Tag Archives: remix

Making the Impact-dance competition podcast

This morning, Making the Impact dance competition podcast released Episode 153, The Dos and Don’ts of Music Editing for Competitive Dance. The hosts of the show are Courtney Ortiz and Lesley Anne Mealor, and this week’s guests are myself and Amy Gibson. I was incredibly honored to be invited as a guest on this highly regarded and popular dance podcast. It was an immense pleasure to talk with Courtney, Lesley, and Amy for an hour. The conversation was excellent and time flew by in an instant. Listen to this informative episode here.

I am excited that this episode has been published! I hope that listeners come away with new knowledge about how to prepare your music so that it’s ready for the competition stage, or any performance stage for that matter. Listeners may gain a greater appreciation for how much a great soundtrack can elevate a dance routine.

Please comment below with any insights or tips that you may have learned. If you would like to learn more about making sure your music is stage-ready, get a copy of my free 5-page PDF: Top Ten Tips for Creating Stage-Ready Music

Find out more about my Catalog of stage-ready clean song edits and mixes. Each one is optimized to give your choreography maximum emotional impact.

Learn more about my custom Magical Recital Welcome Soundtracks.

To connect with me, email me at morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com or message me on Facebook.

Buy 5, Get 5 Free

Buy 5, Get 5 Free!

It’s that time of year again – time to pick out new music for the upcoming season’s routines. If you want competition-level clean song edits and mixes, my Buy 5, Get 5 Free offer is now permanent! This offer also applies to any number of songs more than 5, so if you Buy 12, you get 12 Free! (The purchase has to be made in one request in order to qualify.) There’s no greater library of flawless, clean, choreo-ready song edits and mixes, than right here: Squirrel Trench choreo-ready music catalog

Check out the catalog, with 1300 tracks organized by style of dance, and email me at morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com with your selections!

How to Edit Music for Choreography, beautifully

Below is the introduction for a book I am writing. I would appreciate any and all feedback you might have in the comments. I can be reached via email at: morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com.

How to Edit Music for Choreography, beautifully by Morriss M. Partee. (c) 2023

Introduction

Dance is the art of human movement. And while dance can exist without music, most dance is performed with a soundtrack. For more than ten years, I have had the great honor of creating several thousand soundtracks for choreographers around the world, primarily in the United States, but also in Canada, Australia, the U.K., and New Zealand. It’s been my personal mission over that time to ensure that every dancer performs with flawless, beautiful music. Every time I take on a new music editing or mixing project, I give it the same care and attention as if it were my own child performing with it. 

This book is for choreographers, and those who create soundtracks for their routines. Having attended numerous dance competitions and recitals where dance was performed with the soundtracks I created, I have developed an array of techniques for making these soundtracks excellent. My aim is to give you the practical knowledge I’ve gained working with hundreds of choreographers, and studying music and audio engineering, so that you too, can produce flawless music for choreography.

This text focuses on transforming popular songs, which are generally three to four minutes in length, into soundtracks for choreography, which usually range from two to two-and-a-half minutes.  There are two disciplines needed to create flawless song edits for choreography – musicianship and audio engineering. Those two disciplines dovetail with understanding the intersection between music and dance, and the general cues that young dancers rely on to remember the choreography that they learn and perform. 

Music and audio technology have made impressive leaps forward over the past two decades. Fortunately, long gone are the days when choreographers would use two cassette decks to painstakingly align different parts of a song, often using a pencil to try to get it just right. (If you don’t know why a pencil is involved with cassettes, be glad!) What is now primitive technology came with a whole host of limitations. 

Digital audio and personal computer technology makes it so that all of us are within reach of an amazing arsenal of tools to make music for choreo that is flawless. Today’s laptop has more audio processing power at a reasonable price than the million-dollar recording studios built in the 1970s and ‘80s. Recording engineers of that era couldn’t have imagined that eventually we could put entire virtual orchestras inside of a portable computer that is less than ¾” of an inch in thickness. But while audio technology has advanced to the point where it’s relatively easy to shorten songs on a laptop, or even a tablet or smartphone, sometimes there are almost too many choices. For example, what bitrate should an mp3 be saved as? Should I save with constant or variable bit rate encoding, and why am I even being asked this question?

