Basic Production Guide Feedback

[Layra-chan]

BASIC PRODUCTION GUIDE 0.1

Many fans of electronic music want to not just listen to, but make music. So we download some programs, and buy some hardware, and screw around with knobs and waveforms and samples and routing and all that fun stuff. And it turns out that making good music is hard.

So here, a joint work by anyone who wants to contribute, is a general guide to making, if not great music, at least pretty decent music which can potentially be turned into great music.

We also have a producer's thread where you can post your work and get specific critique and feedback from the other producers on this forum.

Parts of Production/Table of Contents

As a producer, I tend to break production into four main parts:

Composition: Coming up with the usual melody, harmony, and rhythm, but also includes notions like use of non-melodic samples and sounds.

Sound design: Exactly what it says on the tin, designing your instruments, both synth- and sample-based. What should that noise sound like, what kind of instrument should carry the melodic line. Choosing your drum kit.

Structure: Putting those melodies and bits into a larger design, controlling the amount of tension and energy. Something to turn the scenes built during the composition stage into a coherent, interesting narrative. Also dealing with transitions between sections and setting up expectations.

Mixing: Once you've designed all your instruments individually, you need to put them together so that they support each other instead of interfering, so that you, and more importantly the audience, can hear everything.

I'll be breaking up the process into these four pieces, even though really you ought to be doing all four roughly at the same time, interlaced.

[Layra-chan]

COMPOSITION

Say you have a melody. Maybe you thought it up in the shower, maybe you stole it from somewhere, maybe you found it in a box in the attic. Perhaps it's the melody of a song you came up with.
In any case, you have a melody. This is a good start. But you need more than a melody.

In general, you'll also want the following things, to various extents:

Drumline: To support the track and to give a sense of time
Bassline: To support the melody, or perhaps this is what's carrying the melody.
Background: To make your track seem more complete, less empty; also adds depth.
Punctuation: Temporally isolated sounds for catching/diverting attention at crucial moments.

1. Drumline
A lot of electronic music is built upon a percussive rhythm, usually consisting of a kick/bass drum, a snare or clap, and some hi-hats or cymbals. Percussion rhythms are usually divided into four-to-the-floor and breakbeat, but you can alternate between the two if you like, and the terminology certainly isn't so fixed for non-4/4 time signatures.

1.1 Four-to-the-Floor
This is the standard founding rhythm for House, Trance, Techno and most Hardcore. Its defining feature is a kick/bass drum hit every beat, and in general percussive emphasis lands on the beat. Snares commonly, but not always, occur on the 2nd and 4th beat of the bar, and the hi-hats are arranged so that they mainly occupy the space between beats. This rhythm is easy to build upon, but gets boring quickly.

1.2 Breakbeats
The various ___step and ___breaks styles use breakbeats, which, unlike four-to-the-floor, does not have a kick/bass drum hit every beat, and the percussive emphasis often lands between beats. This is classically called syncopation. In breakbeats, the snare/clap plays a more prominent role since it often occurs without a simultaneous kick. Breakbeats range from a simple variant on the four-to-the-floor with some of the kicks moved or removed, to very complicated rhythms with many kick and snare hits appearing in a single bar. Breakbeat rhythms often extend beyond a single bar before looping.
It's less simple to build melodies and basslines upon breakbeats than four-to-the-floor rhythms, but breakbeats tend to go for longer before getting boring.

1.2.1 Breakcore
At the far end of the breakbeat idea is breakcore, wherein the notion of a repeating rhythm has been discarded altogether and percussive emphasis becomes irregular and unpredictable. While often more attention-grabbing than either simple four-to-the-floor or breakbeat rhythms, breakcore is very difficult to make and very difficult to build upon.

2. Bassline

There are two main ways to use a bassline: as a dominant feature of the track, or as a background support.

2.1 Bass as a Dominant Feature
In certain styles of music, such as electro-house, dubstep, or some kinds of drum and bass, the bassline is the main attraction, so you want to make sure it stands out.
Because of the way that harmonics work, it's harder to make good-sounding chords with bass notes, and so one usually doesn't rely on the bassline to carry a complex melodic structure. As a result, composition with regards to the bassline usually focuses on rhythm. But remember that your percussion is also providing a rhythm for the track, so if you don't want your bassline to get lost in your percussion then you'll need to create a new rhythm for the bassline. Ideally, your bassline rhythm and your percussive rhythm should complement each other, doing different but related things. Don't make it too simple or the listener will get bored, but don't make it so complicated that the relationship is lost.

