Dancemom.com‘s online competition for the Dance Mom of the Year has just wrapped up. Squirrel Trench Audio is proud to be a sponsor of the contest, and will be providing a free music edit to two winners from Week 2 of the contest, and two music edits to the grand prize winner.
In addition to the two winners from Week 2 (PinnellMom and GumbysMom), and the grand prize winner (SavgirlsMom), Squirrel Trench Audio will also be giving two free music edits to the runners-up, both MelPadgett, and BerriCre8v.
Welcome! Squirrel Trench Audio is proud and honored to be the official sponsor this week of DanceMom.com’s Dance Mom of the Year Contest! It’s only fitting, since this week, the contest is all about the music used in dance. Break a leg to all of the Dance Moms competing! And we are also excited that we will be giving the winner a FREE music edit!
The mission of Squirrel Trench Audio is to ensure that all dancers have gorgeous, beautiful, funky, grooving, and/or soulful music to dance to. Towards that end, there are many things you may find valuable on this site. We have:
• Songs that are a little off the beaten path in the categories of Jazz, Tap, and Lyrical
• For those of you looking for a professional music editing service, we also offer song edits for $39, or custom remixes starting at $74. Some samples are here, and Testimonials are here. We can also fix music that has already been edited, but that still have jumps, clicks, or glitches in it, as well as master music for proper volume, if it has sections that sound too soft in competition halls.
Feel free to browse this site, and ask me any questions at any time. I can be reached via email at: morriss@squirreltrenchaudio.com.
Break a leg, all you Dance Mom of the Year contestants, and break a leg to all the other dance parents and dancers as you enter another year of exciting competitions!
Here are just a few of Squirrel Trench’s original remixes for small to large groups in jazz and tap categories that will be competing (and in most cases premiering) this weekend in Springfield, Massachusetts at USTD.
I can’t even begin to fathom the number of hours that went into producing these gems… a true labor of love. We’ll see if it translates into scoring well for the dancers. I can’t wait to see them performed!
Normally I like to contribute many ideas and techniques for how YOU can edit your own dance routine music better, but I would be remiss if I didn’t occasionally post some of the glowing testimonials that are coming in for my Squirrel Trench Audio music editing and remixing work. It is truly a pleasure to make so many dance parents, dance teachers, and dance studio owners happy by providing solid, click-free, glitch-free, well-structured music for their superlative choreography.
Here are a couple testimonials; more can be found on the Testimonial page:
“You are a rock star! This is amazing! I can not wait to see her rock out on stage to this version!”
— a dance mom in Texas,
December 17, 2011
“Oh my goodness! This is great! I can’t wait to have her listen when she gets home from school today. I will have her bring it to gym and see what the coach thinks about timing. I’m sure it will be great. Thanks so very much! That was fast!”
— parent of a gymnastic student in Ohio,
who needed a music edit/remix for a floor routine
October 11, 2011
“It sounds great; I love your work!”
— Miss Daysha, dance teacher at OnStage Dance Studios, Cedar City Utah
February 21, 2012
“Thank you! It’s perfect….I’ll be sending some more requests soon.”
— Miss Kimberly, dance studio owner at Dance for Joy, Brielle, New Jersey
November 2, 2011
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.
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!
At many competitive dance studios, guest choreographers are invited to create routines for the most advanced students.
If you are such a choreographer, and want to bring a unique world-class song remix to your students along with the unique world-class choreography you are creating, look no further than Squirrel Trench Audio. I can take your concept and create a unique song interpretation which can then provide the inspiration for your unique choreography. If you are a world-class choreographer looking for unique music which works in a competitive dance format, send me an email.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to hear clearly in your studio’s rehearsal space? As a teacher, are you constantly having to yell to be heard above the music? There is a reason for that: most dance studios’ acoustic characteristics are about as bad as they can possibly be. Because all the walls are parallel (floor and ceiling of course too), and one or more walls are covered entirely with mirrors and windows, sound bounces around and around and around and around. This bouncing is known as echo or reverb. Often these types of spaces have severe flutter echoes.
The net effect of all this sound-bouncing (reverb and echo) is that it makes it hard to hear things inside the room clearly. And when you can’t hear clearly, it makes you want to turn the volume of the music up much too loud. It makes you have to yell in order for the kids to hear you, and even then, it can be hard for them to understand what you are saying, and also hard to hear the details of the music you are playing.
This is ESPECIALLY PROBLEMATIC FOR TAPPERS! Not only are tap shoes loud to begin with, but flutter echoes and loads of reverb make it really hard to hear the details and timing that your tappers are trying to achieve! No wonder that your tap students are having such a hard time trying to get in sync with each other…. they can’t hear what they are doing!
Another downside to the terrible acoustics inside your dance rehearsal spaces is that by cranking up the music to try to hear it better, you are annoying your neighbors, whether they are other businesses or other dance rehearsal spaces. If it’s another dance teacher in the next room, then they have to turn their music up to drown out yours… leading you to turn up your music even louder to drown out theirs, in a never-ending loudness war.
