Tag Archives: beat

Get My Name by Mark Ballas

Mark Ballas_Cover.600x600-75Musician Mark Ballas has hit the scene with a great new song called Get My Name. Get My Name features a terrific groove, a 122 bpm tempo, and is perfect for your next jazz or tap dance routine. Squirrel Trench offers three original remix-edit versions of this fun song at lengths of 2:45, 2:30, and 2:00. These unique remixed and edited versions do not exist anywhere else, and are only available from Squirrel Trench Audio via Legitmix.

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

Break a leg this dance season, and fill out a form if you need a custom music edit or remix.

Pom Routine for 1852 Dance

Cheerleading_Pom_Pom_Wet_Look_00036-2Just got finished creating a custom pom routine remix for a dance teacher in Lexington, Tennessee. This fun remix was just under two minutes in length, and featured five songs with spiced-up rhythms and beats, all at a tempo of 142 Beats Per Minute (BPM). I hope the studio has great results with it! If you need custom music for a Pom routine, just send an email! Here’s what Whitney had to say about the finished mix:

“Thanks Morriss! I love it!!!! You will definitely have a repeat customer! Thank you for giving so much attention to the details- you created a lot of depth with this piece of music.”
– Whitney Durham, Nov 6, 2013
1852 Dance, Lexington, Tennessee

Michael Jackson for tap dance routines

It’s been quite busy for music remixes and edits over the past several weeks. One of the latest requests is a Michael Jackson song re-edited/remixed for a 7-year-old tapper, with a duration of 2:20 for the routine. Michael Jackson was an amazing musician, singer, dancer and entertainer. Pretty much every one of his songs has a catchy beat and great structure. He is one of my favorite artists for music editing and remixing.

After completing and uploading the latest MJ remix for the tap routine, the dance parent had this to say upon first listen:

“Oh my goodness, this is PERFECT!! You are a genius! Thanks so much!”

It’s great to know that another tapper will have a spectacular remix to dance with. When you are ready for flawless music which is a cut above the rest for your next dance routine, just let me know.

Feet Don’t Fail Shaun Now

Shaunessey Tap ChampionI am beaming proud of Shaunessey for her best performance to date… which garned her being awarded the Number One tap routine in her age category, as well as the First Place soloist in the 9-11 age category at this weekend’s StarPower regional competition in Springfield MA. I could not be more proud! Choreography by Lesley Weber. Music by Rhythmic Circus; much love to them for sending me the Minus-Taps mix from their amazingly tapalicious FDFMN song!

Determine the tempo first

Here’s a tip that will make all of your music edits (or cuts) much, much easier.

I just got an emergency assignment to edit a popular remix/dubstep song down to the routine length of 2:30. The dance teacher just couldn’t make it happen. This is very understandable; there are a lot of echoes and the dynamic range is pretty compressed, making it difficult to make out the downbeat in the waveforms.

However, if you start your editing projects by determining the tempo, and then lining up the downbeats to the tempo grid, doing the edits becomes a piece of cake. I am almost embarrassed to say that by lining up the music to the tempo grid, I had about 8 seamless cuts done in about 15 minutes. Boom, done, because I determined the tempo was exactly 140 bpm before starting to make transition points.

Not every music edits goes that quickly. Freeform jazz, or any music done without a click track can be really tricky to edit seamlessly. But for modern dance music, figuring out the tempo first can make the difference between hours and hours of waveform alignment (and still not getting it right), and a perfect precision job that is done in minutes.

If you are tired of pulling your hair out trying to get your music cuts to be seamless, send me an email instead. Let me know the name of the song and the length that you need the finished piece to be, and I’ll make it happen for you for only $39!

Songs for Tap Dance, part 2

Below are some more song ideas for your next masterpiece of tap choreography. These will work for competition or recital. If you have other great song ideas, leave them in the comments below and I’ll add ’em! If you want to use any of these songs and need them edited perfectly for competition, we’d love to serve it up for you. Also, we have song suggestions for JazzContemporaryLyricalMusical Theater, and Kid Friendly Hip Hop. And here are even more songs for tap, and Songs for Tap, Part 1 and Part 3.

Jukebox – Mara and David

Trashin’ the Camp – Town Criers

PJ & Rooster – OutKast

Mighty Mighty – Earth Wind & Fire

Tightrope – Stevie Ray Vaughn

Right Now – Pussycat Dolls

Scatman – Mark’ Oh

Need a song edited or cut to dance routine length? Check out the form here.

Get more taptastic Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

Find even more tap songs here, and Songs for Tap, Part 1 and Part 3.

Top 5 song editing mistakes

I just got back from a spectacular regional dance competition, where my original remix Pixie Hollow premiered. The dancers were truly spectacular and brought a tear to my eye. I can’t wait to see them perform it again in two weeks.

It was truly a pleasure to watch so many fantastic dances, and hear the wonderful music that the dance teachers had chosen for their students. I could see how much hard work had gone into each number to bring it to fruition on stage.

Being a musician and not a dancer, I paid special attention to the music, and how the dance and music worked together in the performances. I was very happy to hear no major squirrel trenches in any of the songs I heard. However, I couldn’t also help but notice that there were minor glitches in the music editing of many songs. So in my quest to help eliminate bad music edits from all dance competitions, I present to you the top 5 music editing mistakes I hear in songs played at competition. In subsequent posts, I will explain in detail how you can avoid each one. While most judges won’t deduct points for these mistakes, any one of them takes away from the musicality of the dance that you are striving for. Any of these mistakes takes attention away from the dancer and makes the performance less enjoyable to watch.

