Tag Archives: studio owner

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!

Don’t forget: what you do is amazing

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you amazing dance teachers, ographers, studio owners, guest teachers, and everyone else who helps young people develop their dance abilities. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your wonderful dance community.

Dance is a precious art form that requires a spectacular amount of dedication, knowledge, skill, and training. From concept to choreography, music to costumes, hair to make-up, and every movement, hundreds upon hundreds of hours go into a single routine of three minutes…. three amazing and beautiful minutes, never repeated in exactly the same way twice.

-a-deep-breathAt times, it may be hard to remember all the positives of dance, especially when you are dealing with crazy parents who don’t read the material you send, and students who don’t want to put in the time and effort, yet want to dance like Misty Copeland. It’s easy to be frustrated about the time and energy required to recruit new students, update your web page, chase parents who are late with their payments, coordinate recital ticket sales, pay the bills, and the thousands of other tasks on your plate which aren’t nearly as fun as inventing new choreography or being in the studio teaching your kids.

At those difficult times, take a deep breath, stop for one minute, and remember that:

  • you are creating something of exquisite fragility and beauty, lasting but a few performances before a new routine takes its place
  • you are making the world a better place with the beautiful routines you create in it
  • most importantly of all, you are building beautiful human beings, giving them a purpose, a pride, and dedication in the craft that they love so much

It’s the last one on the above list that is the most lasting and impactful. You never know when that small child you teach is going to herself grow into a beautiful dance teacher, and inspire yet another generation of dancers to take flight.

Never forget.

What you do is beautiful.

What you create is beautiful.

Who you touch, is beautiful.

No one can do it exactly the way you do, with as much care and passion for your students.

Break a leg this recital season, and don’t let the drama-mamas nor pompous-papas get you down!

Ready for some musical inspiration?

DANCE-silhouetteDance teachers, and studio owners, this post is for you.

Right at the peak of Regionals competition season, heading into recitals and possibly Nationals, there is much that needs to be worked on. Some of you are also getting ready for a new season of routines, which means new choreography, which means new music.

When you are ready to start working on the next season, and need musical inspiration, then look no further than a Squirrel Trench Audio custom remix. Every piece of music is worked on individually and uniquely for YOU and your dancer’s needs. There is no cookie-cutter process, and you will not hear your music used by another dance studio. For dancer teachers who love great music, we think the difference between a piece of music which is custom crafted just for you and your dancers is a difference that can be FELT throughout your process of working with your students. You KNOW that this music is YOURS and YOURS ONLY which is something you can feel great about.

We’ve created custom remixes for a number of dance studios throughout the country, including Beatles remixes, Michael Jackson remixes, Janet Jackson remixes, hip hop remixes, movie/Broadway soundtrack medleys, and many others. We’ve also done scary horror-movie themed remixes, and Dancing Through the Ages medleys. We can do recital opening/grand finale numbers such as this fun Wizard of Oz production.

If a Squirrel Trench custom remix is just the ticket to get your choreographic creative juices flowing (especially for your teen, junior and senior groups), then the process is easy. Just email me (morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com) or give me a call at 413-535-0621 to discuss the ideas you want shaped into the music for your routine. Pricing varies depending on the complexity of the project, but is generally in the range of $89 to $129.

Call or email me when you are ready to get started!

Soloist’s CDs are ready!

It’s that time of year… when the anticipation reaches a peak with the first dance competition of the season coming up in just days or weeks. The students have been rehearsing for months. Costumes have been selected and have arrived. Now it’s time to make sure that all of the studio’s music is perfect too. Squirrel Trench Audio has been busy burning-competition ready CDs on high quality Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, complete with competition-ready labels. Note the nine rectangular spaces on the lower part of the CD; these spots enable the studio to write the number of the routine on each CD for every competition entered.

Competition CDs are ready to go

If you are a studio owner, and you want to make your music prep this easy, contact me about our Studio programs— a full service where you simply select the music for each dancer, and receive a set of rehearsal CDs for each student, as well as competition-ready CDs for performance. With this program, it is possible for the studio to make a small profit on their music each year instead of incurring an expense.

For more information, email me. The sooner the better, because the 2012-2013 dance season will be here before you know it!

The economics of quality music in dance studios

Dance studio owners, who creates the music at your studio? Whose responsibility is it? Since most commercial songs are 3:30 to 4:30 in length, and most dance routines are between 2:00 and 2:55, who does the editing? Is it up to the students? Teachers? You? Or do you use a professional service?

In some studios, the music editing is up to the dance teachers. The teachers are the ones selecting the songs for the students, so it’s up to each one of them individually to get the song edited down to the correct length.

I’m going to suggest that this is not the best scenario to produce optimal results, especially if you run a high quality, top calibre studio.

As a dance teacher, your instructors are experts at many facets of dance, and teaching proper dance techniques to students. However, seamless music editing is not an expertise for a vast majority of dance teachers. The result is that your studio winds up with competition performances that might be visually beautiful, but have a variety of aural scars and mistakes. You wouldn’t put your dancers on stage with tattered costumes, so why would you put dancers on stage with scarred music? Especially for routines that are being graded in Regional or National Competitions, where one of the components is musicality. Especially considering that the music is pumped out to the dancers, audience and judges on high-powered sound systems at loud volumes…. where every pop and glitch is magnified.

Your dance teachers should be working on their choreography, not struggling to figure out how to edit music with no jumps or hiccups, which usually leads to using substandard music in their routines.

Once your teachers have selected the right song for their students, you, as the studio owner, should be enabling them to have their songs professionally remixed for dance routine length. Then your teachers will be using seamless music for their choreography.

You might wish that you could have professional-level music editing, so that your routines sound as good as they look. But the expense might be what’s holding you back. If that’s the case, I’d like to show you how you can use professional quality music editing for your routines AND at the same time make a small profit for your studio on the music. If that sounds appealing to you, email me with the number of recreational and competition students at your studio, and I’ll send you a spreadsheet that shows you how this would work for a studio of your size. It’s a win-win-win proposition for you, your studio, your teachers, and your students.

In a future post, I will lay out a financial case for top-flight remixes for top-flight competition groups.