2.2 Bass as a Supporting Feature
If your bass is not supposed to drag the listener's attention to itself, then you'll want to make it quieter and less intrusive. This does not mean that you can be lazy about it; the support of the track is just as important as the hooks and the melodies. If you're working with a four-to-the-floor percussion rhythm, it's easy to just put a bass note on the off-beats, so that you alternate kick-bass-kick-bass etc. This is easy but can get boring. Beats can be easily divided into sets of four sixteenth-notes, and each of those provides a place to put a short bass note. Hence you can make interesting bass rhythms while still avoiding the kicks. The bassline will stand out a bit more, but it won't be dull if the listener's attention happens to wander across it.

3. Background
Even after making a melody, a drumline and a bassline, your track will probably still sound fairly sparse compared to the music you listen to. This is because you're missing the background elements, tiny, thin, barely audible sounds that make your track feel fuller and control the overall tone. Background elements can provide room for variation even when the melody, bassline and percussion are locked into a loop.
Things in the background don't need to have full, developed melodies, nor do they need to be present at all times. Just snippets here and there will be enough to let the listener know that there are things going on and provide an ambiance and atmosphere for the things happening in the foreground.

3.1 Pads
Background pads are often lush and complex, using a lot of LFOs and varying quickly parameters. Usually they vaguely follow the melody but the notes often last half or whole bars, allowing for textural development.
Similarly, you can use sounds with lots of reverb and decay like they were pads, since the echoes draw out the length of the sound.

3.2 Staccato Melodies
Basically the opposite of pads, short rapid notes don't allow for textural development but do provide more room for secondary and tertiary melodies. Again you don't want them to wander too far from the main melody or else they'll stand out too much, but because the notes are short, often sixteenths or even shorter, they fill space without holding the attention.

3.3 Percussive background
In addition to whatever your kick and snare are doing, you could also have a soft shaker or hi-hat rhythm going, again very softly, to fill the space in the percussion just as the pads and staccato melodies fill up the melodic and textural space.

4. Punctuation
So far, everything has been fairly uniform, fairly even in terms of things happening. Your melody is going all the time, your bassline is doing stuff all the time, your drums are doing things all the time, etc. But you don't want absolutely everything to be uniform, or else your loop will sound flat no matter how cool each piece sounds. You need things to pop out every once in a while. These can be percussive elements that you didn't use before, like a rimshot on an offbeat, or a trill from an instrument that isn't used for anything else. You can also use samples, like vocal snippets from movies or speeches, or sounds culled from real life, or short bits from other pieces of music.
Be careful, though; you don't want to break up any momentum that you have going, so punctuation should be both subtle and regular, say, once every two bars, and only slightly more prominent than your background material. Try to keep the bits short or else they'll start becoming the focus rather than simple nuances.

5 Quantization and Swing
If you're creating melodies and rhythms by playing a MIDI keyboard or even plopping down notes in a piano roll, it's easy to miss your timing. Humans are generally mediocre at keeping steady rhythms without prompts. But we are very good at noticing when you screw up. If your rhythm doesn't match the beat, the listener will notice and think it sloppy.
The trick here is to quantize; you tell the program to only allow you to put down notes exactly on beat, or on half beats, or quarter beats, or however closely you want to quantize, and whenever you put down a note, either via midi controller or directly into a piano roll, the program will drag each note to the nearest beathalf-beat/etc. This will prevent you from sounding sloppy and lazy.
For genres such as house or breaks, however, you often don't want your music to sound too mechanical, too precise. The common way around this is to use swing, where the exact placement, volume and accent of your rhythmic elements are varied slightly from uniform. Instead of a hi-hat every sixteenth note, you might make every other hi-hat just a little bit late and a little bit quieter, or you might make your snares just a little bit early or late.
You need to balance the timing so that it doesn't sound like a metronome, but doesn't sound like a mess. For swing, the variations should be just barely noticeable, so that the listener can't say for certain that the timing isn't exactly on beat. You can do this either by setting the quantization timing to be really precise (maybe 1/32 notes) and then adjusting everything by hand, or you could play it live without quantization, but if you choose the latter, again be careful that your timing isn't completely all over the place.

