Arranging Techniques: Pitch and Time

Melodies, chords, bass lines, and drum parts – these are the musical elements that students most often work with to create song arrangements in a lab. Variations in both pitch and time, however, can be used as creative tools for enhancing songs and producing dynamic arrangements. In this article I want to describe how to create different effects by changing the tempo as well as by transposing beat-sliced loops found in software programs such as Acid (Sony), Reason (Propellerhead), GarageBand (Apple), and Mixcraft (Acoustica).