These beat tapes are all different lengths, as you may have noticed, and I love that about them. It is just the result of putting together beats that were made at the same time, and often for one purpose or with one thought in mind, or sometimes just to kick the tires on a new drum machine or bid farewell to one I decided to part with.
This tape is a buffet style arrangement most of the way through, but I think Cerebro at the end may be different. With each beat I make, I basically set the formula in advance, then execute the formula for however many experiments feel right, and then I arrange the loops that came out of that. This can follow one of two paths, mainly.
In one approach I stack on loops of various lengths for a 16-32 bar overall loop, right until the point when I feel I have added one too many layers. Then I copy that hughe sandwhich of loops several times, and mute different instruments on each copy to make as many viable sub-arrangements as I can. That is the method with both a traditional arrangement and what I call a "dynamic" or theatrical style arrangement. The only difference is that with a dynamic arrangement every single layer is set to play for a length that coresponds to how much I think that part is good or valuable.
In the second approach, instead of stacking all my loops to make sure they all work together, the buffet approach benefits equally from a loop transitioning smoothly or suddenly to the next part, so I use one group of instruments just like before, but I make 3-5 mostly unrelated loop ideas from the same instruments, then I break down each of those for a drum dominant loop, a melody dominant loop, and the full mix. Then I link the unrelated beats into one song like train cars, by making a melody breakdown to another meoldy breakdown or a drum breakdown into another drum breakdown. To the undiscerning ear it feel like a series of sugdden bridges, but a vocalist can scan these beats and discover several completely different loops that the intro in no way preempted.
I told you, this is Advanced Placement at this point. This may only be a three-beat tape, but it is in the same culdesac of discussion, where we will be talking about the next tape, that features multiple beat makers with other methods, such as the "loop flip" arrangement style of Au.Dios.Bass, where the beatmaker alters a single looping sample with various glitchy turntable-inspired effects. That beat tape is called Jampire Sucks, which is an ode to our homie the rapping vampire, Des. On that compilation beat tape you will get to expereince all the arrangement styes that I am familiar of, as well as individual variations on each arrangement style.