in!  Arrangement is crucial for any good song! 

I think one good way which is not always the right way for a song is the way ill gates has explained it before.  If you have a good idea (lead, drums, pads etc, in a loop) then you can copy paste out through however long you want the track to be with all the basic fundamentals there.  From there you can cut out what you don't want in different sections of the song.  Then you could possibly improvise with different sounds in different sections such as a break or a bridge.  And you could also use effects to help with transitions such as EQ'ing out elements or using delay to roll into a new section.  Obviously this is for a more structured type track where experimenting with arrangement is not a huge focus.  But even with this you can still mess around with arrangement and come up with something cool. 
-Cheers!

P.S. Thanks for starting this Mat!  It will be a great outlet!

Yo!

Arrangement is huge. I try my best to first get a main idea down, usually something along the lines of some chords and some sort of hook / drums. Once I have the main idea I really try to just capture the vibe and "feel it out" as cliche as that may sound. Try and figure out what you're going for and really, just start shooting at it until something sticks. It can always be a huge help to reference songs and I recommend really digging into the music you like, and don't like, and looking at the arrangement. Study what elements help drive the song. Once you get something you're happy with, render it out, open up a blank project and just slice it up and play with the sections. This will help give you a broader view of the arrangement as you're not dealing with individual channels but instead the song as a whole. In the end, if things aren't working out, give it a break, take a walk, change the key, work on a different project. Just push yourself and have faith in the process 

Check out this series, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqVbfC1pCaA&list=PLnYFZbm0f2qsFKq9BvLb4WVax2WDMMnit, always helps me

This is actually very simple, A good thing to do is to download a couple of your favorite tracks and use them as a reference track into your DAW. I don't know about FL, but in Ableton you can set markers and name them. So you can just bring up the track you downloaded onto an audio track in Ableton and analyze the song and mark each section.

Quote from: fungsway on January 06, 2016, 02:28:39 am

This might be of limited application, but I think it's the simplest way to explain it, esp if you're in the stage where you're still stuck in loops. NGHTMRE explains this better in his master class, found on Youtube.



You can essentially treat your fully developed loop as the "drop", and treat the rest of the song as stripped down elements of your "drop". This definitely helps you develop an early stage of continuity. This is definitely something I still struggle with as well.

I really really really like this.  I think visual representations can help a lot.  Thank you so much for sharing this simplified structure.

No problem. I want to believe that everyone here is willing to go the extra mile to help their fellow producer. There's too much animosity in today's music culture and I wanted to do my part in changing that attitude.

As quickly as you can, build out the arrangement. Even if you have sounds that you arent fond of, make sure to finish the idea of the track and then go back in and fix the sounds. Like JPJed above me said, it always helps if you have a reference track where you can mark where each of the sections of the song are. This allows you to not dilly dally around where these 8 bars should go or not etc. Each genre has general guidelines for these elements, it is now our job to push the boundaries and find interesting and engaging variations of them