It’s time to stop the loudness wars in your own dance studio! It’s time to start hearing the music and the instructor more clearly inside the the studio space! It’s time to stop going home at the end of a long night of teaching with a headache and your ears ringing!
Fortunately, solutions are EASY and relatively inexpensive! But the difference, from a sonic perspective, is NIGHT and DAY!
Many dance studios have a cadre of talented and able-bodied Dance Dads who build amazing props for their dance daughters and dance sons. These heroic dads (and of course moms too!) then also have the job of carting said props long distances to various regional and national competitions.
Well, the next “prop” your studio’s dance dads should build is …. drum roll….. broadband acoustic absorbing panels.
Yes, you heard me right. For a total of about $150-$200 in materials, your handy dance dads (and moms!) can build six or eight 2′ by 4′ acoustic panels and hang them in your rehearsal spaces, bringing down the amount of flutter echoes and reverb to a reasonable and comfortable level. The result of which will be:
You can hear the music CLEARLY at a comfortable volume
You don’t have to yell as loud to be heard by your students
Students can more easily hear the instructions you are giving them
You don’t leave the studio with a headache every night from the volume of the sound system
You don’t annoy your neighbors with OONCE OONCE OONCE all night long
If you have the budget, you can purchase pre-made acoustic panels and traps, but dance studio owners can save a few bucks by enlisting the help of capable dance parents! More about how to build these acoustic traps coming up soon, so stay tuned! If you can’t wait another minute to find out more, here’s an example of how it looks/works installed in a dance studio: Acoustic panels in a dance studio. Here’s a nice and short little YouTube video that explains quite clearly how to build them. My only advice beyond this video is to use a nice-looking fabric for the face so that you have something beautiful to hang on your walls instead of burlap.
I love monitoring the search terms that people are using to find this Squirrel Trench Audio web site. And here’s my new favorite: “best place for dance teachers to get unique music.”
YES! Squirrel Trench Audio IS the best place for dance teachers to get new, original, and unique music. One of my all-time favorite assignments is to take an existing hit, for instance Martin Solveig & Dragonette’s Hello, and give it a new twist that no dance competition judge has ever heard before (I’ve got a spectacular remix of Hello that will premier in competition in March 2012).
The best part is, with a unique Squirrel Trench Remix, there is NO chance that any other dancer will have the same music. Someone else might have the same song, but the Squirrel Trench Remix will be BETTER, and will impress the judges much more since the audio portion of the routine will be unlike anything they’ve heard before. It won’t be the same-old, same-old that they’ve heard on the radio or on stage dozens of times before.
One of the reasons why a Squirrel Trench Remix is better is that most dance songs are looooong so that they get playing time in clubs. I can take the long song and condense it down (retaining the integrity of the musical structure), giving it as much dramatic impact as possible. The Squirrel Trench remix will hold the judge’s ears’ attention while your student(s) holds the judges eyes’ attention with the dance routine.
Not decided on exactly the right song for your dance routine yet? Give me an idea of the age of dancer, type of dance (lyrical, jazz, tap, acro, contemporary, etc.) and the personality of the music you want, and I’ll give you some suggestions.
So if you are a dance teacher, dance parent, or dance studio owner, and you are looking for new, unique remixes, shoot me an email and I’ll create a unique remix just for you!
I know you are out there, and you are frustrated. You are a busy dance teacher, and you’ve got a boatload of choreography you have to create and teach. And in addition, you have to pick out the perfect music for each of your groups and soloists. Now you have the task of cutting down a song that is 4:10 to a competition-ready length of 2:45, or to a recital-ready length of 2:00. You grab your trusty music editing program of choice, and start listening. You stare at a bunch of strange squiggly lines on the screen, trying to figure out what-in-the-heck they mean. How on earth do these squiggles represent MUSIC? They look like a bunch of scribbles that your 3-year-old toddler drew in pre-school! They sure DON’T tell you where the bass guitar plays a riff, or the saxophonist starts wailing on a solo!
Instead of pulling your hair out, trying to figure out what needs to match up to what, just shoot me an email and I’ll solve your music cutting problems for you. And all at a VERY reasonable price! And maybe save you a from a few gray hairs in the process. After all, your students test your patience often enough, you don’t need more aggravation from trying to wrangle your music into shape!
It’s been a blast doing some fun music editing and remixing for this dance season’s soloists, duos, trios, as well as for a number of gymnastic floor routines. I’m really excited for all of these songs to be performed by a wide age-range of students, anywhere from ten to eighteen years old. The songs range from jazz to electronic to pop, and artists range from Martin Solveig to Club des Belugas to Dee Dee Bridgewater.
If your son, daughter, or student still needs their music professional edited for dance routine length or gymnastic floor routine length, send me an email, and I’ll try to get it done for you right away!
