Analysing arrangement and structure

ewal

I've been reading a bit about songwriting and arrangement, and the advice regularly given is to listen to lots of tracks you like and analyse the arrangement (fairly obviously). This is something I've always been meaning to do as regular homework - take apart a track I like, working out the structure, length of sections, what each instrument is doing in each section, and making a note of it. I also have thought about using a spreadsheet template to note down all the arrangements.  But then I never seem to get round to it... I've also found that there are loads of youtube videos about electronic music arrangement, but I've yet to find anything useful for guitar music.

Just wondering if anyone has spent any significant time analysing arrangements, and if so how you went about it.

Roland

Being in a covers band I average one song per week. To do this is use a word processor, and set up a table with two columns. The first column is about an inch wide, and used to identify Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Mid 8, Solo etc. The second column fills the rest of the page width, and is used for chords, lyrics, score segments, and odd notes. The advantage of the word processor over a blank sheet of A4 is that you can insert, delete and copy/paste. 

Where something needs scoring out I use Powertab, then cut and past screen captures into the word processor document. There are other software packages for Windows, Apple and Unix. I stick with what I'm used to because it means I can always open old files, for example if I need to transpose or add another instrument. 

The main steps to analysing a song are:
1. Identify the verse chorus structure
2. Work out what key it's in, and then what the chords are

Is this useful? I could write more, but I've got work to do

octatonic

Yes, I do it all the time- when I learn songs.
It has limited usefulness doing it as an exercise by itself imho.

This is where learning the Nashville number system will be a massive advantage.

DulcetJones

I did it the same way Roland wrote about above, and once I saw what the basic patterns for rock'n'roll, blues and lots of pop music were I noted it and used it to degree, but being a restless type I soon discovered prog, and classical and even a bit of jazz and realized there are no solid rules and I wanted to be different.  Knowing these patterns helps when you're playing covers but I like composing, and exploring different ways to create music.  So, now I almost never do verse, verse, chorus etc...., not everybody's thing but I like it.

ewal

I guess my interest in this stems from the fact that I mainly attempt to write instrumental music, therefore traditional song structures don't really apply (although sometimes do). I also find a lot of my tunes don't live up to the promise I felt the original riff had. So I'd like to understand more about how bands I admire go about developing ideas, structures and arrangements. I know there's no shortcuts, I'd just like to have a few structures and arrangement ideas that might help me develop a tune to demo quality more efficiently.

The last time I attempted this I had a listen to the song Quiet by This Will Destroy You and ended up with this:

http://imgur.com/tPfCLbP

Think it would be more useful to lay it more like how a track would appear in a DAW.