How to make a dance beat
5 Ways A Drummer Can Get People Dancing
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Sarah Thawer knows how to make people dance with her drumming – and she’s here to teach you five things to consider so yours gets the audience grooving, too.
The goal is to hold the pulse and make the music feel good – but how do you get your audience to feel the pocket? Look into the audience while you’re playing. Are they bobbing their heads or are they bored?
It’s up to you, as the drummer, to make sure they’re moving.
So what do your beats need so they absolutely kill it at the club?
1. ConsistencyWhen someone can anticipate what’s going to happen next, they can get comfortable with the pattern or groove. If there’s too much going on, people don’t know what to grab onto.
Not only is a consistent pattern important, so is the sound balance. Every hit you play should be at the same volume as the previous one. Many of these dance genres – like EDM – use grooves based on drum machines and computers, so it’s important to be authentic to that.
2. Four on the floorThis is essential to dance music – especially styles like soca or calypso – and it can get anyone on the dance floor. It gives people a pulse to follow. Keep that bass drum consistent and build on it. Even if your hands change what they’re doing, four on the floor will make sure you don’t throw off the audience.
3. SpaceGive the music a chance to breathe. If you listen to well produced music – especially in EDM – you’ll notice how much space there is in the song. Start simple. Four on the floor. And then add layers to build the groove.
4. MelodyYou can add a melody using other drums around the consistent kick and snare.
A good way to test your idea is whether or not it makes your body want to move when you sing that melody in your head.
What brings the feel in a groove? It’s more than just going through the motions. Are your notes and subdivisions tight while playing in the pocket? Are you behind or ahead of the beat? Are you paying attention to the dynamics between your limbs? Is your snare really popping? How much are you pushing it?
Take everything you’ve learned here and test it on friends, family, or at a gig. Does your drumming make people move? Whether you’re playing EDM, R&B, funk, gospel or other styles of dance music, you want to make sure the dance floor is packed. Go get ’em!
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200 Greatest Dance Songs – Rolling Stone
What do we mean by “dance songs”? Good question. In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did Slayer.
Nearly all the hip-hop and reggae ever made is great dance music. But to make our list of The 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time, a song had to be part of “dance music culture.” It’s a more specific world, but an enormous one too, going back nearly fifty years and eternally evolving right up to today and into the future.
After paying homage to the godfather of the extended groove, Mr. James Brown, our story of dance music begins in the mid-1970s with disco, and moves into early Eighties club sounds like electro and Latin freestyle. It gets born again when disco is re-engineered as house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit, and mutates with almost comic velocity into the Nineties rave explosion that produced everything from jungle to trance to gabba to garage, and eventually the EDM and dubstep bonanzas of the 2000s. These sounds all had peak moments of exposure, but they never fade away: drum ”n’ bass is having a new moment right now, and there are house songs here from the past few years.
The list doesn’t attempt to incorporate every ripple in this oceanic confluence of sub-genres. We were looking for tracks that seemed to transcend and feel more universally canonical, and we were especially mindful of the moments where dance music has intersected with the wider musical world– with synth-pop, hip-hop, funk, Miami bass, R&B, indie-rock, Latin music and pop. That’s why you’ll see Prince, Robyn, Britney Spears, Shakira, and Justin Bieber in here bumping up against Adonis, Frankie Knuckles, Moodymann, Goldie, and SOPHIE.
If you’re wondering how we got to a summer where Drake and Beyonce are suddenly releasing house records, this is that story — or, at least, our version of it.
Video Editor, Brian Lynch for Rolling Stone
Visual Credits (in order of appearance): Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Crystal Waters – Gypsy Woman, Beyonce – Blow, Corona – The Rhythm of the Night, Madonna – Sorry, Britney – Till the World Ends, Madonna – Vogue, Daft Punk – Get Lucky, Robyn – Dancing on my Own, Joey Beltram – Energy Flash, Azealia Banks – 212, Rihanna & Calvin Harris – We Found Love, DJ Snake & Lil Jon – Turn Down for What, Sylvester – You Make Me Feel, Piri – Soft Spot, Chic – Le Freak, Dee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart, Donna Summer – I Feel Love, Prince – When Doves Cry, Erik B & Rakim – Paid in Full, First Choice – Let No Man Asunder, Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop ’Til you get Enough, A Guy Called Gerald – Voodoo Ray, Grace Jones – Bumper, Marshall – Move Your Body, Internet sensation kid 1997 in Berlin, Whitney Houston – It’s Not Right.
