We've all been there. You have a killer 8 or 16 bars looping around in your DAW but when it comes to building the rest of the track around it, it’s not as simple as it first appears and you wind up with a repetitive sounding track.

The problem is that simply repeating the same loop over and over throughout the length of the track and dropping audio channels in and out doesn’t make for an interesting or exciting track and is more likely to send your listeners to sleep than get them on the dance floor.

For this hour presentation, a professional producer, apple certified mastering engineer and author of the award winning textbook, the dance music manual, discusses and walks you through the basic concepts behind creating and arranging a complete song from an example 16 bar loop.

Originally presented at the Audio Engineering Society convention, Electronic Dance Music co-Chair, Rick, discusses the importance of starting with a basic sound-set and why moving to the arrangement earlier than you might first imagine can be advantageous. He then walks through the techniques he uses to create energy with techniques such as development, recapitulation and contour in order to build anticipation in your listeners and maintain their interest.