The way my band does stuff, since we're very prog and write songs that end up at like 9 minutes without effort, is pretty detailed.
I often write riffs and progressions in groups of 2-10 passages that work together. Once I have enough material to show I bring it up to the studio and we jam on the ideas, usually just me and 1 of the other members. Once some of the ideas are fleshed out we start breaking the whole thing down. For the drummer I'll write all the time signatures out, and for general memorization we name every single riff and the number of times we play it, as well as any notes on forms/variations. So a section of a song, written up on the whiteboard, will look like:
Planet puncher (6/4) x 4
COMWP (4/4, 7/4, 5/4) x 4
Punched into Spess (7/4) x 2
Spess Plucks (3:4 polyrhythm) x 8/6
Spess Jazz (5/4, 4/4) x 2
And so on, with as much detail as possible. We'll note key changes and such as well. We work on lyrical content on and off with the music as well, since it's all conceptual and we're basically using every section of the song as a storytelling device.
Ahahaha! I love this! This has to be one of the most unique methods of arranging I've ever heard. If you're playing prog then I definitely have to give you props. I'm a fan of guys like plini, sithu aye, animals as leaders, and dream theater so I DEFINITELY understand how complex it must be to write music like that. The structure is usually all over the place and it doesn't help that the time signatures are generally just as complex.
I've never thought of trying your method of arrangement. I feel like it would work well in a rock band environment. I dont think It wouldn't work as well in an EDM environment only because the instrumentation isn't nearly as consistent. In a rock band you're always going to be dealing with the same instrumentation "guitar, bass, drums, synth" which makes it easier to incorporate your method. In dance music you have to deal with instrumentation changes during the actual track.
As far as the actual "glueing together" of passages how would you say that process works out for you guys? For example....
Planet puncher>punched into spess
Vs
Planet puncher>COMWP
Do you repeat the sections at all?
Planet puncher>punched into spess>planet puncher
I'm assuming if you're using vocals in your arrangements there has to be some form of repetition in the melody no?