Music Arrangement Part 3: Transitions

1. Introduction: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Arrangement class, Part three. Transition technique. So in this class, we're going to focus on transitions. Now, if you skip the other two and just jumped right to this one because it's about transitions, which is something you wanted to work on, that's cool. You can do that. But I think all three together is the better sequence. I'm going to reference some of those other two classes here. Here's what we're going to do. So we're going to talk about transition theory, what makes up great transitions. And then we're going to talk about preparing entrances and preparing exits, which is a big thing that I like to focus on a lot, how to think about transitions, how to do that big buildup and drop thing if you're doing electronic music, which you don't have to be for this class. Different types of transitions, transitions that kind of elevate that lift you up, ones that kind of drop you down into the ending, things like that. And then, of course, I'm going to give you a tract to work on if you don't want to work on your own, so I'll give you a full session and the stems. And by the end of the class, we're gonna have an arrangement of it. So let's dive in. 2. Review From Parts 1 & 2: Alright. Hey, everyone. So, let's get started with a little bit of review on what we've learned so far in the first two classes in my arrangement series. So we started off with timelines, arrangement theory, got very quickly into my six rules, right? And those six rules are break all the rules. Two is not really break all the rules, but don't be afraid to break rules. Two is all the rules are going to tell you what the audience will expect. Your job is to play with the expectation. Rule three, economy of ideas. That's going to come back again today. Rule four density fluctuation. Okay? When you're contrast trying to create contrast, density. Rule five, clarity, make sure it's clear where you are at any point in the piece. And Rule six, think about that golden ratio that three quarters point. Okay, and then in class two, we spent a bunch of time focusing more on this contrast. So using the arrangement to create contrast, using harmony, using the instrumentation, dynamics, et cetera. Okay. Cool. So in this class, we're going to dive into transitions. We're going to try to think of every kind of transition that we can think of, and we're going to figure out how to it. So transitions are always about preparation and execution, right? So that's basically the same as tension and release. The tension is how we prepare the transition, and the release is what should feel like if we've done a good transition, it should feel like we plopped down into the new part of the song. Without further ado, let's type it. 3. Tools You Will Need for this Class: Okay, tools. Now, I always do this like tools you're going to need before or at the start of any of my classes. And tools for this one, it's pretty easy. You need two things. You need some kind of notation program. So that can be really anything. That can be it doesn't even have to be a notation program. It can be Daw, whatever. You can use Ableton for this class. You can use Logic, FL Studio, whatever. Because in this class, we're learning about techniques. We're not learning how to use software. So just get whatever you're most comfortable with. And if you want to use notation, you could use notation just fine. You could use Dorico or, you know, finale or Mucore, whatever, because the principles are going to apply the same, whether you're notating music or building a track here. So, whatever you're most comfortable, get that out. Now, the second thing you need is some music. So open up a track that needs some work, and you can follow along with that. Or, if that doesn't work for you, I'm going to give you a whole track in the next video. So let's go there now. 4. Full Track Download: Okay, so for a track to use, I thought about just continuing to use the same track we were using before. But then I thought, I'm getting a little tired of that one. So let's do something different. Um, here is another kind of early sketch of a track. Now, you can have this track. You can play around with it, do whatever you want with it. So it's kind of just like a little Cynthi thing. I tried to use only Ableton built in effects, anything like that. So you should be able to open it. Okay. And I've left obvious gaps where the transitions go because that's what we're going to work on in this class. So let's hear it. It's pretty short. So it stops kind of suddenly because we don't really care about the end at the moment. Now, I'm going to give you Ableton files. So if you're an Ableton user, you can download this whole session. If you're not an Ableton user, there's also the stems for this whole thing. So you can recreate it by just layering those stems together in your DA. So here's the download. It should be around here somewhere or in the next thing. Get it, get it all installed, and fired up. And then we'll dive into our next section. 5. Every Section Leads to the Next: Taken any of my songwriting classes, this might be a familiar concept to you. But we're going to revisit this idea of question and answer when it comes to transitions. Basically what we have we have two big sections here. Let's hear them. Transitioning if you think of this as a question and this as an answer, then what goes here It's the mediator, right? It's the thing that says, It's okay and reels us up into the new thing. So the question gets a question mark, which kind of makes it roll down emotionally, and the next section gets a ramp up. So this is just another useful thing to keep in mind. When you're making a transition between two sections, think of one as the question, one is the answer. What's going to be the musical material that ties them together the best? 6. The Halfpipe Theory: Okay. Okay, so I used to be a skater kid when I was little, so I often think in terms of skateboarding analogies, and this is kind of one. It's sort of like an unbalanced halfpipe, okay? So if you remember a halfpipe, if you remember, if you don't know if you've never been skateboarding, halfpipe is those big ramps, that's basically a half of a pipe and you go up and down. But this one is unbalanced, meaning this side of it has to be a little taller, right? Because what we're doing is we're peeling down the previous section, and then we need something a little extra to throw us into the next section, right? We don't want to just Blah, here's the next section. We need something to really launch us into it. So we need to get a little higher than we did on the previous part or on the previous run. We need to get higher, do a cooler trick, do something, but don't crash. That'll kind of throw us over the threshold of the next section and get us started. So just another analogy to keep in mind. 7. Transitions are the Glue: Another kind of helpful way to think about things. Think of transitions like glue. They're like, you've built something out of legos, and now you're coming through with the super glue to make sure it never falls apart. That's also kind of what we're doing. When a track is glued together really well, it sounds very professional. In other words, if you have really good transitions, and I'm talking really subtle ones and then really not subtle ones, everything in between. Then your track will sound more professional than it did before than anyone's track without good transitions. Because when I'm talking about transitions, I'm not just talking about right here, right? I'm really kind of talking about the entrance of every instrument or sound. Here's a stab. Do we need to prepare that stab? Do we need to prepare this synth to enter? So we're going to look at adding an entrance and an exit to everything. More on that in the next section. But I want to remind you of one other thing before we get there. 8. Callback to Rule #3: Quick callback to rule number three from earlier Economy of Ideas. What this means when it comes to transitions is that the best, some of the best material for our transitions is already in our track. So if I wanted to I don't know. Let's find a spot. Let's say I wanted to prepare this entrance. Okay? What I could do is find something there. I could grab this might be a good thing. This might prepare it really well just by doing that. Or you could do the common thing, which is reverse this clip, Rope. And now you've got a ramp up. Let's hear it. Cool, except it didn't go where I thought it was going to go. I thought drums were gonna come in there. More on that in a minute. We'll talk about what I just did and why it worked or didn't work. But for now, just remember, if you need some musical material to build your transition, start first by looking at stuff already in your track. That's going to work best, 'cause we're already familiar with those sounds. It's totally gonna work. Now, we do have to pull in new sounds all the time for transitions, and that's okay. But just try to look at your existing material first. Okay. Now, let's talk about four rules of great transitions. 9. Rule 1: Every Entrance Needs to be Prepared: Okay. The four rules of great transitions. Now, again, these are my rules. These aren't a known thing, but these are the four things that I think about when I'm making transitions, and it's a pretty flawless system, I got to say, it works really well. So rule number one. Every entrance needs to be prepared, okay? So here's what an entrance is. This is an entrance. This is an entrance. Just when the sound starts, this is an entrance. This is an entrance. That red one, this is an entrance at the beginning of anything. Was that kick? Does that need to be prepared? All of these entrances, obviously. But even these things, we've already had this, but now it's been reintroduced and we need to re prepare it so that it can come in. Now, here's the trick. When I say, we need to prepare every entrance, sometimes the best preparation for that entrance is nothing. So we may not have new musical material heading in to every single entrance. We might leave some alone, but we're going to dedicate a few minutes to thinking about every single entrance in this track. 