When it comes to arranging tracks, we rely on expected structural elements. In pop and rock music, that’s verses and choruses, in dance music a drop, build-up and breakdown. These give the listener recognisable elements to latch onto and us songwriters things we can build towards. As with any expected musical forms, there’s a wealth of potential in subverting or completely abandoning these.
At their most experimental, genres like noise, drone and ambient tend to eschew song structure altogether. Listen to the work of ambient greats like William Basinski or Stars of the Lid and you’ll hear that tracks tend to put far more emphasis on subtle shifts in tonality and texture than definable structure.
While much of ambient music is beatless, there are examples of artists taking similar approaches…
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Future Music (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2023