Working with Arrangement Patterns

Song Sketch introduces a tool for working with arrangement patterns. Although arrangement patterns haven’t been available before as a tool in DAWs, it's not something new. Any musical genre has its typical structure and patterns for introducing different sounds. 

Structure and Layers

The arrangement pattern contains information about the structure of a song, as well as the movement of energy - illustrated by when in the song different layers of sounds are introduced or removed.

The arrangement pattern suggests the length of the song (number of bars), and how long the different song sections are. The pattern also illustrates how layering the different sounds helps create the movement of energy that you would typically want in each song section.

The layers do have names such as “Chords” or “Arp”, however these are just example sounds. The layers in the arrangement patterns in Song Sketch can be used for any kind of sound that you have in your song idea. You can also assign variations of a sound to a layer in the pattern, such as different chord progressions in verses and choruses or a melody that is introduced gradually.

Integrated with Live, Song Sketch arrangement patterns are essentially simplified models of songs that can be transformed into all sorts of musical pieces, depending on how you like to use it.

Song Sketch Presets

In Song Sketch, arrangement patterns are saved in a template format. You can create your own patterns in Song Sketch either by drawing them, like in a step sequencer, or by importing existing Live projects (Importing is available for Live 11). The device also includes a number of template libraries with presets in different genres (a total of 160+ templates).

The arrangement templates that we create for Song Sketch are made to represent typical structures for different genres.

Below is an example of a simplified arrangement pattern for Melodic House.