10. Rule 2: Every Exit Needs to be Prepared: Alright, you may have guessed this one, but every exit needs to be prepared, too. So when we come out here, this stops. Do we need preparation here to make that stop smoothly? Here, here, here, even in the middle of phrases here. Here, that should be prepared in some way. Now, again, same rule applies. We may look at an exit of some musical material, the way it exits and decide that it doesn't need a transition, especially things like the one I just saw, like this. Like, this has a fade out built in, so we might not need to do anything there, but we're going to explore it anyway, because we want to look at everything. The more detail we put into these transitions, the more professional our track will sound. Guarantee. So every entrance needs to be prepared and every exit needs to be prepared. Come on. 11. Rule 3: Nothing Should be Standing Still: Okay, another thing we're looking for here in the transitions pass is we want to make sure nothing's standing still, okay? And here's what that means. This is usually a midi thing, but it could be Let's try this. And this solo this. Okay, so this is effectively standing still. And what that means, like, you can hear a rhythm in it. That's for sure. The rhythm is there. But from beginning to end, all we're hearing is that rhythm and those pitches, that sample. We could do a little bit of spatialization. We could do a little bit of depth with reverb and delays. We could move a little phaser around if we wanted to move an EQ, just some subtle automation to get motion into that sound. Same rule applies here as the other two. We're gonna go after this for every single sound we may or may not need it. But this one more times than not, once you put something on the sound, you're like, Oh, yeah, that sounds great. So be prepared for that. Even though it's not really a transition thing, it's a transition thing. 12. Rule 4: Mimic the Size of the Transition to the Size of the Section: Okay. Rule number four. So the four rules are rule number one, every entrance needs to be prepared. Rule number two, every exit needs to be prepared. Rule number three, nothing should be standing still. And rule number four is make sure your transition is proportional to the section. Here's what that means. Let's zoom out a little bit. Okay, so let's look at this transition right here. Okay? Now, what we put here is going to be a fairly big transition, right, because or dramatic is what I mean, because we're moving between two sections. Huge. But this kick entrance, for example, this is a kick entrance, right? You don't need a huge transition here. Don't make a long complicated drum fill here because we're just introducing the kick. If we were introducing the drums and it was a significant part of the texture, then we might lead in with a drum fill. We could do that. But only if it was really significant to the texture, like I said, there's don't want to have these huge transition sounds for a small transition moment, if that makes sense. And vice versa, you want big ones. For the big moments, you want a big transition. So just make sure we're matching up. 13. Common Mistakes: Okay, as we go through the next whole bunch of lessons, what we're going to do is take each of those rules and we're going to do it. So the next thing, we're going to talk about preparing every entrance. And then there's a whole bunch of videos where I'm going to do it, eight of them, where we are going to add transitions to all the entrances, right? So we're going to work through all of these rules. There's one I want to put in your head beforehand. This isn't really a rule. It's just something to keep in mind for all transitions everywhere, okay? And that is. Not everything is a swoosh. Okay? In music, especially electronic music, if that's what you're doing, we like to put swooshes on stuff. Let's look at that one. Okay. That's a kit. So to make it a swoosh, we reverse it. The best swooshes are like backwards crash symbols. And swooshes can be really cool. Like, watch this. Let's use it for this transition. So it's cool. To make it even cooler, duplicate it, go back to the unreversed version, and have them kind of allied into each other like that. Now it'll go up and down. Great. And then shows So there's cool things to do with that. We'll do more techniques like that later. But I just want you to challenge yourself into not doing a swoosh every time, okay? I do swooshes every time. I'm like, Oh, it's a a big swoosh there. Don't do it, and don't let me do it, okay? You can have a lot of swooshes. Swooshes are big parts of music, but you're more clever than that. You can come up with some other things, too. Okay, let's talk about preparing every entrance. See how I threw it to the next one? 14. Size Matters: Match the Moment: All right. Prepare every entrance. So in this section, we're going to talk about in general, how I approach this idea of preparing every section, and then we're going to go through a bunch of techniques, a bunch of things you can do. I want to say a couple quick things about that first. So we're going to show we're going to work on in this section, some techniques for transitions, right? And while we're going to look at these as a way to cue in a section or an entrance, they don't have to be used that way. So you can use these for entrances. You can usually flip them around and do them for exits. You can use them for big things, small things. Everything's very scalable here. So if you like one of these techniques and you're like, Well, that's cool, but I don't need to use it. I don't have an opportunity to use that as an entrance, then see if you can use it as an exit or somewhere else. So let's pick a spot to start. Let's start with something kind of obvious. Where'd my mouse go? There. Alright, so let's go back to here. Transition one. Okay, let's just hear it. Okay. So, we don't have a real dramatic section change here, right? The only thing that's coming in that's new here is this texture and the snare drum, right? Everything else is the same. And I guess this synth thing stops. Let's explore this little area and try some fills and let's try a few different techniques here to smooth this transition over. 15. The Classic Drum Fill: Okay, the drum fill. Let's talk about the drum fill. Just a heads up. My Ableton audio recorded weird here. I'll get it fixed in the next few videos. The drum fill is you can pretty much do anything in the world, but I'm going to show you how to do a very quick and very tasteful drum fill. The term tasteful, I think, is appropriate here. You can do drum fills. That's just Bo, da da da da da da da da. I'm just going crazy. But that's obviously not gonna work here, right? Like, we're we've got a fairly subtle shift. But we could use a drum fill maybe on beat four. Let's kind of Let's kind of visualize that. Bah bah. Three. B, boom, something like that. That could work. There's a number of other things we could do that are more or less subtle. So here's my super trick for drum fills. Economy of ideas, right? Think about what we've already got. We could just take this, put it on beat four. Okay? Now we've got technically a drum fill, a very short drum fill. Okay. M. A lot of the time, this is all you need, right? Just like a little push. But this isn't working for me right here. So, could we use the snare? Oh, this isn't gonna work either, but I'll but I'm getting to a point. Just hang on. Who. That's actually not bad. I kind of dig that a little bit, but let's keep going and see if we can find something else. Now, here's what I'm looking at. A lot of the time, when you look at a loop of drums, like, here's the loop, right? This is a two bar loop. Look at the end of the loop. A lot of the time, there's a little fill built in right there. Let's copy that. Let's put that on beat four. And let's hear what that sounds like. A B? I could get that opening snare out of it. Zoom way in. Like that. Ooh. Okay, this is Oops. Getting too excited. This is interesting because what happened was the initial was one, two, three, four, right? It gave me four 16th notes. But I want to get rid of this snare, so I'm going to do that. But now I've got and I've got this kind of weird rhythm because I don't have the downbeat. So let's add in a downbeat. Okay? I just copied beat two, put it on beat three. This is like drum fill Engineering one oh one. Not bad. We could even do a little volume fade on that to get it even a little bit better. Why. See, it's subtle, but for a change like this, subtle is all you need. I don't like that fade so much. There we go. I'm gonna keep it like that for now, just for fun. So, moral of the story you're looking for a drum fill, a lot of the time, you've already got it. Just grab one of these things. Oh, hey, look, transition two already did that. Okay, now, we'll probably talk more about drum fills later because there's literally infinite amount of things you can do with a drum fill. But always look inside the material you've got and see if that is enough for the fill that you want. Okay, let's go to the next thing I warned you about the backwards symbol swoosh. 