I’m in a place a lot of people get trapped in: lost in 4 or 8 bar loop hell.
Whether I’m sampling or arranging chords and melodies purely with synths, I’m generally able to come up with really catchy loops but I nearly always hit a wall face first when it comes to expanding on what I’ve created.
The laziest approach to this (and one I kind of default to) is to just keep adding elements to the original loop (add some hats after a while, add another synth playing an arpeggio off to the right with the gain low, etc) , but this just leaves me with a really heavily dressed up version of the loop by the end - at its core, it’s just the same exact melody for 32 or 64 bars or whatever with a bunch of crap that’s been slowly tacked on over time.
Alternately, I’ll remove elements or remove the drums for a few bars… these things can be nice and are certainly very useful techniques for general variation, but they don’t tackle the core problem: creating actual melodic variation in what I’m working on.
Interested in hearing your tips and tricks for switching up melodies.
With the approach you have now, just keep adding and taking away the layers gradually. Dynamic change can be as good as melodic/harmonic change.
If I’m doing a track with one chord progression, I’ll change the way its played on a hook section. Maybe one part will have longer sustained chords and another more rhythmic/staccato.
Or I’ll go with more variety and have different chords for verses, choruses bridges and pre choruses.
For melodies specifically, utilising a theme that you then build on can be great. Starting with the main theme and then keeping the same rhythm of the melody with different notes (like the imperial march from star wars does) or utilising the same notes with differences to rhythm, or enhancing with extra notes involved.
Good advice all around. I’ve actually noticed that dynamic changes can create a huge shift in how the track feels, which is likely why I kind of default to that. Excellent call out inre the Imperial March - really clear way to explain/illustrate what you’re talking about. Thanks!