Beyond minor issues like these, I routinely find many errors and glitches in choreo music I receive for repairs or cleaning. And I have also heard far too many routines’ soundtracks played at top volume for competition in civic centers and auditoriums with jarring skips, breaks, and thumps. Such glitches take an audience (including parents and judges) “out of the moment” of enjoying the dance performance, with the worst of them creating difficulties for dancers trying to count the music.

You’ve probably heard these mistakes as well if you have watched other’s dance performances, in music that otherwise flows smoothly. Strangely, while you’ve heard these mistakes in others’ music quite clearly, you may have not heard them in your own music edits — and there is a reason for that.

It’s not that your own music edits don’t have flaws. It’s in the nature of how the brain works, that you are less likely to notice flaws in your own musical creations. When you listen to a piece of music, over and over again, it eventually becomes “normal” to you, even if there are one or more issues readily apparent to anyone else listening to it. This is why good audio engineers need to work fast, or else they too fall into the trap of thinking that what they are hearing is normal or good. 

Trying to hear your music work clearly is known as ‘maintaining perspective.’ There are several ways you can maintain perspective while creating your own music edits. The first way is to know your tools and techniques extremely well, so that you can work swiftly. The faster you work, the better perspective you can maintain. Another method is to take frequent breaks. Yet another method is to “put away” your edits for a couple of days or even a week, ensuring that you don’t listen to them at all. But even this technique won’t work if you’ve already listened to your own edits more than a dozen times.

***

Some may question the importance of creating beautiful soundtracks for dance. Does one thump or awkward break in a song really ruin an otherwise beautiful dance performance? That decision is up to every choreographer or dance studio owner. Does a jarring sound break the audiences’ enjoyment of a graceful dancer? Most would answer yes. But in any case, with today’s technology, there is no need for any dancer to ever perform with anything less than flawless music.

Here are a few more reasons I feel every dancer ought to have perfect music to perform with. From a dance studio owner’s self-interested perspective, flawlessly edited music does several things for the studio: It increases the perceived quality and professionalism of the studio, and it also increases the likelihood of student retention. One way it increases those chances  is that a beautifully edited piece of music has less repetition than when a song is simply started from the beginning and then faded-out at the two-minute or two-and-a-half minute mark. We’ve all seen the dancer on stage who performs their solo beautifully for the first two-thirds of the routine, and then suddenly forgets the next move in their choreography, and runs off the stage in embarrassment. While I don’t have a catalog of such ‘forgetting choreo’ moments, I am convinced that some of these occur because the music is so repetitive the dancer loses track of where they are in the song. 

The other way in which flawlessly edited music helps studios retain students is by avoiding the awkward fade-out. When music is faded-out at the routine length, it is an incredible disservice to the dancer. When the music volume starts to drop, that is the dancer’s queue to exit the stage… and usually these fade-outs take the audience by surprise. So that when the music finally is over, the dancer is already in the wings, and only then does the audience start to applaud. This robs the dancer of being center stage to fully receive the audience’s applause that they so richly deserve after all of their hard work. 

But these are the self-interested reasons for a dance studio to utilize nothing but flawless soundtracks for their routines. Other reasons go beyond self-interest. Dance students are impressionable youngsters who are going through the most formative times of their lives. Each dance student will hear their chosen group and solo songs hundreds of times in the course of a season’s rehearsals. This music forms the soundtrack of their lives. For that reason alone, every dancer deserves that music to be as perfect as it can be.

Making choreographers happy

When you need perfect music for a new routine, Squirrel Trench Audio’s catalog of more than 750 ready-to-go clean edits and mixes is an amazing resource. Here’s what Maggy had to say about it:

“A huge thank you to Squirrel Trench Audio for their fast and professional service. You have saved me many hours of editing. So many amazing cuts and songs to choose from! This site is a dance teacher/choreographers dream come true!”

—Maggy Elias Sonoski, September 3, 2017

The catalog is even searchable by dance style. Check out the catalog and find the perfect music for your next routine!