16. Backwards Cymbals: Okay, the backward symbol swoosh. Now, I warned you in the opening a couple things to not overuse this. I have learned that lesson the hard way. I often used to use this multiple times per track. I used to do it everywhere because I just thought it was the most perfect thing. And it is pretty perfect. It can get you exactly what you want, but it can easily be overused. So here's how I'm going to make it. I'm going to make I'm going to look for a crash sample for crash symbol. Well, there's one that's already reversed. Kind of looking for a low one? Well, that's crazy. Maybe even a crash ride? Nope. Okay, let's just find any of them. Sure. Okay, let's put it there for the sake of argument. Okay, so all we have to do is depends on what DA you're on, but in Ableton, we just press R, and that's gonna reverse it. Okay, so this is going to give us a right? Now, there are some problems with this. One is that we don't always have control over the length of the ramp in, and the ramp can be really extreme at the end, because think about how a crash symbol works. You hit the symbol, and there's no sound before it, and all the sound as soon as you hit it. And then the volume dips down really fast. That's the volume curve of it. So if we reverse that, it's gonna do ppoie. It's gonna go. So it can be pretty fast, but there are a few ways we can deal with that. Let's just hear what we got. Me. That was okay. I never like hearing these enter. So I always want to just go in and do a little bit of volume work. There we go. So do a little bit of this. That can help smooth it over. In this case, I might want it actually to be quite fast. That's kind of cool. One thing you have to watch out for with these backward symbol crashes is that you want the pinnacle of it, the loud part to be right on the beat, right? And if you just flip it, it's actually going to be a tad early. See? So you need to nudge this forward just a little bit, maybe a little bit more. Let it overlap by a hair, and that can work really well. Now it's tighter. You can also colorize this a whole bunch. Reverb and delay will add a lot for you. Let's try that. Let's just crank up reverb and delay. This is a technique where you're going to basically hide the seam, that's what I call it, where we're going to generate a lot of sound over here, right, because of all the reverb and delay. And that's going to kind of cover up the entrance of the kick, okay? And the snare. So let's try. Subtle. See, it's there. It's quite quiet, though. Let's really crank it. Okay, now let's hear that in context. A. See, you don't really hear those echoes so directly when you're listening to the whole mix. But they can help kind of glue everything together. Okay. Let's talk about adding a crash on the downbeat. Sometimes, that's all you need. 17. Crash on the Downbeat: Okay, let's take this a step further, Rover, and add a crash on the downbeat. So this is something we can do a few different ways. Let's take a different crash. Sure. Let's take that one. Okay, it's better to do this on two separate tracks, so let's do it. Okay, so now what we've got is a swoosh and then a crash. Okay. These are very technical music terms. The swoosh. That's a PhD term right there. Okay, I'm going to turn the swoosh off for a minute. So we just hear the crash, right? A little much. And I promise the track audio gets better soon. See, you want it kind of subtle in there. But if we add both, what you get is a sound. It's almost like its own reverb. Usually, I do it with the same sample, but let's try it with two different ones here. See, it goes and then up and down. I'm gonna try it. Getting rid of this. Duplicate this, reverse it. There we go. See, now we've got that uncomfortable part right there. Let's try just doing this, see if that covers it up for us. Okay. Bad. There's a funny little hiccup in there. It goes We could just overlap them. That works a little bit better. It all depends on your track and how you're editing picks together. So, you don't need the swoosh and the crash. You can just have the crash. Sometimes a little crash on the entrance of something is all you really need. Like, right here, maybe that's all we need. See, that crash was barely noticeable there, but it was definitely a texture. So it served a really good purpose. Okay, now let's talk about that weird rhythmic kick thing that you've heard 100,000 times. And how to do it? 18. Rhythmic Preperation: Talk about this kick thing. This is a transition technique that won't work here because it's far too dramatic. Okay? So let's find another spot. We need, like, a big change, maybe right here. It's kind of neat. Let me see this next part. I don't know. How Okay. Okay, I'm going to do it right here. So here's what I'm talking about. Let's go down to one kick. So we're going to go kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. Kick, kick, kick, kick kick, kick. Kick. Kick. Okay. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do do do do do do do do, Right? You've heard this, like, as a build up to a drop 1 million times. Again, this isn't the ideal spot for this, but I wanted to get it in here so we could talk about it. Do that and that. Let's just see how this works here to get it in your head. Okay, of course, you probably heard what I heard, which is now it needs to go to 32nd notes. So I'm just looking at the grid up here. Every two at this resolution is gonna be a 32nd note. Let's try that. Alright. Okay, this needed to come in about there. Bye. Okay. This needs a few more to get us all the way out, but you get the idea. This actually kind of feels like it might be working a little bit. I screwed that up. And it leads into this other drum fill, maybe? This one. So I don't know. Let's see what happens. Oh That wasn't bad. I didn't think that would work. And it probably didn't work awesome, but I liked the way that it continued here and then sort of, like, shifted over or sort of lighted with this drum fill here, right? That really kind of kept the motion pushing all the way through that. I actually liked this sound. 19. Risers: Alright. Let's talk about risers, okay? So risers are a term that we use for a few different things, and we tend to use it mostly in electronic music, but you can come up with acoustic analogies to what we're doing with risers, and it works really great. So what a riser is, it's basically a sound that causes some kind of tension that builds us up, rises us up. Usually, it's like a glis up or volume up or some kind of opening crescendo kind of thing. And it just helps push us to the next section. So, let's find a good spot to put one. I don't know how I feel about this kick things here. This is already kind of a riser right here. See, that's a riser. Alright, let's try one right here. We'll leave the kick there for now. Maybe I'll take it out in a minute. So this is kind of a riser, right? So, there are two kinds of risers. There are tonal and non tonal risers, Okay? Tonal is like this one. It has a pitch. Let's solo this. So, in this case, what we're hearing is a pitch on a synthesizer with a filter opening, right? So it's going. And it's opening up, which is giving us that feeling of, like, kind of rising. So using a filter is a fine way to do it. I'm going to push this forward so that it takes up the gap here. Let's hear it. Okay. Let's make our own. Let's make a tonal one. Let's go down to. So I'm just gonna make a really quick tonal riser. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to an instrument. I want something with some teeth on it. So I'm gonna go to, like, a wave table. If you have serum or anything like that, any kind of wave table sinth will work really well. Let's go with that. Let's put that there. Now, I just want one note here. Let's see. What key are we in? I think we're in C major. Maybe A minor. Let's say A minor for now. Okay? So I'm going to go to an A here. A, and let's stretch that across the whole thing. Okay. Now, basically, I could use a filter to open up a filter over this to create that rising sensation, or I could just use pitch bend. Let's try it with pitch bend. Show. Let's see what we got here. Okay, that's not very interesting. So let's go to Envelopes pitch bend. So one thing you can do is you can start all the way low. That should be two octaves, but we'll double check that in a second and go all the way high. Okay. Okay, that's not glising up like I don't know, fourth or so, third. So we need to find the pitch bend maximum amount. Whoa. That was a little too much. Let's take it down to two octaves, 24. Okay, what I kind of like here is that we have the note landing. Take it out. If I just add this here and let's turn the pitch bend off on this to go there. Ooh. Okay, let's try now. Oh. Okay, goes on a little too long. Let's take our volume up here and just pull that down just a little bit. Let's just kind of sneak that out, actually. Okay. Oops. Now I've muted. Okay, so here we go. Here's our riser. Oh, it's flat. It's just a little flat. It's Mega Loud, so let's go down. Down. Neat. We'll deal with the flatness later. So another thing we can do is the non tonal ones. I hesitate to call it atonal that's kind of something else. But let's call it non tonal. And what that means is that there's no pitch to it. So we typically do that with noise. Let's go to I just want something that's gonna make me some noise real quick here. And the analog is pretty good at it. Let's check it out. There it is. Cool. Noise. Now, our pitch bend is probably still happening. We color, go back to pitch bend. No, pitch bend. Okay, pitch bend is not happening, but that's okay because it wouldn't work anyway. We can't really pitch bend noise because noise is all the pitches all the time. That's what defines noise. There's no single pitch. So if we pitch it up, it doesn't really work the same. So in this one, we could use volume, not as effective, or we could use a filter. So let's use a filter. We'll do it right here. Maybe a little resonance. Now, now. There we go. Let's start it down here, and we'll just do it right here. Let's try that. There's our filter opening up. Cool. Let's hear it in context. Alright, not bad, right? It blends in. It helps push us over to the next section, creates a little bit of dissonance. Ooh, my light just turned yellow. That was weird. Why did that happen? And super bright in my face. Turned down. Okay. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So we just want something that pushes us. Now, risers get used all the time. I think this noise one blends a lot better. So I prefer to use these noise risers. You can also just find a sample. If you look around wherever you get samples and just search for noisy riser, you'll find things you can just plop right in without doing the synthesis. But the synthesis is super easy, so give it a shot. Now, this riser kind of falls under a few of my different rules because we're using it to trigger in a sound. We're also using it to create motion within a sound, right? Because that rising helps things not feel so static. So it's doing two jobs for us. Okay, let's go to another kind of transition. This one, a little vocal chop thing. 