I recently picked up a copy of Zen and the Art of Mixing written by Mixerman, I highly recommend it for everyone it's a good read.

Anyways he talks a lot about arrangement decisions coming from the point of a mixer. Although not all his points apply towards electronic production, I thought he did dish out some good tips as far as what makes songs successful. Basically he stresses the functions of 5 elements of the song:

(1) Melody:

-This is the main focus of the song (obviously) and is more often than not placed center in the mix and is among the loudest elements

(2) CounterMelody:

-A subordinate melody to the main focus of the track, it serves to contrast the main melody and support it, never to take away focus. Often times the countermelody works opposite to the automation of the main melody. When the main melody goes up in pitch the countermelody will drop down, when the main melody drops out the countermelody comes in etc.

(3) Rhythm:

-For us this will be the bass and drums. What I thought was helpful from the book was a mention of internal Rhythm. This is the rhythm that moves us in between the main kick and snare hits. These are the hihats, percussion etc. and they serve to provide a secondary rhythm for the track that works with the main rhythm, similar to melody and countermelody.

(4) Harmony:

-Harmonic support for the melody. These could be underlying chord progressions, white noise or a multitude of other mixing decisions that help our ears reach satisfaction with the melody playing as well as the drums we hear.


I hope this begins to help some of you in arranging decisions. It's hard at first but once these are ingrained into your brain it really does help to start producing cohesive melodies. And again I'd recommend picking up a copy of the book there are other jewels inside