Helping Ashley at Ohana

I love getting feedback from dance studio owners and choreographers. Especially when they find that my catalog of cleaned and edited songs and mixes transforms the music selection task from a headache and chore into an easy and exciting process of finding music that is perfect for their choreographic vision. Here’s the latest from Ashley Kohl, Creative Director for the Ohana School of Performing Arts in South Hadley, Massachusetts:

“You totally ROCK!!!! Wow, thanks so much Morriss! I’ll be in touch with more … this resource is a serious lifesaver. I have shared it with all of my instructors. I am so much more excited to pick music than I have ever been. It’s usually so daunting and stressful. Game changer!

Thank you for being so generous and helpful!”

—Ashley Kohl, Creative Director
Ohana School of Performing Arts, July 22, 2017

If you’d like to check out the listing of more than 700 clean songs and mixes, just click this link: Squirrel Trench Audio catalog. Find out how easy picking perfect music for your choreography can be!

Three common problems and fixes when editing or mixing music

clean_music_by_fatihakgungorI love helping dance teachers and choreographers have the most outstanding, powerful, and impactful music possible. It’s an honor that so many dance teachers and studio owners entrust me to fix and clean the mixes they create. When DTs send me mixes, I hear three problems most often. They are relatively easily avoided. Here they are with their easy fixes:

  1. Problem — Timing hiccups
  2. Problem — Volume drops
  3. Problem — Poor audio quality

 

  1. Fix for Timing Hiccups — Determine the tempo of every song and align your work to the tempo grid. That means all cutting, moving, etc, is done precisely rather than via guesswork
  2. Fix for Volume Drops — One reason I receive many song edits or mixes with a reduced volume is that when the audio file is created during the Export process, the “Normalize” option is turned on by default. When there are internal peaks in a song that is bounced down with the Normalize option turned on, this results in the ENTIRE mix being reduced in volume. Do not leave the Normalize option turned on! Instead, make sure Normalize is turned off. To avoid digital distortion in these cases, put a peak limiter on your output bus. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, because in most cases, a short digital over will not be very noticeable on most sound systems.
  3. Fix for Poor Audio Quality — Use only original sources. Never import an mp3 into your audio program since an mp3 is a reduction in quality. Always save your mixes at at least 256k bit rate mp3, because to go less than that also results in an audible drop off in quality.

Hope these tips and fixes help you as you put together your edits and mixes! Please feel free to ask me any question about any of this since I truly love to help you have the best music you can possibly have for your amazing choreo!

Control for Me Lately – Janet Jackson

janet-jackson-in-concertDuring a recent presidential debate, one candidate described the other as a “such a nasty woman.” This is not necessarily a bad thing as Janet Jackson fans can attest. With renewed interest in Janet Jackson, Squirrel Trench Audio brings you the newest Janet remix, an intertwining of Control with What Have You Done For Me Lately. Take a listen!

Another Janet Jackson remix from Squirrel Trench Audio is Janet Rhythm Cat:

And Make Me is an edit of that excellent and fun Janet Jackson song:

Squirrel Trench also has an original remix of Rhythm Nation, spiced up specifically for an outstanding dance routine:

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

Sia’s Elastic Heart Remixed

ive got thick skin and an elastic heartSia’s Elastic Heart is full of passion and heart-pounding drama. And Squirrel Trench Audio is proud to announce an exciting new remix of this amazing song. Full of twists and turns, this 2:59 rendition starts with a lonely heart beat and evolves from a delicate piano into a whirlwind of synth electronics, bass drops, and sharp outbursts, perfect for passionate choreography. If you have a contemporary or lyrical soloist or group, you’ll want to take a listen:

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix

Castle by Halsey

halsey castleHalsey has a haunting and beautiful song out called Castle. Get the official Squirrel Trench 2:51 or 2:21 edited version, for your next jazz or contemporary routine. Editing has been carefully done to provide the best possible foundation for your choreography. Squirrel Trench Audio is your source for clean edits and remixes created specifically for dance routines.

Get more Squirrel Trench remixes at Legitmix