arrangement

Arrangement

User has a loop or section and needs structure. Or has a full song that doesn't move. Either way: a bar-by-bar plan with an energy reason for every section change.

Inputs

• 4–16 bar loop (audio or MIDI) — design the full track around it
• Existing arrangement bounce — diagnose where energy stalls / peaks early / drags
• Description only — produce a starter map

If a bounce is supplied, run ebur128 short-term LUFS over time to see the actual energy curve. Then read the curve back to the user before redesigning.

House/EDM phrasing defaults

Section	Bars	Purpose
Intro	16–32	DJ-friendly, kick + maybe perc, no melody
First break / pre-drop A	8–16	Introduce hook
Drop 1	32	Full energy
Breakdown 1	16–32	Strip to vocal / pad, build tension
Drop 2	32	Bigger — add a layer, change one thing
Breakdown 2 / bridge	8–16	Last surprise
Outro	16–32	DJ-friendly tail

Total: ~5–7 minutes. Adjust for trance (longer), tech house (shorter), hard dance (faster phrasing).

Output format

Energy map — ASCII curve, one row per 8 bars:

Bars 0-7    ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁  Intro: kick + perc
Bars 8-15   ▁▁▂▂▃▃▄▄  Build: add hat, filter pad open
Bars 16-31  █████████ DROP 1: full
Bars 32-47  ▂▂▁▁▁▂▃▄  Break: strip to vox + pad
Bars 48-79  █████████ DROP 2: + 5th layer
...

Bar-by-bar plan — markdown table:

Bars	Section	Elements in	Elements out	The one move
0–15	Intro	Kick, top loop	—	Filter slowly opens
16–23	Pre-build	Sub, perc roll	Top loop	Snare roll last 4 bars
24–31	Build	All synths	Kick (last bar)	Riser crests, silence on beat 4.4
32–63	Drop 1	Everything	—	Bass layer drops in at bar 40
64–79	Breakdown	Vocal, pad	Drums	Pad swells, kick returns at 76
...	...	...	...	...

Save this table to ~/Music/Producer/arrangements/<track-name>_arrangement.md.

Heuristics

• One change per 4 bars minimum — if nothing changes, the listener checks out
• Drop 2 ≠ Drop 1 — add a counter-melody, change the bass octave, swap the lead with a vocal chop, or half-time it
• Build with silence, not noise — kill one element 2 bars before the drop for half a beat
• Transitions are subtractions — reduce before adding
• DJ math — start and end on 32-bar phrases; intro/outro mostly drums
• Test with a DJ filter — does it still groove when high-passed?

Section-specific moves

Drop won't land

• Snare roll in the last bar of the build, then 1 bar of silence under just kick + sub
• Drop the bass in 8 bars after the drop hits (delayed gratification)
• Sidechain everything harder for the first 8 bars of the drop

Breakdown feels dead

• Lift one element from the drop (the lead, processed differently) and let it sing
• Add a vocal sample, even a chopped one
• Modulate the pad → filter sweep + chorus + reverb 80% wet

Outro doesn't end

• Last 16 bars = drum elements peeling off one at a time, 4 bars apart
• Final 4 bars = kick + reverb tail of the lead

Connectors

• Ableton MCP — session-bridge to mark locators at section boundaries in the actual Live set
• Spotify — reference-curator to pull 3 references with similar arrangements and time-stamp the section changes
• search_videos for arrangement tutorials specific to the genre

After

"Want me to (a) actually place locators at every section boundary in Live (session-bridge), (b) write the build-up MIDI (midi-lab), (c) design the riser for the build (sound-design), or (d) pull a reference playlist of similar arrangements (reference-curator)?"