Licensed Tracks/SFX (in order): Biodynamic modulated stutter riser, Dance like crazy – Ikoliks, Our Vibe – Superlative, Dance Out There – Alejandro Molinari, Pineapple Disco – Audiopanther, Bring It – Naems, Blurry Stars – Nbdy Nprtnt, Dark Future – Skygaze, Taika Promo (Rolling Stone VO). Song Samples (in order): Erik B & Rakim – Paid in Full, Dee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart, Madonna – Vogue, Azealia Banks – 212, Sylvester – You Make Me Feel, Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop ’Til you get Enough, Marshall Jefferson – Move Your Body, DJ Snake ft. Lil Jon – Turn Down for What, Dee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart, Whitney Houston – It’s Not Right
How I learned to write dance music and started releasing on labels — Music on DTF
A big story about finding yourself in creativity. With pictures and music.
15,198 views
Hi, I'm Muchkin. I write music. I make money with soundtracks for indie games, and for my soul and career I also make tracks in the genre of melodic house and techno.
About how I came to composing, I wrote in a recent text. Now let me tell you about my path in dance music.
Screenshot of my latest project so far
Beginning
Somewhere in the ninth grade, I first heard Prodigy - Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix) as part of a mix from DJ Stroitel. I got crazy and started to get interested in drum and bass. I listened to Pendulum, Noisia, Spor, danced drum and bass dance, which we called drumstep.
Then I thought that I also want to write the same energetic cool music with rich drum parts. I had no idea how it was done, and the search led me first to some kind of MIDI editor, in which I made a couple of songs. And then I found FL Studio, a sequencer that I've been using for over a decade. nine0003
The first tracks were terrible.
I shared them under a shameful pseudonym on PromoDJ, in an active community of fellow beginners. We intelligently criticized each other's tracks, not knowing anything at all about how music is created.
But it's always like that when you start.
nine0002 Toward the end of school, a dream began to form in me: I will learn how to make cool music for the university, and by the end of the fourth year I will become, if not a world star, then certainly a professional and respected music producer (a person who earns money by creating and performing electronic music ).I once read the idea that you need to make the first 100 songs as quickly as possible, because after them normal music will follow. In my experience, yes, something like this is
University
In fact, for four years at university, I basically did only three things: studied (albeit well), played video games and suffered from fears and anxieties. Despite the fact that the dream still lived somewhere on the border of consciousness, and I considered myself a music producer, writing tracks faded into the background. nine0003
It wasn't because I was lazy or because I didn't want to make music.
Just because I thought of a great success in advance, creativity turned into a hard and painful task. High anxiety, disorders, traumas, and just the peculiarities of the psyche (which I realized only ten years later thanks to psychotherapy) exacerbated the situation.
For example, I wrote this track for a whole year and spent more than hundred hours on it . That was the pace at which I produced finished works at that time. nine0003
Funny story. Born in Space found some cunning guy on PromoDJ and wrote me, they say, let's release it on my label. I went nuts from the word "label" and agreed. We even signed some kind of contract through the Proton system. After that, the man disappeared. Until now, the composition can be found on streaming services - he released it ten times, probably, and all under different "labels".
I didn't make a dime from it, of course. I suspect that he is also
nine0025Among my other works during this time, one can single out this psychedelic “neurofunk”, in which everything that is possible is not in tonality.
When I wrote it, I did not yet know what tonality was.
This was supposed to be an intro for my friend's YouTube show, but it never launched.
At the university, I wrote little music, but this does not mean that I did not develop creatively. I listened and analyzed bass genres a lot and sometimes through suffering I made tracks. Many did not finish. So there was progress, but very slow.