20. Harmonic Entrances: Okay, next, we're going to talk about a transition that uses harmony, okay? This is probably the biggest secret weapon I can give you in this class, okay? It's probably the most important thing you'll learn. And here it is. If you want to make a transition that sounds really smooth harmonically, you want it to use the five of the chord you're going to, okay? Here's what that means. So let's take this same spot. So when we get to let's see. What note is this? Because I'm not convinced we're in A. EFG, E flat FG, so we could be in C minor. A G, B flat, C. I think we're in C minor. Let's go with C minor. Okay? So let's say here we want to land on C minor. Okay? That's where we're going. So if you want that to sound like home, like we've arrived somewhere, like, C minor is tonic, then you don't have to do this, but this works always. Do a some sort of riser or harmonic thing before or during the transition on a fifth above the chord. So we're going to go to C minor is where we want to land. So we're going to count up five notes in the key of C from C. The fifth. So C, D, E flat and C minor, CD, E flat, F, G. G is the answer. It's if you looked at the three notes in a C minor triad, it would be the top one G. So the reason this works is that if you've taken any music theory, you may know that five wants to go to one, pretty much always. You can make it even more want to go to one by making it a 57 chord. So, let's demonstrate. Let's do that here. What do I have for sounds right here? Not awesome. Okay? I'm just gonna make a big G. I'm just going to spell out a G chord. Should be G minor, technically, because that's the key we're in. G should be B flat. D. Okay? Now, if we want to be fancy and make it a 57, we can do that. Yeah, that'd be cool. Big minor seven chord. Okay, now let's find a better sound for this. Oh Okay. Let's do this really obnoxiously. We'll make this really obvious, and then it'll make sense. I'm gonna go down on octave, though. Let's do this even. Let's make it resolve. So here, let's go to a C minor core. Just trust me for a second. C, E flat G. Okay. Now back to where we were. Okay, so now we're going to go G minor seven to C minor. So we're just doing the five and then the one. Okay, that's a pretty ugly sound. I'm still not convinced if we're in C minor. I should probably stop and just figure that out. But you can see how this works, right? If you want to go to D, if you're gonna land in the key of D major, then you want to count up five notes, you'll get to A. So we're going to use an A chord to go to D, right? So just count up five notes, play that chord, and it'll automatically sound like the resolution to that is your key, right? Any key change you ever want to do, just do five above where you want to go and you'll drop right down to it. Always works. So, remember that your best transition can just be a fifth quaraway. 21. Millions More!: Okay, so there is literally millions more, right? We can do whatever we want for a transition. So let's go through and just think about all of our entrances. We can leave this very first one alone. This one. Okay. This is cool. This one kind of creeps in, so it doesn't really need anything. But if we wanted to give it something, what we could do is have it enter early. That can be a nice transition sometimes. So let's go here. Let's pull it back just a little bit. Actually, what if we had to enter early but a whole step high? Okay? This is kind of like the fifth thing where the second note of a scale also tends to want to fall down to the tonic. So, don't worry. We're not going to get super into music theory. So if you're lost on some of this theory stuff, you'll be fine in a few minutes. But if I lead in with a whole step above it, that's basically there's a note in between. Then that can be a nice, like, lead in kind of transitionary sound that'll kind of cue in our violin. Let's hear it in context. Right? Just kind of falls right in. See that one more time. Right? So that can be an entrance preparation. That's a great entrance preparation. Let's see. Since this is so slow and fades in, I'm gonna leave that one alone. Let's try this one. Okay. That is a transition element that's queuing in the next section. So we can leave that one alone. Wait, what about this? Okay. Sometimes rhythmic entrances like this can be really fun. So let's prepare this one by copying this, pasting it over here, we're gonna zoom super far in. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm just gonna create a little glitchy entrance. So what we can do here, so let's see. We're looking at 32nd notes. That'll work well. Put some space in between them. Okay, just a little glitchy entrance. Okay, it's gonna be kind of a little sloppy about this. And maybe even, like, I don't know, double that up just for fun. This last one didn't work all that well. But let's hear that in context. Not bad. Since that is a fairly distinctive sound, so I'm probably going to want to use that a few more times. That can be sort of a nice, little reusable way to cue something in, let's put it right there, too, just right. So those kinds of little glitchy things can be a nice entrance. Now, I do want to make this glitchy thing a little bit better. So, here's another way to do a glitchy entrance that's a little better. Let's take a full one of these. Put it there and there. And then, actually, I take that back. Let's put it there and there. Let's put it on a new track. And then let's add a glitchy plug in. There are a few plug ins that do glitchy things that I like Effectrix is a really good one. Okay. This actual tool is great for transitions, effectrics. Let's just basically what we have here is a bunch of different effects and then a grid of when they happen. So let's just do something, here's a rise. Let's do a little riser thing. Here the boo. So it's a fairly extreme kind of sound, but that actually works really well. Right? Let's Let's think of something else here. Let's do chaos, counterstrike, whatever that is. I'm just gonna look at some of the presets really quick. You I like that one a lot. Let's crank that up, though. And then here in context. Yeah. It's like, boom, boom, and it like launches in. Nice. See, those are the little moments that make your track sound like professional. So we're gonna keep that. And we have an added bonus of now that we have effect tricks on this track. We can throw more stuff down there and assume it's gonna sound pretty cool. Like that. Okay, I'm gonna adjust the volume of that to make it not that loud 'cause this one's stronger signal. There we go. So my point was, there's millions more things we could do, but let's move on to preparing every exit. 22. Preparing Exists: Okay, let's talk about exits. So, I like to think about every sound having an exit. Now, that doesn't mean that we need to put something at the end of every sound in order for it to just stop. That's not true. What I'm saying is, we need to think about the exits of this sound. They might be great. Like, let's take this kick, for example. This kick stops right here. Now, this I would consider this is a spot where we want to transition. Kick doesn't actually stop. It pauses while we have a transition. So let's find a spot where a sound just stops like right here. Okay? This sound. Let's see what this is. Okay, now, that has a little bit of an exit already, just from the reverb and delay that's on it. So what I might do is think about in a case like this, I might actually think about pitches. So it's kind of walking down. Maybe I'll add another couple of beats. And let's just add the root note again and just hold on to it. Now, we don't have to do this here. We don't really need it here, but it's a really good example. Okay, so here it is. So I just added one more note to let us just kind of sit on. Okay, let's hear in context. Yeah. I like that, right? I think that was a nice little ending to that sound. Let's find another one. How about a here? Okay, that one stops pretty suddenly. But it's pulsing. Does it need something? Let's find out. I don't think it does. I think we're okay here. I don't know what this extra little thing here is. H Yeah. This works because that snare drum comes in at the same time. That kind of serves as the wrapping up of this sound. We push right into another sound. Let's find one that needs something. This looks fishy. Okay, are we in a transition probably? No. What does that do in there? Okay, that's totally weird, right. So, if this is going to stay here, it needs an exit. It needs something. It needs a way to get out of this texture. So we could put a delay or reverb on it. Actually, I think we should probably just chop this out, but let's try to fix it. We've already got some reverb and delay, but what I want to do is actually just delay this last beat especially that last bump right at the very end of it. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to take these make this bigger so I can see what I'm doing. I'm going to take these sends I'm going to crank them up right at the end. This is my reverb, and this is my delay. And we don't have any of that. So let's do that. And this is sending to the delay. So now, this is sending to the reverb. This is sending to delay, and this is sending to the drums return, which I'm not using right now. Alright, now let's hear this. Solo it. Pretty quiet. It's not really getting as much as I want, but it's getting a little bit. So we're we've at least got some sort of sound happening there. Let's try to go a little over the top with it by putting a delay right on it or an echo, in this case. And then what we'll do is we'll automate, when this turns on right around here. Okay? So now this big echo at the bottom is just going to turn on for that last beat. Let's go back here. That's what I want. Okay? That gives it a little bit of kind of a cushion to land on. Okay. Now, I actually think it works pretty well, because what we're doing is we're in this kind of middle section where there's just kind of stuff happening. And that means that I don't mind things popping in and popping out, but I do like this extra little glitch that we put on it with that big echo. So here's this whole section. This is very kind of ambient section. And then something there. Right? So we're just kind of building a texture here, building up to you could call this whole thing a transition, but really, this is our transition, which we'll get to soon. Okay, so prepare every exit. Let's talk about one of my favorite transitions, which is subtractive transitions. 