Tag Archives: groove

Uptown Funk (Clean version) – album now available

uptown funk jazz handsDue to the runaway popularity of our clean version of Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, we’ve created an album containing every length (six) of this song, that we’ve created to date. Our clean version of Uptown Funk is super-smooth – no awkward hiccups to interrupt the song’s funktastic groove! Most of our clean versions also include the exciting intro as performed on Saturday Night Live – an intro which is not heard on the iTunes release of the song.

This album contains six different lengths of the song, and is a terrific bargain at $11.99, a savings of 78% compared to buying each version of the song individually!

The six versions of the songs are: 4:28 (full length), 2:58, 2:45, 2:32, 2:15, and 1:59. One of the lengths is sure to be perfect for your jazz, tap, or hip hop competition or recital dance routine.

Grab your complete Bruno Mars Uptown Funk Clean Version album now! Or just purchase the length you need for your dance routine!

If you know what length you need, click these links below to get it. Each edited version is $9.99; or the full-length version is $4.99:
4:28 (full length)2:582:452:322:151:59

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

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.

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.

Put your music “in the pocket”

An article I wrote about adjusting the tempo of songs to fit your dancers for Dance Advantage was published today. Check it out, and use this technique to ensure that all of your songs are at the ideal tempos for your dancers!

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.