[Evolsine]

SOUND DESIGN


1. Designing instruments:

1. What is an oscillator?



1.1 Saw

The sawtooth wave (or saw wave) is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform. It is named a sawtooth based on its resemblance to the teeth on the blade of a saw.

The convention is that a sawtooth wave ramps upward and then sharply drops. However, there are also sawtooth waves in which the wave ramps downward and then sharply rises. The latter type of sawtooth wave is called a 'reverse sawtooth wave' or 'inverse sawtooth wave'.

1.2 Square

A square wave is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform, most typically encountered in electronics and signal processing. An ideal square wave alternates regularly and instantaneously between two levels.

1.3 Sine

The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation.

1.4 Triangle

A triangle wave is a non-sinusoidal waveform named for its triangular shape.

Like a square wave, the triangle wave contains only odd harmonics. However, the higher harmonics roll off much faster than in a square wave (proportional to the inverse square of the harmonic number as opposed to just the inverse).

2. Basic types of synthesis

2.1 Additive

Additive Synthesis constructs sounds from the ground up by building a complex waveform from it's basic elements. It works by mixing (summing) one or more simple waveforms, such as sine waves, together to create a more complex waveform.

This method of synthesis is theoretically capable of reproducing any sound. This is true because every sound can be broken down into a collection of sine waves. Unfortunately, natural sounds are extremely complex and require a great amount of processing to be recreated accurately.

2.2 Subtractive

Subtractive Synthesis takes a reverse approach to generating sound. It starts out with a waveform rich with harmonics (such as a saw or square wave) and filters it to produce the desired output. This method can be used to effectively recreate natural instrument sounds as well as textured surreal sounds.

3. What is an envelope?

Used in sound synthesis to control the volume, pan, pitch or other attribute of sound over a period of time. ADSR envelopes are the most commonly used type of envelope. They are divided into several segments, Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release.

3.1 Attack

The initial period of a typical Envelope during which a sound's attribute (such as volume) increases from 0 (silence) to it's maximum amount. The length of the attack determines how "soft" or "harsh" a sound is. For example, most drum or percussion sounds have a short amplitude attack time and thus have a sudden "harsh" start. A string sound usually has a long amplitude attack and thus has a "soft" start which eases the sound in.

3.2 Decay

The period of an Envelope during which a sound's attribute (such as volume) stabilizes after the Attack has completed. When the sound attribute reaches the end of it's decay, it has reached the Sustain period.

3.3 Sustain

The period of an Envelope during which a sound's attribute (such as volume) holds at a constant level. The sustain period starts at the end of the Decay period and holds until the Release period is started (usually by a keyboard note release or the end of a "note length" notifier in graphical sequencers). Unlike the other periods of an envelope, the sustain period does not have a slope because it must be capable of holding indefinitely (as long as a keyboard/midi notifier is pressed).

3.4 Release

The final period of an Envelope during which a sound's attribute (such as volume) decreases from the Sustain level to silence. The release period is usually started upon the sending of a RELEASE indicator, whether in the form of the release of a keyboard's note, or from a note_off notice from the sequencer.This period of the envelope defines how a sound finishes off. A long release time causes a sound's attribute to fade away slowly, while a short release time causes it to drop out quickly. When modifying release values, it is up to the producer which end trails of a sound are present longer than others, adding to their distinctive signature sound.

[Layra-chan]

Structure

Having composed your melodies and rhythms and basslines and having chosen and tweaked your instruments, you now have a whole bunch of short (or not so short) loops. Now what?
There are two main ideas to keep in mind when arranging those loops into a track.
The first is that your track needs a balance between what I'll call "coherence" and "contrast", how much part of your track reminds of what happened earlier in the track, and how much it differs.
The second is what your audience expects to happen, and whether you plan to fulfill those expectations or not.

1. Coherence and Contrast

If you take a theme, a melody, a rhythm, a musical idea, and repeat it a dozen times in a row, people will complain that your music is boring. They get acclimated to the theme/melody/whatever and lose interest. Even slight variations, while more interesting that pure repetition, get boring after a while.
On the other hand, if every few seconds you completely change everything, the listener will get irritated. They'll complain that it sounds less like a single track and more like you just shoved a bunch of random things together.
The two things to balance here are coherence and contrast. You need coherence, to glue your track together by having later sound like (or identical to if necessary) earlier parts of the track. You're telling a story; you need to keep the cast of characters somewhat constant. You also need contrast, so that your story actually goes somewhere.

