- spin backs & air horns
srsly tho...
- drum fills/drops (adding fills, dropping out/muting drums and end of measures)
- risers & filter sweeps; effects sweeps (delay/reverb washouts & feedback etc.)
- creating room at the end of a pattern with mutes/fades so the new one comes in with new energy or conversely, building up a lot of energy at the end of a pattern and bringing in the new pattern slowly
- mute/unmute tracks between the 2 sequences until you find which combination works well enough you can switch between sequences without things clashing i.e. playing one pattern and slowly muting/fading tracks out, then switching to new pattern with tracks muted and then unmuting/fading them in
- sometimes you have 2 good ideas that just kinda sound like one idea, but really, they aren't. it's okay to work on two different projects with the same sounds. just call them 'remixes' or 'ver 1.XX' or whatever lol. it's also okay to scrap one idea if the other feels stronger
- energy levels. you might be going from one part that's low energy to something that's really high energy. maybe something really loud to quiet. fast to slow. without an appropriate transition, this will sound bad
- i think in terms of: intro, outro, build up, wind down, verse 1, verse 2, chorus 1, chorus 2, , breakdown, bridge. if i want to make it even simpler: beginning, end, the hook and like one other part. a lot of the time i just start making patterns and figuring out where they fit. point being, sometimes you're trying really hard to force an intro into being the chorus, maybe what you want for the chorus isn't working because the beat is better for the verse, maybe a lead sound that if muted in a certain pattern, that pattern would now make sense and would be easier to transition in/out of
MPC 1000 w/jjOS, Elektron Octratrack, Korg EX-8000 & MS-20 Mini, Behringer Neutron, E-mu E6400 Ultra, circuit bent Roland TR 505, Mackie 1604 VLZ3, Electrix Filter Factory, delays & compressors