23. Subtractive Transitions: Alright, subtractive transitions, one of my favorite things to do because it's super easy, takes zero time, and in the right situations works super well. So I don't think we're gonna find one of those right situations in this track, but let's try it anyway. Let's listen out here. So let's say the last few bars here need a transition 'cause they do. So what I'm talking about when I talk about subtractive transitions is doing a transition by simply taking something out. That's all you do. So here, so basically, we want to transition. Let's do this much. What we could do is just take out all the drums and see how that works. And Yeah, I was. Let's keep the kick in. The whole way. Try that. See, that kind of work. So all I did was take something out to make space to draw our ear towards something else for a second, and that's all it needed. 24. Reverb as a Transition: Okay, Let's talk about reverb as an exit transition. What we're going to do here is we're going to use reverb so that when something goes away, when we take something out, we get sort of this tail of it, and that tail is going to cover the transition. That tail is the transition, essentially. Now, I want to point out one interesting thing here, something I haven't really talked about yet. When we're talking about transitions, what we're really talking about is a handoff, because if you think about how your ear follows different things in the mix, when we're mixing something, we're often trying to pull someone's ear or focus, I should say, through the track, right? So it might be that in this part of the song, I want them to really hear the way I do this one thing. So I kind of nudge the mix around so that we take them on this little journey, right? Like, that's a good mix. Transitions also help. So when you're doing a transition like reverb, what we're really doing is kind of covering the same of the element that we're taking out or adding in and handing off the musical focus to the next thing, right? So I'm going to put in one here and you'll see what I'm talking about. So let's just listen to this little spot. Okay. Now I'm going to go down here and I'm going to stop it at a different time to see how much reverb I've got going on. Not much, actually. So, let's find something that we can kind of cover this transition with. This one's pretty joke. Because it's pulsed, right? So when the reverb happens, we're still going to be able to feel that pulse, right? So let's crank up a little bit of reverb here just by using our send. Alright. So that reverb is the hand off. It's the handoff to this Roads thing that's happening right here. So that really smooth transitions when we think like that. What is what is ending and what is starting? And how can I make a handoff between those two so that I can take the listener's ear with me to the next section? 25. Stutter & Glitch Effects: Let's talk about sort of glitch effects or stutter effects as they relate to exit transitions. So something is stopping. What can we do to kind of do the handoff to the next part? And what are we handing off to? So let's go to Alright, let's try it right here. I don't think this is going to work amazingly well, but y'all at this particular spot, but it'll at least explain what it does. Let me tell you why I don't think it's going to work exceptionally well because going into the next section, the next we're at kind of a big section, and we're going to a quieter section, right? So what I what glitch effects are going to do is basically extend the big section just a little bit so that it hangs over the new quieter section. But it works well going between two loud sections. Doesn't work awesome going from a loud to a quiet section. But let's try it anyway. So let's pick something. Drums are usually a good place to start. Cool. Let's do that. And we've looked at, like, a couple kind of glitch effects already earlier. And like I said, there's a ton of them. Probably the most aggressive and complicated is this one called stutter Edit. If you set that one up, which is kind of a pain to set it up, you can do some really wild stuff. But this effectrix one that we've already looked at is also great for this. Let's put it right there. Here's effects effecttrix I want to say Hun tricks. So let's do just a fun little default here. I don't know. Some of these grain effects are probably cool. Break time. Alright, let's try that. Okay? Here's what it looks like. But I only right here, right at the end of this. So I'm going to go to my automation. I'm going to turn this off and then turn it on on these last couple of beats. Okay? So this is the on off of the Effects tx plugin, basically automating that dot right there. Let's hear what we did. Oh. Okay. Oh, that one wasn't my favorite. Let's find something good by just looping this. Let's. Okay, now, obviously, the better thing to do would be to go through here and design our own. But let's just see what happens with these default plugins. Okay, I'm gonna pull in the whole track now, and let's see how it fits. My loop is still out. Let's show one more time. Okay. That worked really well to kind of deconstruct the beat and then let the new thing come in. So that was kind of a nice handoff, too, to get rid of the beat right there. Is it a little subtle in the mid? Let's hear it one more time. This time, I'll crank it up. But yeah, it works really well. So Koch effects, stutter effects. I love them. W. 26. The Floating High Note: Okay, here's another technique for pulling out something smoothly with a good transition, doing a nice handoff. This is one that works with electronic stuff, definitely, but this is one I really lean on a lot when I'm writing acoustic music. And what it is, it's the soaring high note. That's the only play I can call it. There's no good name that I'm aware of for this. But basically what it is, I do it with strings all the time. I probably way over use this when I'm writing for strings. But basically, when we get near the end of a section, what I'm going to do with one of the strings is I'm going to go for a high note. I'm just going to get it screaming, and then I'm going to let the transition happen and just hold that high note. Just let it float there right across the transition. That will serve as a great handoff. And it also kind of thematically unifies everything really well. So let me show you. There's already one built into this track right here. I'm at 1:13, and I actually just made it a little longer. So this is going to be longer than yours is. I stretched out a little bit just using warping, just to make it a little more obvious. So you'll hear that kind of all the music stops around here. And then this screaming high note just keeps going for a little bit longer, and then I fade it out. I don't really like fading things out, but this works. So it sounds. Here's the solo note. That's just gonna go on forever. So let's listen to it in context. It's been there for a long time. So I'm just gonna call that The floating high note. It doesn't work as well with low notes. And I think that's because with low notes, they influence the harmony too much. If you have this really high note, it can be a number of notes. It's got to be in the key, but as long as it's in the key, it's going to sound pretty good and not really mess with your harmony too much. Like, pick the tonic of whatever you're on and extend that note out forever. It'll work, trust me. 27. Dovetailing and Anticipation: Okay, next, I want to talk about two sides of the same coin, dovetailing and anticipation. Now, dovetailing is a really great term because it's not one of my terms. It's just This is something that you would learn in, like, orchestration one oh one if you were writing for orchestra. We do this all the time. What dovetailing means is we have one sound, and as it's ending, another sound is starting, and we don't just end one and start the other and keep going, right? Like two tracks doing this. Like, this one goes, like, this, then this one takes over. We don't really do that because that would be a little bit jerky. So what we do is we dovetail them. So this one goes this way. Sorry, I'm trying to watch myself do this. This one goes this way. And then this one comes in. This one keeps going for just a little bit, then kind of fades out, and then the second one takes over. Dovetailing. I can't find a great spot in our track to put one. So let's find a not great spot to put one. Let's go. See, this is a great exit thing. It's the same thing that we were just talking about with the high note. That high note thing where it hangs over and the rest of the music picks up underneath it, that's dovetailing. It's the same thing, except it doesn't always have to be with a high note. Let's try. Let's just for the sake of argument. That's not really going to work. We have here this sound, which is this This turkey thing. Okay? It is going to right here, collide into this stuff. So not just one thing, but one whole other texture. This stuff is this. So we're going to collide that texture sound into this other texture sound with three tracks. Now, in order to do that, we're not just go to push one up to the other and stop like that. Let's assume this build isn't here. So instead, what we're gonna do is we're gonna let this kind of drift over a little bit to kind of cover that seam, right? And then we're going to just kind of inch this guy out. And there. So he's got a quick little fade out while this stuff takes over. Okay? So let's hear it just these four things. One slides out without anyone even noticing. That's dovetailing. Now, anticipation or anticipating. And it's the opposite. So this is something I do much more often, we can probably find some examples of it already here. Okay, well, let's make one. So we've got this gap here, right? We could do a little anticipation and have something come in early, like this. So this groove comes in early. Now, this particular thing isn't going to work very well because it's the same thing here and there, it's not going to feel like it's coming in early. It's just going to feel like it never stopped. So let's find something better to come in early. Drums are great for this. Anticipation on drums is awesome. Right here, in a way. So if this is the drum groove, Okay? So this is the group. This is what we're building to. But we're going to enter these hats a little bit early. Right? So it's just a little intro. It's actually quite longer. So we're letting those in early. We're letting them just kind of build up a little bit before we put them in the snare drum and everything. Let's hear that in context. Let's go back out here. 28. Layering Multiple Preperations: Okay, so layering multiple preparations, preparations. I don't know why my tongue got all tied up in that. So here's one thing we can do. We don't have to do just one thing. You can kind of make a texture of multiple things to end a sound to cover the exit of a sound. Here's a kind of good example. We have all of this stuff going and then a break here, right? So we have this note that hangs over that break. That's great. That's not exactly a dovetail because it doesn't hand off to anyone or anything. But listen to all the delay that's here in this song, okay? That delay is going to make a whole bunch of stuff just kind of carry forward until our groove comes back in. So I point that out to say that whether you're entering or exiting, actually, this is not just an exit thing. You can pile these up if they work together musically. They don't always. But a lot of times I do, and you can just pile things up and do multiple things. 