1.1 Establishing Themes
Sometimes you need to repeat a section several times in a row. This is to establish it as a part of the track; things that aren't main melodies or hooks often need to be repeated a few times so that the listener can get used to them. acknowledge them. A steady sense of pace and intensity created by repeating a short section builds a sense of momentum, a sense that "now the track is doing this".

1.2 Development
Once you've got something established, you want to create some variation, changing things so that the track goes somewhere. This is the part where you add or remove instruments, change melodies subtly, change the sound-design parameters over time. Develop and elaborate upon the musical ideas that you've established.

1.3 Differing Sections
Usually simple development isn't enough. Sometimes you want to change everything, such as going into a sudden drop or breakdown, or up into an anthem/chorus. This is good for getting your listener's attention. But just remember that you need to tie back to the main storyline somehow.

1.4 Contour
Just like how your individual sounds have volume and filter envelopes, just as your melodies go up and down in frequency, your track needs to go up and down in intensity. Intensity is a result of many factors, including pace, volume, sonic density and complexity. Generally the chorus is more intense than verse sections, anthems more so than breakdowns. Some genres try to be intense all the time, but like with everything else, if your track is high intensity all the time then it ends up feeling flat. Humans are more attuned to contrast than absolutes, so in order to make any part of your track feel intense, you need parts to be less intense. But if you're bouncing up and down in intensity, it feels choppy and unstable.

2. Expectation
The other side of coherence and contrast, comparing parts to previous parts, is expectation, wherein the listener tries to guess what's going to happen later. If your track goes exactly as the listener thinks it will, then it gets considered predictable, and thus dull. If your track never follows up on the cues you give earlier, then it gets considered illogical or incoherent. So as always, you need balance.

2.1 Tension
Tension is when you set up an expectation and then put off the expected part. If the listener is primed to expect a chorus but instead of following with a chorus you put in something else, you build tension, like a horror movie where you're watching a single, unarmed character walking down a dimly lit hallway. If the listener expects something and wants it to happen, but doesn't know when it's going to happen, the listener's attention becomes more focused on the track. On the other hand, if you delay for too long, then the listener becomes frustrated or bored.

2.2 Transitions
Moving between sections can be tricky. Even if you want a lot of contrast between one section and the next, you often don't want it to be too sharp or else you risk knocking the listener out of whatever mood was being built. So a transition, usually starting somewhere between half a bar and two bars before the change of section, sets up the change by differing from the section currently playing in a noticeable way. This can be via drum fills or introducing a snippet of melody or sound that stands out but doesn't jar like a soft white-noise that grows in volume and pitch.
You can also use them to set up expectation. If you have a buildup transition, like a snare roll or some white-noise with a rising pitch, then listeners will expect a high-intensity section to follow. If you cut a bunch of instruments for the last bar of the section, people will expect that the following section will have less intensity. Some genres like melodic trance use buildups to set up the expectation of an anthem and makes the buildups really long to create tension.
You need to remember contrast, however. If your buildup leads all the way up to or above the intensity of the following section, then the fact that the new section is high intensity gets masked and diminished. You can often use this to create tension, but you have to be careful that the listener doesn't simply get annoyed at the subversion.

[Evolsine]

Mixing: Once you've designed all your instruments individually, you need to put them together so that they support each other instead of interfering, so that you, and more importantly the audience, can hear everything.

V 0.1: Added ideal chapter headings; Added amusing pictures to illustrate points.
Roadmap for V 0.5: Fill everything with info (basic). Crop pictures, formatting for text.

- WHAT IS A MIXER PANEL?

A mixer panel or tab is a software representation or emulation of a hardware mixer. These emulations range from the really simplistic to the extremely accurate. The basic idea behind a mixer console/panel in a software environment is to allow the routing of different source audio to different mixer tracks. These tracks can then be fitted with effect modules, or simply adjusted for volume, pan, and simple EQ using the knobs and sliders.

