This is kind of a broad question so I'll explain what I mean. Been trying to learn to write music through playing, learnint theory, and using thay theory to analyze music. I'd say I know the basics, nothing too fancy. What I get really confused over though it how songs are actually arranged.

I know music is made of chords and melodies, and it's really easy to understand with more simple music like someone strumming a guitar with a melody, but what I immediately have a hard time understanding what's going on when it gets to more complex layered music. I'll hear all these layers and instruments dancing around, interacting with each other, flowing, and I don't understand the thought process behind the arrangement. Especially when the melodies start mixing in multiple note harmonies occasionally.

I understand that theory isn't rules, and chords melodies are more fluid, I am just having a hard time figuring out how to internalize and understand more complex music. Especially music that does seem to follow the standard rules and approach (not saying it actually doesn't, but I can't see how to connect it to what I know easily)

Theory has been such a helpful too to understand and learn from what's happening in music, but I am having trouble bridging that gap between basic chord and melodies, to more fluid music.

I know that really you can just add in whatever layers playing whatever you want because there's no "rules"

But I don't want to be just trial and error pushing through, I want my learning to be understanding, not just doing. I want to understand what each layer is doing when I find these pieces I like that have like 8 layers, or even crazier stuff like orchestral pieces where theres tons and tons of layers, and things and zooming around, intertwining, making greta harmonies, etc.

tldr; how do I learn to understand more complex pieces when I have been approaching music from a chords melodies angle.

Any advice is appreciated, just looking to correct my learning process :)