Q: Hi Bill, I recently wrote a full song (Chords, melody, lyrics, tempo, form) and I've started recording it. The problem is I'm really struggling with fleshing out the arrangement. So far I've recorded temp piano, guitar, and vocals.I feel like the song doesn't have any peaks and valleys, the verse chorus and bridge all feel at the same energy level. Maybe this is a writing or performance issue? I don't know what order to work on stuff e.g. should I have started with drums? I also don't know what sounds to use to fill out the arrangement? I'm just sitting in front of my computer scrambling to get anything that works, I spent all day yesterday working on it and all I achieved was one tiny counter melody part on vibraphone. I also don't know where these other parts should land and how to not make it sound too busy and cluttered. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I love the arrangements on your songs because they are so detailed and intricate and I love th
 e variety of tones and timbres you use. Thanks!
A: i think i have the ultimate solution for this, because i think i've been through this exact same scenario before. and i can safely say that the only way i know how to solve this is to start with much much much shorter songs. Ultimately i feel like i didn't start making good progress on this until i actually started writing songs that were as short as 1 second. Then i started to watch all the necessary concepts and procedures take shape easily. and then you can gradually work your way up to longer songs after that. Starting with something full length is gonna be way too many huge unknown variables at the same time