scenes containing this pattern (it will create automatically a new pattern)).

This can be used for example for what you wanted to do inserting fills here and there

D-One

There's really many ways to go about it, you kind of have to pick the one that works best for you.

Would you make a long scene where the drums are long patterns with both fills included, and the bass is also full length with the full at the end?

I personally would always make 2 8-bar Scenes for this, one with a drum fill and another with fill-#2, I'd keep the original 2-bar Pattern for reference in case I need to make more variations in the future. For the bass it's the same deal, one per Scene.

To me, this approach is simple and flexible enough to allow tweaking things at any time in the future:

Or you can keep your loop 2 bars extend the Scene length to 8 or 16 bars and use Clips for the Fills:

Personally, I really don't like the Clips approach because they are unique, they can't be in more than one place in the arrangement, so you gotta have a ton of them for repeating fills and if you edit one fill it won't affect all the others, you cant change your mind later as you said without a ton of re-editing; you also can't trigger them on the fly... and much more, but some people love it.

Mudloop

Thanks @LostInFoundation and @D-One . I was hoping there was some different way so I could loop something within a scene and then change it out for the end. Guess that would be pretty complex, but useful nonetheless.

I to try avoid having the exact same thing play multiple times in a song, just little variations in what’s playing together etc. I’ll have to figure out what the best approach would be for me.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63512#Comment_63512

It is not so complex. Try the “Unique Scene” thing I suggested you and you’ll see it’s very practical to add fills here and there 😉

darkogav

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63512#Comment_63512

you can just duplicate scenes and then make variations.

i think much depends what you are doing. FWIW.. my scenes are very long. usually 16 to 24 bars and I have multiple sections of songs in them. that way I can have varaitions built into the scenes.

for example, the thing i am working on recently, the scene contains verse and pre-chorus. that is duplicated and i make slight variations of pre-chrous so it doesn't sound exactly same. other scenes are intro, outro ad chorus 1 chorus 2 and so on.

hope that helps.

D-One

I pretty much do the same too, every time I want something new or a variation I dupe the Pattern and edit.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63540#Comment_63540

Making the scene Unique automatically creates the new pattern and keeps the original one intact 😉

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63542#Comment_63542

Yes but it does it for all Patterns in the Scene, I might not want to edit all the patterns, and if I don't I get a ton of dupes just cluttering my Pattern Menu and overall project and making things harder to read later.

I don't want multiple patterns that are exactly the same without a reason for it and I cant really think of any reason for it.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63544#Comment_63544

Fair point 👍🏼

The only thing is, when I use the Unique feature I am SURE anything I change in this scene won’t be reflected to other patterns I use in other scenes. So, if I come back to a project 5 month later, I KNOW I can touch this scene without worrying that I don’t remember if some patterns are used somewhere else 😉

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