Sometimes, the best way to avoid choice paralysis when working on music is to imagine you’re writing with an imaginary group in mind, or maybe an actual group if you’re inspired by their specific sound, but for my purposes here, let’s go with an entirely pretend group of musicians.

So, let’s imagine they’re a pretty standard configuration of rock band: two guitars, bass, and drums. This track does have more than two guitars in it, but with only one exception, they’re intended to be compressible down to just two guitars, so the song could, in theory, be played live, albeit with some pedalwork to get the different sounds.

(link the VOD)

But while it’s fun to do this exercise literally, and actually arrange a rock song for a rock band, it can work with electronic music as well. Think of the parts of the song, rhythm, harmony, melody, bass, percussion, ambiance, etc, and the imaginary musicians who specialize in each department.