This composition also took about a year and 60-80 hours of work.
My music from this period seems to meet some minimal requirements of the genres (the structure is readable, the sounds are more or less intelligible, the kick and snare give some kind of energy, sometimes there is even a sub-bass), but they are crooked, poorly thought out and uninteresting .
I just used samples, notes and instruments that seemed appropriate and didn't think about the big picture, melody or atmosphere. And, I suspect, for the better. If I had been worried about this as well, then anxiety would have completely crushed me.
nine0003
By the way, my suffering also had some advantages. From the very beginning of working in FL Studio, I decided that I needed to create all the presets for the synths myself, and so I did. By the time I received my diploma, I had a good knowledge of the standard synths of the program and even a small library of presets.
By the way, about the diploma: I wrote this experimental composition dedicated to a headache closer to the defense, which is symbolic.
Work
After my bachelor's degree, I went to the master's program and at the same time started looking for a job. For a year and a half, I was doing all sorts of small jobs (once I even made the whole foley for a short film). I didn’t do much music, although I was able to complete a couple of projects. nine0003
For example, this future beats track inspired by Ivy Lab and Noisia Radio selections.
And an old school drum and bass remix for Dorn (there was a PromoDJ contest).
I was looking for ways to make money on music: I applied to local game and recording studios, I tried my luck in creating beats and stock tracks. In vain. As I studied the market and read the stories of more successful producers, an unbearable, terrible thought formed in my head.
To achieve something, you have to work very hard
That explained a lot.
At the beginning of 2017, I was accepted to DTF. Since childhood, I loved games, I read LKI, the Land of Games and Igromania, so I was very happy with this opportunity.
I was part of the editorial staff for almost two years. At this time it was difficult to find the strength and time for music. I watched tutorials, analyzed other people's tracks, replenished my database of samples and presets, but completed projects during this time can be counted on the fingers of one hand. nine0003
Weird downtempo project - time.
Dubstep with the voice of YouTuber Jacksepticeye - two.
Gloomy base house - three.
Drum and bass, started back in 2016, four.
I tried to send each of these tracks to labels, but they were not taken anywhere. I was surprised: how is it that they have everything. And powerful basses, and cool drums, even some interesting effects. Isn't that enough?
Oh, how little I understood.
nine0002 Composing
In the spring of 2019, I started building a career as an indie game composer. A few months later, this occupation even began to bring in some money and soon became the main one for me. (You can read about this path here.)
I found a way to make money with music and immersed myself in creativity. A little bit not the direction that I dreamed of, but still it was progress. Working on the soundtracks, I learned to feel the music better, learned new techniques and added to my own libraries even more. nine0003
As for dance tracks, at the end of 2019, aggressive and fast base house was popular, and I tried to sit on this hype train.
But no labels took the track, so I released it myself through distributor DistroKid. It was my first "adult" release - the one that appeared on streaming services. So far, I have earned exactly $0.03 on it. That's 17 auditions.
Back in the beginning of 2020, I made time for the LEAVEMEALONE halftime track.
nine0002 The flops over the past couple of years made me wonder: what is wrong with my music? Why doesn't anyone want to take it? Reflection and reflection led me to an important conclusion: in the first place, I do not make the music that I really want.I became interested in making music thanks to drum and bass, then I started listening to dubstep and electro house, and for some reason I always felt that these genres were what I needed to work on. But as soon as I listened to myself a little (which I had never done before), it turned out that I had nothing to express through bass music. nine0003
Therefore, I spent the following months looking for genres that would most accurately reflect my inner state.
They were melodic house and techno.
Brute force
Since April 2020, I have decided to get into dance music properly. Since I used to be able to create compositions only through force, I came up with a challenge for myself: to finish one track every month.
The logic was like this. By forcing myself to work on dance compositions month after month, sooner or later I had to develop all the necessary skills needed to create cool music. nine0003
I was going to basically brute force my creative powers
The first track turned out to be clumsy. The mixing is murky, there is not much development, both drops are arranged as if it were a summer banger, although a soulful melodic techno was conceived. But for starters, it will.