- Levels: RED IS BAD UNLESS YOU ARE A DEAF GERMAN TECHNO/JUNGLE/HARDCORE producer

Most mixing consoles are now outfitted with some form of LED notification in the real world. This same concept translates to the software realm. If you see your main output, or main mixer channel is consistently displaying red bars, and you are not SPECIFICALLY aiming for this output (the assumption here is that you plan to do extensive post-render/mixdown master work), you should look into ways of lowering the volume/strength of subordinate signals, or simply compressing or limiting the master signal. The former is usually preferable to the latter as it allows much more control over the distribution and ranges of the various sounds than simply reducing the main volume to compensate for over-powering elements.

- Mixer routing: WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING? THE STASI IS MONITORING YOUR SIGNALS!!!!

Ideally, the simplest routing in real hardware terms is from any device (sampler, digital audio device, drum machine, synthesizer, vocoder, effects rack etc) to any other device that can support the continued flow, or simply accept (for recording purposes) the signal being sent. In a software environment, this means the sending of a signal is from a virtual instrument/module to another or directly to the mixer. There, a specific track/channel will be dedicated to either effecting, controlling, or otherwise re-routing this signal to another track/channel/instrument. This kind of routing is most evident and most visually enjoyable in programs like REASON.

- Mixer leveling *** Not everything needs to be compressed/limited just to fit it into the mix. Level sliders exist for a reason. This is just like cooking.

Even Martha Stewart uses a mixer properly. Have you tried her acid cookie mix 2009? In any case, the sliders that are by default present in the mixer tab/console/panel are immediately useful in applying mix altering changes to your tracks. If something is too loud, try lowering the volume slider, if its too centralized in the mix, use the pan knob, if its simply monopolizing a WHOLE range of sound, and your particular mixer has a simple British or other EQ enabled, simply do a quick edit to see if further PRECISION EQING will have the effect you desire.

- Effects chains: These can span as many channels and as many effects as your processor/sound card/system can handle.

This is a term applied to what would occur if you were asked "What is affecting SIGNAL X to sound like OUTPUT Y?" This is the order of effect modules which are applied to any given signal sent through the mixer panel. Rerouting the altered signals around the various mixer channels and using sends allows complex and automated instances of alterations to be applied to any given signal chain.

- Side chaining: A bicycle has a side chain, it must mean some form of connection between two gears? Here is a man attempting side chaining in the real world:

Sidechaining takes one sound and uses it to manipulate another sound. Most often you will see it on compressors, gates, limiters, and expanders. However, it can also be found on vocoders, synthesizers, and other effects. It is a really, really useful feature on compressors and gates because it allows you to place multiple instruments in the same frequency range without clashing. Or, more succinctly, it can make your mix sound really good.

MORE: http://sonictransfer.com/side-chain-compression-tutorial.shtml

- Knowing the spectrum ranges of particular instruments: Ja ja geten zee banden up and playiiiing! Zer fuher is coming unt I want the - - the - - KLAAAAUUSS VAT IS THAT TUBA DOING HERE? DER FUHRER WANTED SHRANZZZZ!!



- The simple explanation of the EQ: Thew great equalizer. In our case it is just like Rambo killing countless enemies with numerous deadly arsenals, except we kill frequencies, and he kills extras:

This is my Equalizing face. It should be yours too.
Filtering

Filtering means completely cutting out a frequency from a certain frequency. Filters cutting out the low or high frequency are the most common, and are called either High-pass filters/Low Cuts or Low-pass filters/High-cuts.

Other filters include band-pass filters and notch filters who either only leave the desired frequency and cuts all the other(band-pass) or completely cuts out one certain frequency(notch)

Boosting/Enhancing

Repairing problematic sounds are done with subtractive EQ, meaning that you find the problem frequency and cut down on it either completely eliminating it or reducing it until it ceases to be a problem.

Repairing/Cutting

Sometimes recorded instruments need a bit more shine in the mix. Adding to certain key frequencies in a sound source can make them more present or add certain characteristics to the sound source. Examples include adding a lot of 2-4 Khz for a metal-type kick drum or 5 Khz to make the vocal more present.

SOURCE: http://www.audio-production-tips.com/EQ-principles.html

- + VST? This is a plugin. Here is the Vatican, it plugs into the whole notion of a Christian faith.

