Tag Archives: glitch

Looking for music inspiration?

For you dance teachers and studio owners, it’s an exciting time of year. The kids are back in school, and the 2012-13 dance season is about to get underway in earnest.

Are you tired of trying to cut music, spending hours upon hours to try to get it right, only to wind up with clicks, jumps, skips, off-beats, and hiccups? We are here to help. For only $39 (less with quantity), we will deliver any song to you at the perfect length and structure for your dance routines. Not only are we masters of music editing and remixing, we also understand what is needed to make music work for dance. If this sounds like the relief you need, then send us an email with the song(s) you need, and the length you need them to be.

And if you have a group dance and are looking for inspiration in terms of fresh music, email us to learn about our custom remixes. We’ve done quite a variety over the years, and they are sure inspire your choreo to reach new heights.

Fix your music in time for Nationals

Now that it’s the middle of May, and many competitive dance studios have wrapped up their Regional competition season, it’s time to get ready for recitals and Nationals.

If your music is not all that it could be, it’s not too late to get it fixed in time for Nationals.

Is the music in your routine too soft? Too loud? Are there hiccups? Clicks? Pops? Are there swear words that you are getting point deductions for? Are there odd-beats? Double words? Is there not enough bass or low-end in the music?

Any of these common music editing problems can be fixed. Just email me a copy of the music as you are currently using it, and I will fix it. Most fixes can be done at the standard music editing rate of $39 per song. I will get the song repaired for you as quickly as possible to maximize the rehearsal time you have before recitals and Nationals.

Time to clean up your music!

It’s January, and that means that competitions are starting! For many of you, you may have already entered your first competition, or it may be a few weeks away. That first competition will be here before you know it!

Well, you, the dance teacher, has spent hours upon hours cleaning up every last movement of your dancers for the past several months, ensuring they everything is in perfect sync. You’ve probably gotten your costumes in, and hopefully are dancers are delighted with the way they will look on stage.

You’ve cleaned up your dancer’s moves, gotten them the perfect costume to perform your choreo in, but have you cleaned up your music? Is it perfect in every way? Are there hiccups, jumps, skips, dropouts, or any number of other mistakes in the music caused by less-than-perfect editing? If so, it’s not too late have your music cleaned up in time for competition. I can fix any pops, clicks, hiccups, mis-matched phrasing, off beats, or passages that are too-soft for competition, and I can do all of this while retaining the original timing and structure that your dancers are used to (within reason of course). Since you want your dancers totally comfortable with the music they will be performing with, the sooner you get me your music to be cleaned up, the sooner you can start rehearsing with perfect music. And all of this clean-up/mastering for only $39 per song.

When you are ready to get started, submit your song via this Request Form, or send me an email!

What exactly is good music editing for dance routines?

With the proliferation of free and cheap audio editing software, many dance studios have taken it upon themselves to handle the editing of their dance music. While it is certainly better to edit a song yourself than to not edit it at all, a top-notch dance studio may want to consider having their songs professionally edited.

Why would a dance studio have their music professionally edited?

Teachers and students at a quality dance studio spend hours upon hours perfecting their dances for recital, competition and other performances. Students practice all of their routines in class and at home. Every nuance, every detail of motion is perfected and cleaned up. Every detail, from how the dancers enter to how they exit the stage is choreographed for optimum audience enjoyment and professional presentation. The same is true for costumes and makeup. The details of the appearance are examined and refined.

So if a dance studio is spending countless hours and dollars to ensure every aspect of the dancers’ movement and appearance is the best it can possibly be, why wouldn’t they also want to ensure that the music, the foundation for every dance performance, is also as great as it can be? Why use music for performance that has glitches, awkward fade-outs, mismatched beats, frozen statue intros, abrupt jumps and other scars when seamless music can be created by a skilled music editor?

What does professional music editing for dance entail?

Some people think that dance editing is simply employed to remove swear words or other inappropriate lyrics from a song. But editing music well is much more than than, and certainly much more than fading a song out at the desired length of the routine. In fact, 90% of the time fading the music out at the desired length for the routine is at an awkward point in the song, leading to the most common music editing mistake heard at dance competitions. In this blog post I explain exactly how to avoid awkward fade-outs. (Here are the other Top 5 mistakes made in dance music editing.)

A skilled music editor, who understands what dancers need in a competition or recital-length routine, does a lot more than simply a fade a song out or edit out swear words. A skilled song editor analyzes a song for its structure, and then determines how that structure can be changed, sliced, or rearranged in order produce a new song that makes sense from beginning to end. Usually this involves shortening an intro, removing a verse and/or a chorus, shortening instrumental solos, and so on. This process is something that requires a great deal of skill and experience, in both music and audio editing, to execute flawlessly.

Skilled audio mix engineers not only rearrange the structure of an existing piece of music, they can perform quite a number of other audio engineering techniques such as changing the equalization of the music to better fit the dancer, speed up or slow down all or parts of a song without changing the pitch, add reverb to edit points or endings where it makes sense, and even increase the volume (slightly) of older recordings without causing clipping distortion.

The sad but unfortunate fact is that many dance teachers don’t even realize that they utilizing music with poor edits in their routines. Dance teachers are trained in the visual arts, and are experts at choreography and movement. Few are also exceptionally well-versed in music structure or audio editing. Therefore, dance studios would enhance the quality of their performance by utilizing the services of an experienced music editor to handle the process of editing songs to the right length for dance numbers.

As I mentioned before, it’s not too late to have a song with a music hiccup or glitch fixed in time for Nationals. In fact, I’ve just finished repairing a song like that right now… the dance routine is SPECTACULAR, winning Platinum and 2nd overall, and the music is by a well-known artist who hit the scene in the 80s. The song, as edited by the student, was wonderful all the way up until the very end when there was a fade out, followed by an abrupt jump into the last few notes. But have no fear, Squirrel Trench Audio now has the ending smooth and flawless! And since the routine has already been choreographed, I kept all aspects of the song identical to the original edit, except for the newly perfected ending. If you are cleaning up your dance moves after regionals, going into nationals, it makes sense to clean up your music too!