This track (and several others) I released again via DistroKid. Even tried to buy ads for him through Facebook. There were still few auditions (39 to date), but I was resentful of the label system after so many rejections and was determined to make a name for myself.
nine0003
The next composition in May, Pasturage, was much softer. Birds, forest, nice sound design and summer rain atmosphere.
For this track, I also purchased advertising. This time I set up the ad better and invested more money, so the output was more tangible. Now he has 138 plays.
The June track Arcane turned out to be mysterious and attractive, like a Celtic forest. Hence the name.
I did not commission advertising for him, because the determination to promote myself in the music industry began to fade. I didn’t pour so much money into advertising tracks, but there was no more extra money. nine0003
The conclusion was that you can break through on your own only in two cases: if you have a lot of money for advertising (I didn’t), or if you know how to do cool PR in social networks (I didn’t know how). So I started looking towards
labels again.Arcane was not taken to the labels (I did not even hope), but they took Autarca - the July track.
Here's a snippet of it, and you can listen to it in full here.
It was released as a compilation on the sub-label of a small St. Petersburg publishing house Polyptych. I knew perfectly well that this would not bring me any money or popularity, but I signed the contract anyway. You have to start somewhere. nine0003
The next track was a bit hooligan Help a Robot. I didn't send it anywhere, because big labels wouldn't take it, and it was long and tedious to look for small labels with such music. How do you even google them? "Labels with frivolous electro-house"?
In autumn I decided to make a three-track mini-album. For some reason it seemed to me that labels were more willing to take EPs than singles.
Even by this moment I had heard a lot of music in the selected genres and realized that in melodic house and techno, few people make tracks shorter than six minutes. So from now on, all my new compositions slowly fade in and out. nine0003
In general, the music has become less hasty and more conducive to immersion and thoughtful listening
As you might expect, my plan to boost my chances with labels with the EP didn't work out very well.
The release was eventually taken to the same Polyptych Limited (it will be released on July 5), but I was hoping for something bigger.
In December I finished the new track Rewired and decided to take a break. Working non-stop for nine months (and I also did soundtracks) without tangible results led to the fact that I just burned out. nine0003
Rest helped me rethink my priorities and figure out which way to go. I stopped caring too much about labels and started focusing more on creativity and self-expression. Plus, psychotherapy helped (and still helps) to listen to yourself better.
Rewired was included in the compilation for the Moscow label ONESUN (will be released sort of like in the summer).
Opening
I wrote the next composition at a more relaxed pace: burnout forced me to abandon the "one track per month" mode. Simultaneously with the work on the track, I was doing research. He carefully studied music in the chosen genres, pestered successful producers with questions, whom he could reach.
nine0003
The result was the biggest takeaway of all time: major labels need unique music first and foremost. One that has not yet been
Within the genre, of course, although the boundaries between melodic house and techno are blurred.
How to achieve uniqueness? For me, the answer is simple: it comes from the uniqueness of the psyche. If you learn to listen well and express yourself adequately, then creativity will be unique. Therefore, when creating Bird Law in January 2020, I tried to listen as often as possible to what melodies, sounds, effects and just decisions resonate with me. nine0003
This track doesn't just meet some technical requirements, it's undeniably my . For example, the title is taken from a comic book that I really like.
It's the law
And the theme of birds in it is not only because of the name, but also because these animals (but not all) touch me and my wife very much.
And also partly a track about the love that I feel for my wife, and this has something in common with the comic book. In general, a warm work about good things. The ones in me. nine0003
I don't know how noticeable this is to the outside listener, but I see a massive improvement over the previous compositions. He was even taken to a more serious label - the Italian Natura Viva. They promised to release it as part of a compilation. I don't know when exactly: for some reason, labels rarely notify me about such things, and I myself don't really care. I'm more focused on future works.
The last track so far is called You're Not What Your Mind Tells You. It's about my many battles with my own brain. It is a little sad, but with a light undertone, because no matter how scary the battles are, there is always a possibility to win. At least I can. nine0003
The other day I signed him to the Belgian label Sound Avenue. It will first be released exclusively on Spotify to try and push it into the platform's playlists, and will be released as part of a sub-label compilation in August.
