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.
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!