29. Stop Time and "The Breath": Alright, let's talk about stop time. So with this, what we're going to do is we're just going to stop. Like, sometimes, the best transition is nothing. It's silence. But there's a big difference between nothing and silence, okay? I want to talk about that in just a second. But let me show you what I mean. If I delete everything right here, right? We're just going to leave a whole bar of silence. That can work great. Sometimes, if you're careful. So in this case, what we're doing is we're not preparing the exit of everything. We're just going to pull everything out and then pop it back in. That can work great in some cases. Now, a measure of that is a bit long, but let's try it. Maybe we wanted a drum fill or something there, but not bad. So it can kind of work. Like, it maybe works here if you want, like, a big, like, moment of tension and then drop it. This is something you see in movies lately. Lately, you're seeing this a lot in movies where the biggest moment of the action scene, the volume just goes like, they just cut out the music, cut out the sound, everything. I just saw this the other night. I was watching Mana two with my kiddo. And during the huge storm and the big climax of the movie, it just goes it's just silent. While all this chaos is happening. It's the most intense thing in the world. So silence can be great. Now, let me show you what I was talking about. The difference between nothing and silence. Weird distinction. Nothing sounds like this. So that's not actually nothing, right? There's kind of a lot going on there. It's just very quiet. But nothing. Silence sounds like this. Let's take our main. Let's automate the volume of our main. Don't do this. There's no good reason to do this. Let's pull it down and pull it right back up. Okay, so now our all of our sound, everything is gonna go to nothing, and it sounds very different than just having no music there. Right? Looks like uncomfortably weird. So that's not something I would recommend doing going all the way to silent. Like, let there be some reverberation, something because silence a lot different than very quiet. 30. Harmonic Exists: Okay, last thing on this topic for now of exits. But I want to talk about harmonic exits. Now, I don't want to go too deep into this because this is going to get very music theory heavy. But let me just explain what this means. Harmonic exit. Where can the harmony stop comfortably, right? So if we're trying to make something end and we're trying to make it not sound weird when it stops, if it's harmonic, meaning if it's playing notes, like it doesn't work on drums, but if it's playing like, notes and things, then you can give it a little help by giving it some good notes. There's a couple different ways that we can do this. We can Let's talk about two really quick. We can do what's called a perfect authentic cadence, or we could do a deceptive cadence. Now we can do a whole bunch of different kinds of cadences. Cadence just means the end of the phrase, how it ends. So we can do a bunch of these different cadences, but these two are probably the most useful to you. A perfect authentic cadence means that the re progression goes 51, and that's going to feel like the end. It could be 57, one, but it's basically five, one. The base the base note goes five, one. So like in the key of C major, it would be G, C. And in the key of C major, the five chord would be G or G seven if you wanted to do that. So making authentic cadence just means it's going to wrap up. It's going to sound perfectly great. It's going to end exactly how we want it to end. But doing a deceptive cadence is kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's a cadence that deceives you, sends you somewhere different. So you could do a cadence that kind of tricks the ear and sends you somewhere else. So deceptive cadence means basically that you're going to start on you're going to get to a five chord. So if we're in the key of C major, we're going to get to a G major or G seven. And then we're going to go anywhere but one. That's basically a deceptive cadence. Now, one of the best places to go, one of the most common places to go is the relative minor. So go to the minor six. That can be a really nice sound, but you can really go anywhere, and it's just going to not resolve perfectly, which can make a little bit of tension. But if you don't want that tension, resolve it perfectly. Go five, one. If you want to know more about this topic because I'm not going to spend more time in this class on music theory stuff other than a little bit, we'll talk about it a little bit. But just Google cadences, watch some theory classes. I have some pretty good theory classes, just FYI. But check those out. Before I go, this is a deceptive cadence here. We didn't go back to one. We went somewhere different. Now we're just hanging there. So it doesn't feel like it goes back to one. 31. The Three Types of Transitions: So with that being said, I'm going to go into a little bit of a genre specific thing for a few videos. And that that will be kind of like EDM stuff. Now, if you're into acoustic music, you should watch this anyway, because while we're talking about this in sort of like this EDM kind of thing, it's only because there are kind of specific things that EDM requires or just electronic music warrants requires probably the wrong word. And these concepts can be used in any style of music, Okay? So if you do the same thing that I'm going to explain for, like, a dance track, if you did it in an orchestra track, it would work the same as long as you adjusted everything accordingly. So we're going to focus a little bit on these, like, EDM risers and things like that for just a minute. But if you're doing any other kind of music, stick with us. This will still be helpful. 32. The Most Important Transition in Electronic Music: Okay, let's talk about the build up and drop in electronic music. Now, of all the different kinds of transitions we've talked about, this one is a bit different because it's long and in a lot of dance music, the transition is its own section, right? It's very different than anything else we've looked at. Here's what that means. In a pop song or a rock song, really kind of anything traditional song, let's put it that way. A transition could be it could be a beat, two beats, four beats, 2 bars be a big transition, right? In a lot of electronic music that uses this format, the transition or build up can be 32 bars, even longer. It's a section in and of itself. So it's actually a really great thing to study to see how people do different transitions and what goes into building up the anticipation. So these are a two part transition. It's a build up and then a drop, okay? So I think this term drop is kind of falling out of fashion. It used to be, for a minute, that every song you heard had a buildup and a drop, sometimes two or three of them. And that's still often true if you go to a big club or something because that's what gets people moving. That's the whole. That's not the whole point, but that is a big thing that everyone comes to expect. So the way we deal with expectation in this kind of a transition is different, too, because there's no what's going to happen. Like, everybody knows what's going to happen. We're going to get to a drop. And the drop is where everything comes back in. It's the boom, boom, boom part, right? So you can think of it, imagine all the low stuff, the kick, the base, the everything goes away in a tune. That's the buildup, and there's all this craziness happening. Bill Bill Bill Bill Bild build build build build. And then it all comes back. All the bass, everything comes back. Oh, boom, and then we're into it. It's crazy long anticipation. So there's kind of three things that make a drop kind of land. Right. The first is that anticipation, but the anticipation is different, like I already said, because people know it's coming. It's really only a matter of what you can do to delay it and how long you want to delay it. The second thing that makes the drop work is contrast, super contrast, right? So we're gonna have a really thin breakdown, and we're going to go to something really big or some combination of that. The third reason it works is what we'll just call kind of the physical sense of the music. And that's that when everything comes back in, this is dance music we're talking about. So it just gets people moving. Everybody knows, like, deep in their DNA to start dancing when that thing happens. Okay, so for the next few videos, let's break one of these down and build one up, so to speak. 