1. Awkward fade out

2. Mis-matched phrase edit

3. Abrupt cut

4. Drop-out edit

5. Frozen statue intro

Let’s discuss the first two in a bit more detail. Again, future blog posts will explain more about each one of these pitfalls, and more importantly, exactly how to avoid them in your own music editing.

The awkward fade out (and its cousin, the abrupt ending) is by far the most common music editing mistake I hear in dance competitions. It’s easy to understand why it happens. You find a great song, and virtually all popular songs are too long for competition. So what is the easiest thing for a time-pressed dance teacher to do? Fade it out at the proper length for competition. But while it’s easy to do this, it’s very much worth the time to avoid this practice. With the awkward fade out, your dancer is usually left either holding their ending pose or begins to exit the stage, while the auditorium falls into silence. The audience doesn’t start applauding and cheering because they aren’t sure that the performance has actually ended. There’s nothing worse for your performers’ self-confidence than the nervous silence, followed by the too-late applause created by the awkward fade out. Often these strange fade-outs occur in middle of a verse or some other equally unexpected point in the song. As I’ve said in an earlier blog post, if your song has a clear ending, use it. [Update: Here’s exactly how to do it.]

The mis-matched phrase edit is another common song editing mistake, and one which can be quite problematic from a dance point of view. Most dancers love a strong groove, a catchy or funky beat, that propels them to dance. And most dance music (though certainly not all) is in 4/4 time. Dancers learn to count in 8s, which corresponds very nicely to most musical phrasing, which usually occurs in groups of 4-beat measures. While musicians learn to count in 4s, these groups of measures often occur in even multiples, such as 8 and 16, and these patterns usually can also be lumped together in groups of 24 and even 32. How strange then, when the editing of music occurs in mid-measure, and sometimes even in mid-beat. Here is what this pattern looks like in written form, from a dancer’s point of view:

8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 11.3, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8.

No wonder your dancers are having a hard time with this section of their song- it not only has an odd number of beats, it also has a partial beat! OUCH! It’s nearly impossible to get your dancers’ moves clean when the music itself is not clean in this way. Inevitably, this type of editing flub kills the groove and pulse of the music.

Well, that’s all for this blog post. In future posts, I will give you some very specific guidance on how to avoid these most-common song editing mistakes in your competition routines. In the meantime, if you have a song that has one of these mistakes in it, and you want it fixed in time for your next regional or nation competition, send me an email.

What percentage is the music in dance?

We all know that the focus of a dance competition is the dance. Obviously. But how integral is the music to the dance? Is the music why you dance? How much better is dancing to great music than mediocre music? Or does it not matter that much? Does the music have to be great to inspire you to new heights in your dance? Is having a great groove important to the dance?

If you had to express the percentage role that the music plays in your dance, what percentage would that be, and why?

Vote in the blue box above, then explain why you chose the answer you did in the comments below.

Basics of music editing

We understand that not every dance routine needs to have the song professionally edited. Personal computers have put audio editing tools within reach of everyone. But even with great tools, unless you really understand what you’re doing, it’s easy to botch the music up when cutting down the music to dance routine length. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been at competition and heard a squirrel trench (a scar on the music)- taking not only the audience out of the moment, but also the judges.

So here are some things to keep in mind when editing music so that you don’t leave a big ole flub on an otherwise great song.

First: Really listen to, and understand the song all the way through. Understand the parts that make up the song: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, ending is the most common song structure. There are certain parts of a song where the performance is almost exactly the same every time it occurs: this is most often true of the chorus of the song, so one of the easiest edits to make is to remove the second verse out of a song. Line up the 1st and 2nd chorus so they are overlapping exactly, and make your edit. This way, you leave the bridge intact, which gives the song (and therefore the dance) more interest over the course of the routine.

Also, watch out for exactly how you make the edit. Many folks try to make a long smooth edit… where one part of the song fades out for a few seconds while the other part of the song fades up for a few seconds. This is usually a mistake and sounds funny (unless there isn’t much going on instrumentally), and can even cause distortion. Better to make a very clean and crisp edit, where one part of the song ends very nearly abruptly while the other part of the song begins nearly abruptly. I usually employ an ultra-ultra-quick crossfade at the edit point, but it happens so quickly (usually a few milliseconds), that you can’t tell that it’s there. The important thing is to line up the beats (and the measures) at the edit point. This brings up another part of successful music editing- make sure you have full measures lined up. Dancers count in 8s… which is usually two measures of 4/4 time. I’ve heard plenty of songs where the edit is in a funny spot and the measures don’t line up.. which produces an “extra” two or three beats, which always sounds unnatural.

Well, that’s all the tips for now. I’ve got more that I’ve developed as a professional musician and music editor, but I’ll post about other techniques later. Here is how to avoid awkward fade-outs, and here are the other Top 5 music editing mistakes heard in competition.

Now that we’re about to enter competition season, take a listen to the songs you’re using for your dancers. If you notice that any of the songs you’ve edited have a squirrel trench or two in them or a funny beginning or ending, send it my way, and I’ll see if I can fix it up for you, retaining the original timing (or as close as possible) so that you don’t have to re-choreograph! My email is: morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com. Or check out the Services link in the header of this site.

Best wishes for a successful competition season!
~Morriss Partee
Squirrel Trench Audio