Scenes are a collection of your sample, drum and instrument sequences.

They can be considered a vertical slice of your song - whereas when we start arranging in song view, this is the horizontal version of your song.

Scenes in Serato Studio can be considered the building blocks that allow us to create variations, and ultimately build towards making a finished beat or song.

Scenes start by having a default scene called ‘Intro’. Let’s add some variations to this:

●  Click on the + icon adjacent to the ‘Intro’ scene - this will copy the Intro scene into Scene 2, and name it as ‘Scene 2’.

●  Now any changes to Drums, Samples, and Instruments in ‘Scene 2’ will differentiate it from your ‘Intro’ scene.

●  Note: You can add an empty slot by hovering below the ‘copy’ icon.

●  Now, simply click on the different scenes and as the currently playing Scene finishes it will jump to the next selected scene.

Practical Task

Quick scene variations

This exercise should take no more than five minutes with your students.

For this exercise, use the blank “Make a beat” template.

Student Steps:

1. Take 1 minute to quickly construct a beat in a drum deck in a genre of their choice (with appropriate BPM) - they may use the “make beats” function

2. Take 2 minutes to add at least two other elements (Sample deck / Instrument deck)

3. Once they have populated some drum and sample elements to their intro scene, they should copy these to scenes 2 and 3, and create minor variations in each of these scenes

4. Allow 1 minute for playback, jumping between each different scene

Tip: If you hit ‘Shift’ and number 1-8, Serato Studio will select the associated Scene to play next.

Scenes in Arrangement

As mentioned, Scenes are the building blocks of your song, as such once you are happy with what you have in a collection of scenes, then it’s time to build these into your arrangement.

The simplest way to do this is click on song view to simply drag the scenes into an order that you desire.

Practical Task

Quick arrangement

This exercise should take no more than two minutes with your students.

For this exercise, use the existing beat the students started earlier.

Student Steps:

1. Get students to click on ‘Song View’ so they can see the arrangement page

2. Get the students to quickly drag and drop the Scenes they have created into any order of their choice on the Song View page

3. Allow students to quickly experiment with duplicating Scenes (short cut: Command D) to extend their Songs

Note: Editing for your scenes will take you back to the individual scenes view - you are not able to change the length of a scene within the song view.