33. The Three Axis of Tension: So we're going to need to create some tension for fairly long periods of time in order for this kind of a build to work. So, let's pull this apart into kind of three elements, right? This is kind of my thing of the day. It's always easier in my brain anyway, to, like, pull things apart into three or more separate elements that I can keep track of rather than just kind of throwing everything at the wall. Because then I know if one of them isn't working, what I need to chase down and figure out. So here's going to be our three elements to make a big amount of tension for our build transition. They are. Frequency, rhythm, and density. Okay? So, what that means is with frequency, maybe we want to pitch rise in it. Maybe we want a noise crescendo. Maybe we want to glitz, maybe we want some filter sweeps. All that's kind of in the frequency element. Then we have rhythm. Rhythm, maybe we want some glitchy elements. Maybe we want, like a snare roll. Maybe we want any kind of chaotic rhythmic thing happening or even a lack of a rhythmic thing can work sometimes too. And then the third one is density. How we're layering things to make it thicker and thicker and thicker until it can't get any thicker, and then boom, we drop the drop. So those are three elements. So let's work through each one of them to make a nice build and drop. 34. Filter and Frequency: Okay, so first I'm gonna find a place to put this, and I'm gonna put it right here. I'm gonna get rid of our big kick thing. Yeah, do that, too. And we're gonna go right here. Build. I'm going to go measure 92 all the way to 98. So here's what that sounds like with nothing. Good. Okay. So first, let's go down here and let's make a few new mini tracks, maybe only two new mini tracks, and then a few audio tracks. I'm going to put these all into a folder called Build and drop. Okay. So the first thing we could do here we could do a filter. We could do some rising pitch. Let's do that. Let's do a quick filter sweep. So let's go to a mini track. There's a few different ways we can do this to make a really nice filter sweep. The first would be to take an audio file of just noise and then put a filter around it, sweep it across, or we could use a synth and just generate some noise there. Let's do that. So let's go to I think analog will work. So in analog, I'm going to turn off Oscillator one, oscillator two, turn off noise, and then turn on noise, and then I'm just going to make a long note. That goes the whole way. There's the build. Goes to there. I want to make sure that's not looping, whoops. So what I'm telling it to do here, make a note. That's just noise. Let's solo it. Okay. Let's go back here. Let better. So what I have here is an analog synth with just both oscillators turned off. Turn this filter off. Also Okay, we've got some noise. Maybe a tab brighter cap. Now, let's add a filter. So we can just go to Audio Effects. Probably usually the easiest way to do this is just if you're in Ableton is with an EQ eight. I just gives us the most kind of control over it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn everything off except for one. And we're just going to turn this into a low pass. So low pass means low things get to pass through. We'll start right about there. Okay. We can't really hear anything here, so that's just about perfect. Now, all we're going to do is automate this frequency parameter, start it right about there, go into automation mode, make a point, make another point. Now, this kind of thing often does better with a curved automation line. So in Ableton, you do that with option and then click and drag gives you kind of this little bit of a parabolic thing. Okay, Let's maybe start it just a little bit lower. All right. So here's what that sounds like by itself. Okay. Little slow going. We could give it a little more juice here. Okay. Not bad. Now, another thing we could do is a rising pitch in there, just something going because that often helps. And let's combine this with what I told you way earlier, which is economy of ideas, right? We already have something glisting like that in this track right here. Right? It's kind of going down. It's kind of going down a little bit. So I'm going to copy it. I'm going to go down here to an audio track, turn off automation. All right. And now, what I'm going to do is just some kind of audio fun stuff for a second here. Let's make it twice as long. Let's make it three times as long, four times as long. There we go. And then, of course, let's reverse it, so it goes up instead of down. The way over here. Give it a little extra juice. Solo it. And then we want to make sure for this much stretching, it's gonna get a little glitchy, and that's gonna be kind of cool. But we definitely want to change the warp mode to Complex Pro. And I should do it. Let's hear it. Okay, let's trim this off. Let's do that. Maybe we'll kind of give it a little bit of anticipation by doing that. Oh That's a pretty cool sound, actually.'s pretty evil. Let's hear those together. Sweet. Alright, so there's our pitch element, right? It's already starting to sound like a pretty cool transition. But let's move on and talk about the rhythmic element. With. 35. The Rhythmic Element: Now, what's our filter doing, make sure that's still going? You know what? I kind of want to reverse that. Cool. So that gives it a little more rhythmic motion. Let's hear that together. Then I have one more rhythmic thing I might add. Okay, not bad. The one other thing I could add in here that I'm thinking about is an echo, but we're gonna mess with the dry wet. Yeah. Okay. I actually works pretty well. But we're gonna take this dry wet and we're just going to use it to make a decent amount of noise here. Take it all the way down, and then not till the end, we're gonna let this get a little more chaotic. Okay. Now, one downside of doing this delay thing is that it's going to hold over, right? It's going to give you a kind of a dovetail into the next section, which can be cool if that's what you want, but maybe that's not what you want, and if you don't want it, you just got to be sure to do that. Like that. But let's leave it for now. Alright, let's hear our transition so far. Alright. Pretty good. Let's see if we can get any of the density layer going in this. 36. Density and Layering: We already have a decent amount of density going, but we could add another layer or two or three if we wanted. One layer that could be cool here is some sort of rhythmic synthesis, just to help push it forward. Something may be a little subtle. So let's look for let's look at wave table. Let's try this synth and put that in my group here. Okay, so this is just a fun little synth. I'm just gonna do this 'cause I really just want one note playing. Let's hear what we have. Okay, I need to re hit it. It's not a looping sound. That's cool. Let's just hit at every bar. And then let's I do have to worry about that pitch a little bit here. I believe I was in, like, a C minor, C major. Okay. So this note is okay, but I'm going to do pitched stuff. Well, we already talked about different pitch things you can consider doing the tonic or the five or whatever. If it's just a single note like this, usually you want to do the tonic, sometimes the five. Okay, so this little simple rhythmic thing like that is all you need sometimes. Let's hear it. Yeah, okay, hold on, hold. I just heard exactly what I wanted to hear as soon as I found it. Okay, so we're gonna take this. Let's put it about there, and let's give it a little arc to it. But I want it up kind of early. I want us to be able to hear this little rhythmic thing all the way through it, not a lot. Let's try that. I also just want to get a little bit more juice out of that synth. I wanted to come in with a little bit here. A little bit more. Alright. That was quite a nice transition. So we could keep going. We could add another rhythmic element if we wanted, another pitch element if we wanted. But I think we're pretty good with this kind of a build. 37. "The Breath": Okay. I would be remiss if I didn't add one little extra touch into this. You don't always have to do this, but sometimes it's good to have a space between the top of the buildup and the drop. I call this the breath because it's kind of like, as you crest the top of a roller coaster and you're about to say an expletive, that's the breath. It's boom. And then we hit it. So let's add one. The way it's probably going to sound the most normal is if I just take everything from here forward and scoot it back. So here I really want to give myself maybe a beat or two. Having a full bar is kind of a lot, but let's try it. So we're just going to have a bar of space here. Seemed a little long to me. I'm just doing one beat. Now, if you're going to do a whole measure, you can push things forward like this, and that can kind of work. But if you're going to do less than a full measure, and you do it by kind of, like, just dragging things like one beat like that, you're going to screw up your grid. So let's do kind of a combination of the two here. Let's do all of that. And then let's take all of these. Whoops wrong, but Okay, slide them up to here. So this will give us one beat of it. We could try two beats. Let's see if we can use all that delay in reverb to kind of cover up and kind of fill out those two beats. That's pretty good. Let's leave it at that. Now, the biggest thing that I hear happening now is that my drop when this finally comes in, it's relatively wimpy, right? It doesn't have the oomph that I wish it had. Not quite sure what to do about that yet. Let's come back to it later. For now, let's carry on. 38. Building to the Last Chorus (Part 1): Okay, so let's try using some of these techniques to fill in this gap here, okay? This will be our big elevating transition. We're going to try to go from sort of this, you know, kind of demo track doesn't really have a doesn't really have a proper chorus, necessarily, but let's pretend this is one. So we're going to go right here. We're going to treat this as the kind of bridge into the final chorus. Okay. So one thing I think we can do is we can actually take our bridge here or build here and kind of just let's try just doing it like hyper fast. Where is it? Right here. We want it to land right there. So we could probably just do this. So we only need a two beat transition here. We can use the whole bar. It'll be sort of a dovetail kind of deal. Let's try something that. And that. So I'm gonna let these two kind of anticipate come in a little early and overlap what's here. Let's try it. Okay. Um, the concept worked. It didn't I wasn't mixed well. So let's do this. I'm gonna try that. Okay, I still think this is way too much. So let's just take this whole thing down a bit. One more time. Okay, cool. That's fine. Now, we should really give ourselves a little extra juice for this last chorus. So let's see what we can do to kind of build up a little bit. Let's see. Is this the same Impact. What is our pitch here? G, B flat, D. Okay, so we're on a G G minor ad four or something like that. It's okay. So if we're on a G, let's try our harmonic trick. If we're on a G, if we want to land on a G, we can do the five above