I am the master at procrastination and never laying out a track, I just feel like its so difficult to arrange something. I come up with loops easily but can’t arrange for my life sake. and here I am at sonic academy.
here are two techno tracks I somehow managed to complete 4-6 minutes in I hope to be an ok arrange. and hopefully it will get better with time.
the struggle is real.
It is for all of us indeed 
Arrangement & track structure is definitely something that can make a good mix or simply break it. In this case it’s true that both tracks are quite linear and using too much repeating elements, without very distinct sections & parts. It feels more like adding layers and some transition effects than having a real song structure.
There’s no secret about this, it’s not easy to arrange and to make a full song from an 8 bar loop. The best way to learn about this is to deconstruct reference tracks.
Take a track in the same genre and import it inside your DAW, use markers or empty Midi tracks & Midi Clips to identify the main parts like intro, verse, chorus, break, drop… The more you zoom on the reference track, the more you can go into details taking note of what’s being added to the track at a specific time, what’s been removed, transitions elements used…etc.
So when it comes to arrangement there’s no way around than listening to others tracks and deconstruct them inside your DAW. It’s obvious with Pop music since arrangement rules are often following an established pattern & structure but in other genres too, most tracks have a similar arrangement because it’s based on listeners and club audience expectations, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel unless you’re making experimental music.
Once you’ll have spend some time deconstructing tracks inside your DAW, you’ll have a clearer picture of what the main components of a good arrangement are, then it’s a matter of getting the transition between parts right.
So again, no secret or voodoo science here : listen to mixes that work in clubs, analyze & deconstruct them, try to replicate & mimic existing arrangements. If you don’t have any reference, you’ll have more chance to get stuck with loops, even nice sounding ones but you’re definitely gonna struggle to come up with a full track that works.
Not diving into mixing or critical feedback here, there’s a few issues but the most important is what you pointed out yourself : arrangement isn’t really there at the moment.
Here’s a very simple example about using empty Midi Clips to locate and name elements of a ref. track, it’s an alternative to use markers and can be useful since you can also use colors for the same elements, or to identify climax & very punchy/dynamic parts of a track as opposed to quitter ones ( i.e : pale blue for low energy parts, red for climax moment ).
thanks for the feedback, very helpful =) working on the next project and hope to implement the feedback into the new
