.....the song starts, the guitar plays 8 bars,
the second guitar plays 8 bars,
the drums come in, and before you know it...
your 45 seconds or a minute into the song and no vocals yet....
The listeners attention has already gone somewhere else and it's going to be pretty hard to get them back.
Lets look at what many think is the proper way to arrange commercially.
Intro, Verse, Pre, Chorus, Verse 2, Pre 2, Chorus 2, Bridge, Breakdown, Chorus out.
Sometimes you'll put a little "interlude after the first chorus, modulate the chorus out, and many other variations, but if I would have to pin point the average arrangement, that would be it.
Here are just some basic tips that could help make your listener stay with you through the whole song, which in some cases in just good writing , but lets look at it from the arrangment stand point.
1. Keep the intro short and sweet, people wanna hear the singer and his/her's message as quickly as possible.
2. Think of your song as mountains and valleys. If you would drive through a texas 500 mile straight, how long until you loose interest? What if you would drive through the mountains , up and down, curves and all....pretty exiting right? Well, it's the same with your song. Create some highs and lows, or spaces in your arrangement that will pull your listener back in. Stops, extra instrumentation, background vocals, guitar slides, reversed effects, extra keys or strings and many other things can keep the average A.D.D. human interested in your music.
3. We all suffer from it.....showing off. But Radio proves everyday that simplicity works. Keep it simple. That's the key. Your Drummer is probably a monster player, and your guitar and bass player can really tear it up, but there is a time and place for that. In an average 4 minute song, can you find 2-3 spots for everyone to do a little something? Hey that gets us back to point 2..... Mountains and Valleys......right?
4. Make sure the arrangement matches your lyrics or message of the song, unless you are comedians, which works too. This is rather a simple concept, but I believe that people forget about this sometimes. If your song is dark, arrange it dark. This could mean lots of space and really gory, or whatever dark means to you. We are all influenced by somebody which brings me to the most important point.....
5. Learn and Steal. Yep. Thats what made me successful in this business and helped me produce on records selling over 50 million. Your favorite artists, the top 10 on the radio and your cd collection are the best place to start from. See, we all forget that even if you would do the exact same arrangement of the exact same song as someone, that it would still be YOU doing it. That is all the difference. So, listen to similar music and really analyse it. Take a piece of paper and write down the length of each part, make little notes for little effects they did, and do that for 10 songs. Now compare the notes and see which of the ideas you gathered hit you the most and implement them into your arrangement.
6. Voicings, yes I gotta talk at least one technical term... I've heard such amazing things done with the most simple chord progessions like a 1-4-5-1 , that you would think they were playing minors over majors.. For example, you can create tension by NOT exposing the whole triad on the guitar. Why guitar? Well it seems to me they always come up with the best voicing because of how the instrument is layed out. Hard to explain without playing it for you, but i'm sure you get the point. The same counts for strings or keyboard parts.
Veit Renn
With more than 50 million records sold worldwide, Veit Renn has made a remarkable impact in music. But let's start at the beginning. He was born and raised in Augsburg, Germany. At the age of 8, Veit's parents fulfilled his desire to learn an instrument by buying him a keyboard. Inspired by his nine year older brother who played guitar and sang in different bands, he started to write his own songs. While still studying keyboard with a private instructor, he taught himself guitar and bass.
Inspiring artists of his youth were soul and jazz musicians like Al Jarreau, George Benson, and Stevie Wonder. The combination of R&B and jazz fascinated him and was soon recognizable in his original songs. He started singing in bands that soon played mostly his songs and in 1986 he received his hometown award for "Most Promising Musician." With this band he also toured Germany, Czechoslovakia and other European countries.
Veit always had a dream to study music, but first had to fulfill his parents wish to do an apprenticeship in order to have a more sec
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