After You're Not What Your Mind Tells You, I again rethought my creative process. Now I try to treat music less as a series of separate projects and more just as a field for experiments, from which cool completed projects will grow. Let's see where this takes me. nine0003
Such things. Thanks for reading. By the way, I will soon launch a course on creating electronic music from scratch. If interested, you can read the details here.
If you like my music, you can subscribe to Soundcloud, YouTube or Spotify. All my future tracks will appear there as well. Also here are my social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch.
Track Structure - RishaManis
- Music Lessons
- Secrets of Electronic Music
Click on the picture for a detailed analysis of the track.
Also there you can see what parts the track consists of. nine0003
There are many different sub-genres in edm music.
House style itself can be divided into: Tropical House , Progressive , Melodic , Bigroom etc.
But something unites them all. This is the structure of the track, or in other words, the scheme for constructing the track.
There are many schemes, but most have a lot of the same parts. See examples of some of these schemes: nine0003
Intro, Breakdown 1, Build-up , Drop A , Breakdown 2, Build-up , Drop B .
or
Intro, Main , Breaks down , Main2 , Breaks down , Breakdown, Uplift, Main , Main2 , Outro
There are other schemes as well.
However, we will analyze some in this article in order to have an idea of what, in principle, parts can exist in tracks. nine0003
To get started, start listening to the track and track it in the picture below. Parts are indicated on it, their names are given, an approximate characteristic of the part, and the number of measures that they are playing.
In house style, the intro usually includes drums, percussion, and some melodic elements. But sometimes the intro is small and just introduces the listener to the track. Those. the main task of the Intro is it is to bring the listener into the track and prepare them to listen to the main parts. Melodic elements should not reveal the melody at the very beginning.
These are literally a few notes of some tool. The intro sets the theme for the entire track. This part is usually underestimated. nine0003
It is also often referred to as the "pit". This should be a softer sounding part compared to other parts of the track. It introduces minimal melody and sound design and quite often strongly different from the dance part (main or drop). If your track is going to be played at a party, then this is the part where people are not very energetic and have time to rest before the next parts. And you save their energy for listening to the drop, dance part. The main purpose of the Breakdown part (pit) is to calm the listener and give him a breather before the next parts. Very often, pit put almost in the middle of the track. In some tracks, there are even several holes. nine0003
Now comes the fun part. In the swing, you enter the entire melody, plus some of the parts of the dance part (drop). This is where you build up your energy.
Each of these parties must start rock the listener and prepare him for the dance part. It is worth noting that many people make the mistake of making this stage more energetic than the dance part of the track. Just endure a slightly less intense version of perception from this part than from the dance part (drop). nine0003
Tip: add a high pass filter to the master channel to boost the dance part. This will create a stronger impression.
Now the most active part of the track: Drop.
In this section, the main melody is used, the most delicious and explosive, for which the listener was prepared. There may be more percussion instruments in this part, relative to others. parts. The same applies to other parts: bass, leads, pads, etc. Just make sure that this is the brightest and most memorable part of the track. nine0003
In EDM genres, you can copy and paste the structure to your liking. But if you listen to all music (including classical), the structure of the tracks is everywhere.
You can also select and enter a new melody or chord progression.
Here is an example of what a track structure divided into bars and parts might look like.
The track follows the following pattern:
Introduction (16 bars)
Lose (24 bars)
Verse (16 bars) nine0003
Lose (8 measures)
Break #1 (4 bars)
Chorus (16 bars)
Instrumental chorus (16 bars)
Break #2 (16 bars)
Break #3 (8 bars)
Chorus (16 bars)
Lose (32 bars)
Instrumental chorus (16 bars)
Ending (32 bars)
This structure uses the principles of dance music structure, namely house. The intro of the track is a pure beat, to which other elements of the track are gradually added, and so on. growing. At the end, after the instrumental chorus, everything returns to a clean beat, so that this composition can be mixed with another.