- + Hardware?
- - + HI? LOW? MID? BAND?
- - + A snappier snare and a fuller kick
- Compressor? Limiter?
- Distortion is a friend I visit often. The other friends are like these:

- The problem with repetition and the human mind (you can only work on one section for so long before it becomes too much for your to discern right from wrong. Take a break, drop the track and go see some real life people)

- Mixing THEN Mastering: Realizing the audio engineers are only Audio Wizards of level 10 or below. They have yet to learn "mind reading" and "********" spells to any decent level.

- What ? MY HEDPHONES ARE NOT GUD FOR MACHING DIE TACHNO?: Use monitor or any sort of well balanced audio setup (not shitty pc speakers) for figuring out whether your mixdown is actually going to the listenable side of things. If its listenable, the masses will rise up and ... dance. Hell, even Lenin is excited!

[Placeholder]

Laylay: Do you need to adjust the order of our content in the OP? Or are we going to simply shift post information around to align with the OP?

[Layra-chan]

I'll rearrange the stuff in the OP to suit. Doin' that now.

And now that we've gotten the big sections out of the way, other people can comment on what we have/should have.

[LittleSpaceCase]

I don't completely understand what was said about mixing.

[Evolsine]

Taliesiin

I don't completely understand what was said about mixing.

I haven't said anything about it in any depth yet. I wasn't expecting the guide to be released so soon! Its just a breakdown of topics I will discuss with amusing pictures to help a user visualize the processes involved.

[Layra-chan]

Evolsine

Taliesiin

I don't completely understand what was said about mixing.

I haven't said anything about it in any depth yet. I wasn't expecting the guide to be released so soon! Its just a breakdown of topics I will discuss with amusing pictures to help a user visualize the processes involved.

Errr....I wouldn't really consider it released. It just got raised to the top of the page. I'll fix the title.

[Zegim]

So, if I want to contribute with stuff about reason, should I do it here?

If so, how the hell? I'm not sure how long it would take dramallama

EDIT Let's see how this turns out:

Reason

Reason is a DAW that aims to emulate the look and feel of a hardware rack of audio equipment; It looks like one, with modules stacked in a virtual rack, and it feels like one because the way to make things run is pretty much the same you would use working with hardware.

The Windows - The enviroment you’ll be using.

The first thing you need to know when working with Reason is how to make sense of what are you looking at. The work flow of Reason is very visual if you will, you can easily understand what’s going on paying attention to what you see, and what you see is what you get, with very few things hidden from plain sight.

You window will look, at first, more or less like this:

Click to enlarge

You can click this little button...

... and undock the Sequencer window from the Rack Window. That way you have this:

Click to enlarge

And this:

Click to enlarge

Notice the words Rack and Sequencer. The Rack is where your devices are and where you make connections. The Sequencer is where you put notes and create automation clips. At the bottom of both windows you have the playback controls and the Regroove mixer. We’ll come back to those later.

Optionally, you can have this floating around:

Click to enlarge

Now, back to the Rack Window. Press the Tab key in you keyboard. You’ll see this, the place where the magic happens:

Click to enlarge

[Evolsine]

Zegim

So, if I want to contribute with stuff about reason, should I do it here?

If so, how the hell? I'm not sure how long it would take dramallama

YOUR POST IS NOW....(drumroll)...THE OFFICIAL REASON COMPONENT! You just apply all the aspects we discuss generally in how they apply to reason. Take your time. START WITH THE REAL BASICS:

1. How reason make noise?
2. How melody is maeEEEEK?
3. How drums?
4. WHAT? A MIXER? HAS U A MIXAAAR?? REASONABLY MIXED MIXERS?
5. etc

(I cant sleep, so its now UNGRISH TIME)

[Wrath of Karma]

Subscribed for the sake of win.

[xPOISON_FREEx]

Koumaru

Subscribed for the sake of win.

******** YEAH

[Layra-chan]

For those who care about citations and crap, my section on arrangement is basically going to be entirely paraphrased from Kim Lajoie's blog. He calls it structure; perhaps I should as well, considering that arrangement in terms of music does have a slightly different meaning.

[xPOISON_FREEx]

Layra-chan

For those who care about citations and crap, my section on arrangement is basically going to be entirely paraphrased from Kim Lajoie's blog. He calls it structure; perhaps I should as well, considering that arrangement in terms of music does have a slightly different meaning.

That might be a good idea.
Arrangements in music usually refer to a physical arrangement on sheet music and stuff right?