Arranging a song (and creating a drum structure)
Let’s create a new song and structure an arrangement using drum groove variations!
Tap on the New Song / + button at the top of Songzap’s Home Screen to name and create your new song. (The New Song pane provides you with options to start from an Arrangement Template, include a Count-in and disable/enable the Drums – leave everything as is to follow the steps in this tutorial.) We’ve named ours: ‘Arrange a Song’. Now tap on the ARRANGE button in the Home Screen, which will take you to Songzap’s ARRANGE page. Here, you can view your song sections horizontally from top to bottom as the song plays, and access many useful features to customise your arrangement and the elements it consists of.
Start by tapping on the tag (name) of the first available BASIC GROOVE section, which opens up the Segment Type menu. Let’s select VERSE from the menu for our first section. Next, tap on ’32’ (the number of bars) at the right of the VERSE segment to open up the Number of Bars menu and select ‘8’. We’ll now repeat the process for the next available (BASIC GROOVE) segment just below, select CHORUS from the Segment Type menu and ‘4’ from the Number of Bars menu. This means we have created a very simple song structure with an eight-bar verse and a four-bar chorus.
Let’s variate the drum pattern for the chorus section. If you long-tap (tap and hold) on the Beat clip of the CHORUS segment*, Songzap will open the Beat designer screen of the GROOVE function (see the Creating a Groove tutorial), where you can modify the drums by: moving the Kick, Snare and Hi-Hat control dots; tapping in the Notation screen to add or remove drum notes; select different drum kits and preset patterns (you can unlock the full Drum Kit sample library by upgrading to Songzap Premium); or change the Hi-Hat sound and add a Crash via the Cymbal Settings menu. Let’s do the latter, switching the Hi-Hat to a Ride (a classic chorus variation) and adding a Crash cymbal every four bars (to signify the entry of the chorus).
* You can also tap the Drum Header icon above the Arrange segments to open the GROOVE’s Beat designer screen. Make sure the blue bar on the left is in front of the intended segment, which you can ensure by tapping to the left of the respective section, or using Songzap’s ‘Next/Previous Section’ transport controls at the bottom of the screen.
Fantastic – we now have a chorus drum variation. Let’s close the Beat pane and extend our arrangement. Tap on the Arrangement Edit button (at the top right of the ARRANGE page), and tap on the ‘–‘ (minus) button (to the left) and then the Delete button (to the right) of any remaining BASIC GROOVE segments to erase them.
Next, tap the Copy Segment button (to the right of the segments) to duplicate the VERSE and CHORUS sections respectively. You can then use the Move Segment button (to the right of the Copy Segment button) to drag the copies down and rearrange the song into a VERSE-CHORUS-VERSE-CHORUS structure. Excellent! Let’s also create an Instrumental break. Add two more CHORUS sections by tapping the Copy Segment button next to the final CHORUS segment twice, exit the Arrange Edit mode by tapping the Arrangement Edit button, and change the penultimate CHORUS segment into an INSTRUMENTAL section.
Let’s make one more drum variation for the Instrumental! Long-tap on its corresponding Beat clip and, once in the Groove’s Beat pane, tap the Cymbal Settings button to open its menu and change the Ride into a Tom.
Congrats! You’ve made your first song arrangement. Press Play and enjoy, and don’t hesitate to modify the drum patterns further to your liking. You now have a great drum map of your song structure, which can inspire you to record music.
