We’ve all been there with loops: you spend hours putting together an on-point groove in your DAW, complete with a sublime harmonic progression, an unforgettable hook and all the rest of it… and then get completely stuck when it comes to deconstructing said four-, eight- or 16-bar loop and stretching it out into a full and finished track. It’s an issue every fledgling dance and electronic music producer comes up against at some point, and, indeed, some would say that the ability to overcome it is what makes the difference between being able to call yourself a ‘beat maker’ and an actual producer.

Here are five tips to help you liberate your loops and get those choons to the mixing stage.

Great artists steal…

Perhaps the easiest way to expand a multitrack loop into a fully developed track is to copy the layout of a proven commercial release that you like. Analyse its arrangement and development (visualise it by drawing it on paper, DAW arrange page-style), find equivalent parts to each element of it in your loop, then simply map those parts our to recreate the ‘shape’ of the track with your own sounds. You don’t have to cover every sound, of course, but do be aware of what each one in the track you’re copying brings to the party, and make sure anything vital has some sort of equivalent in your project.

Not only is this an effective technique for turning loops into arrangements, but it’s also a hugely educational exercise for the newcomer to production, providing general insight into musical structure and form.

Start at the end

Assuming your multitrack loop represents the ‘all in’ stage of your track – ie, the dense climactic section in which all the elements play together – you already have everything you need to build the skeleton of an arrangement. All you need to do is take parts away to define each section of it. Copy your loop out in the arrange page for four or five minutes to create a solid block of clips, then work backwards from the ‘all in’ section (or forwards towards it from the start if you prefer), thinning out sections as you go to create verses, choruses, builds, drops, etc. You’ll still need to apply filtering and effects automation, and add in risers, spot FX and other ancillary elements, but with the bones of the arrangement in place, that process becomes a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

Let your DAW do the hard work

Upon its launch in 2001, no one could possibly have predicted what a game-changer Ableton Live’s Session View would turn out to be for live computer-based performance, but it – and the equivalent systems integrated into many other DAWs since – also offers a fantastic way to to turn multitrack loops into fully realised tracks. The Session View is essentially a non-linear interface for triggering individual loops and multi-loop Scenes in perfect sync with Live’s clock, and, crucially, everything you do within it can be recorded directly into the Arranger View as a regular arrangement, which can then be finessed if required, and embellished with effects, live automation edits and so on.

If the idea of building tracks in real time by jamming around with loop elements, as opposed to manually copying and moving them around on a timeline, appeals (which, for dance music producers especially, it should), Live’s Session View, Bitwig’s Clip Launcher, Cubase’s Arranger Track, Logic Pro’s Live Loops, Maschine’s Ideas View, etc, are well worth getting to know.

Work with what you’ve got

If you’re struggling to keep a sufficiently layered loop sounding consistently interesting when stretched out into an arrangement, resist the temptation to just pile on further new parts in order to differentiate between similar sections, and instead come up with variations on the parts you already have. Less is more, as they say.

Your DAW’s MIDI and audio editors, and your library of plugin instruments and effects, open up endless possibilities here, from subtle timbral shifts to transformative reconfigurations and voicing changes. Arpeggiate the MIDI notes of a synth pad and shorten the synth’s envelope in the chorus, for example; switch to a different drum kit and bass instrument after the drop, or double them up with new layers; halve the tempo of the rhythm section in the verse, or go for a key change; change to a different synth for the second appearance of your focal lead line; harmonise the vocal for the second chorus… you get the picture.

Double up

When you’re really struggling to spin a loop out into a meaningful track, why not mix things up with the introduction of a whole second loop? This could be a previously abandoned project, or an entirely new one, and while, of course, the two will need to be compatible in terms of key, tempo and general character, beyond that, the magic may well lie in the contrasts between them.

You can either merge and mix up the constituent parts of the two loops throughout the track, letting them boil down to a single new loop if that works; or deploy them as separate discrete sections for a mid-arrangement switch-up. Be careful not to let the arrangement get too dense, though – ultimately, the idea is for the end result to sound like one cohesive entity, not two disparate tracks forced together.