it before it, and that'll make a cool harmonic transition. So five notes above G, GA B C D. That is the pitch. D. So if we change this base note to be a D, the pitch D, it might help us kind of launch into the next section a little bit. So, let's see, unfortunately, it's an audio file and not a mini note. So let's see if we can figure out what pitch it is real quick. Quickest way for something like this is to throw the tuner on it. It's G. Lovely. Okay? So then I can do two things. In order to get it to a D, I could go up half steps. So up one would be to G sharp, A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D. So that's up seven semitones, or I could go down, which I think might sound better here. So if I'm on a G, I go F sharp, F E, E flat, D, five semitones down. Let's see if it works. Okay. Sounds pretty Oh, did I no, that's Oh, I did the wrong thing. DRP. Okay. Let's reset that. I transposed our snare rolls gonna sound awesome? Negative five. Cool. You know what we could do? What if we did this? Let's get this fade off of this. Move our fades here. Oops. You set fades. Then reverse this and take off the transposition. What did I just do? This is going to be up a fifth and then it's going to plop down to the original pitch. But backwards, we're going to go boom. Let's try. Let's hear just the base that we just set up. Cool. Let's hear it in context and see if it works. Okay, now, that works well. But in order for this next section to sound kind of punchy, we need to do a little bit more with our base. So what I think we should do 39. Building to the Last Chorus (Part 2): Let's try this. I'm going to copy this MIDI file. I'm going to go down here to add a new Mi clip. Something basi. Let's just quickly go to you know what is a great kind of little bass. It's the default. Tuck this in here. Now, I don't want to play this on our base. This is gonna be way too muddy. But I want to play around with these notes. So I think we need to move this base around for it to get some new energy into it. So we're going to add this new big low thing. We'll drop it down a few octaves in a minute. But I just want to find the right kind of pattern here. Okay. B flat. Mm. If we loop that, I think it can be kind of a nice baseline. What I'm hearing already, so I'm going to drop this down maybe there. Now, a problem right away is going to be that it's going to conflict with this that we just added, but not the first note. First note won't conflict with it. So let's just do that. Heat this out while this comes in. We down and knocked it with it. I hit a wrong button. Why did I do that? Okay, so these ones probably need to go up. Okay, now, just to put a little extra hair on it, I'm going to duplicate this. I'm going to go up an octave with it, and I'm going to add some distort h. Okay, let's try that. I just don't like these tobacco. In the upper version, this one that's up in Ochn, let's take these down. And then this will loop really nicely. Okay, so, big transition. Then we dropped right down into our kind of beefed up new final chorus. 40. Consider the Motion of Every Element: Okay, so remember that everything we've talked about, even with the kind of small transitional elements of single sounds, all the way up to big transitional elements of the whole song, all of those can really be using the same technique. So everything we've talked about in terms of technique, and sounds to use can work for both big and little transitions. I want to move on to something that's transition adjacent, but I think it's important to talk somewhere in this arrangement class about in terms of things that are going to really make your track feel professional, this is one of them. And what I'm talking about here is trying to avoid leaving something standing still, as I like to call it. And what that means is just, I want to make sure everything is doing something. Almost everything. So let's take a look at, like, this sound. This is a pad. Is it moving at all? Get some vibrato. Te crescendo. Okay, so there is some motion to this. It's subtle, but there's some vibrato happening and there's sort of an arc of volume. Let's look at Let's look at our main kind of groove here. Okay. This is not really moving. This is kind of just standing still. There's different notes happening, but the sound, the tamber is really just kind of staying put. So let's do something to that to maybe give it a little more life. So let's explore the different things we could do in a couple different contexts. We're gonna talk about doing this to an acoustic sound and doing this to an electronic sound. So let's start with the electronic sound and deal with this one. 41. Creating Motion with Synthesizers: Okay, so let's talk about putting a little bit of motion on this line, tamborl motion. So when we have an electronic sound and we're working on the synthesis element, there's a lot of different things we can do nearly infinite. But the three kind of go to things for me are always an LFO, an envelope, or detuning. So let's just loop this for a second. So we just have one. And let's do an LFO. Let's see what we have here. Okay, so we have a fairly complicated synth. That's okay. Let's open it up and I don't want to go too deep into sound design, but so if you don't follow this, that's okay. But basically, I'm going to take this LFO one. It's going about that fast. Now let's take our frequency dial here and just map that two LFO one. So here's our frequency LFO one. There we go. Now, something else is also a math to that. But even that gives it just a little bit of character that can really help a lot. We could also do a longer envelope, which would be a nice thing to do here. So with that, what we would do is we go down here, go to envelopes. And let's pick something like wave two frequency. Sure. And then we can kind of just draw it. To do that. But if we want it to last a lot longer, we can hit this unlinked, and then we can say, This lasts. It does that. So now, this is going to last over the course of however many bars we have it set to. So let's hear it. And then detuning is just a matter of taking some of our oscillators, changing them a little bit to create that sort of beading, we call it when we have two out of two notes. Okay, let's talk about things we can do on acoustic instruments to give them a little extra life. 42. Creating Motion with Acoustic Instruments and Sounds: Okay, when we have acoustic sounds and we want to give them a little extra life, we're really talking about automation, automating volume, panning or effects. So let's take something like I don't think that snare is not going to work very well, but it's this. Okay, this is something good. We could work with this. So let's take this and let's loop just this little area. And then let's see if we can automate something. Do we have any effects here? We do. We have an EQ. Let's take this lower EQ note and kind of move it around a little bit. So I'm going to grab it here. Let's start it there. Make sure it stops there. And then I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to kind of make some of these built in shapes I basically want this to be random. So I'm just selecting a beat, going down to a shape. We'll leave that one right there. I do that. Oh, there's a noisy one. We should have just been using that the whole time. Okay. Now, what I kind of want to do now is make this less intense. So I'm going to highlight all of my points here. I'm going to smush them down to the bottom. Actually, no, let's smush them up to the top and then pull them down a little bit. I didn't really get me what I wanted. Let's go right there, and then let's try to grab the low stuff. Alright. Let's try that and see how it goes. So, here it is with our automation. See, it's subtle, but it's a good amount of extra just movement to keep it alive. I'll sound less robotic this way, especially on things like hi hats. Let's hear this in context. Okay, so we could automate anything else we wanted. Effects, panning can be a nice thing. We also have some auto panning and auto modulation tools in Ableton, but this isn't about Ableton. But if you have any of those auto panning tools in your DA, you could use those too. Sometimes those can be configured to work really well. But just try to keep things from being really stagnant. 43. Really? Everything?: Okay, one more thing about this. Maybe not everything. Like, if you like a kick, we don't need to do this on a kick. It can sound a little silly to do some big automation to something like a kick. Possibly on something like the lead vocal. If that has some parts that don't really move much, that's okay. You might leave those alone. So take it with a grain of salt. I think of it, like, get everything to have some kind of motion more than just pitch. But there are exceptions like kicks and things like that. Okay. 44. Final Listen: Okay, we are reaching the end, and I wanted to go through our track one more time. We added a bunch of transitions here. I don't think I added anything else that we haven't talked about yet in this class. So let's listen to it one more time through and just see how we did. Here we go. 45. How This all Fits Together: Okay, we have reached the end of my three part arrangement series. This is something that a lot of people have asked for, so I'm really excited to be finishing it and bringing it to everyone. Remember how everything all fits together, right? So we started by talking about arrangement theory, different kinds of arrangements, ways to approach your arrangement. Then we moved into creating contrasts, how to make the different sections of your arrangement stand out and really click as different sections. And then, lastly, in this class, we focused on providing some of the glue for those sections, how to make smoother transitions between them. And for all of your track. So, I hope you had a good time. Download these things. These tracks that I'm giving you, you can do whatever you want with, have fun. Go crazy. Stick around. I got a few more little things for you left. 46. Thanks for Watching!: Alright. Last, I just want to say thanks for watching. Thanks for spending your time with me, for taking this class. I appreciate every one of you being here and learning with me. Shoot me some questions. I'm here. I'm around, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you make. Thanks again. Bye.