Negative or subtractive sequence arranging.

Posted August 4th, 2008 by Oliver Chesler
Filed Under: Ableton Live, song writing

I often say that the arrangement is the most important part of a song. For some people it’s also the most difficult task. Anyone can make an incredible short loop but developing it into a 4-5 minute song takes some practice, thought and planning. A trick my friend Miro Pajic uses which he calls “negative arranging” consists of copying every track’s parts across the entire 4-5 minutes. Next, he goes in and deletes parts instead of starting blank and adding clips/parts as he progresses. I don’t personally work this way but I was surprised to see Miro is not alone.

As I was doing my nightly troll though the Ableton forums I came across a post by uber Live geek Tarekith. He posted a link to his guide to song arranging and it’s definitely worth a read. He also uses the “negative arrangement” style but he calls it, “subtractive sequencing”: click to read

This is a technique I call subtractive sequencing, where we start with all the song elements and remove bits and pieces to form the structure of the song. - tarekith.com

Have you ever tried this technique? Personally I fill up Session view with many tracks, clips and scenes and drag them into a blank Arrangement view.

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8 Responses to “Negative or subtractive sequence arranging.”
  1. Chris Randall Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    Interesting, inasmuch as I wasn’t aware there were other ways to go about it. I guess coming from tape-based production techniques, I’ve just copied over mute-group arranging to the modern age. But how he described it in his article is essentially how I write electronic music and always have.

  2. Tom Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    I’ve always written my tunes in this way…. I guess its because I find I need to know where the peak of the tune will be before I start arranging - it kind of establishes a boundary and keeps me focussed on the original idea. If I don’t have a definite idea of what the meatiest bit of the tune will sound like, I just keep piling on the salami until the bread crumbles….

  3. Oliver Chesler Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    I’m definitely going to try the subtraction method this week. Imagine if it cut my arranging time down drastically.

  4. Charles Cushman Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    Great post, I missed this over at ALDJ, I just shared your blog comment back over with them.

  5. Sean Cooper Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am

    i make tracks basically the same way, get the bones of the track finished (the main loop) and then work backwards from that, removing certain elements as i go until i have a beginning.

  6. digitalbeatsyndrome@yahoo.com Says:
    August 4th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Wow. I hope this kills my writers block.

  7. vo1k1 Says:
    August 7th, 2008 at 8:02 am

    Very interesting post. Arrangement and construction are fascinating IMHO. Definitely an area worthy of more discussion. Kudos on the link!

  8. DJ Chima Says:
    October 17th, 2008 at 5:59 am

    I use a similar but different method - loading a scene with all clips I would possibly need, and having the track mutes mapped to my midi controller. That way I’m only working with one scene and I can add and subtract parts with easy keypresses.