How I Get Square Dance Music
Rich Reel 6 Mar 2007
Building a good square dance music collection is something I spend a lot of time on.
Great music builds excitement and makes dancing, and calling more fun.
This article is in two parts: How I Get Square Dance Music and
How I Get Alternative Music.
See also:
Vinyl records I own and Music I've converted to MP3 (my best square dance music)
Square Dance Music
There are several companies that offer square dance records including
Palomino Records and
A & S Records.
You can now listen before you buy.
There are individual record labels that are also selling their music directly.
Find a list of them here
I mostly use BRS Square Dance Records and Engraving in Pinole California (Greater San Francisco Bay Area).
I simply send e-mail to Ronda (Bert and Ronda Swerer) at
BSwerer@aol.com
and tell her what I want.
I try to tell her as much as I can about the records I want.
It is amazing that she can find records sometime if I only can remember some of the words in the song - not even the title.
If you notice only the color of the record label of another caller's record, this is helpful information.
Ronda will typically get any records she has in stock out to me in a few days.
If I order new records (from this or last month's new releases), I can expect about 80% or more of what I order in a few days.
If I hear a record at a weekend dance then try to order it, I typically can expect...
- 30% chance: She has it in stock - I get it in 2 days
- 30% chance: She has to back order it - I get it within a month.
- 30% chance: It is no longer available but another record label has different version of the same song.
My experience has been that the other version is not as good, but occasionally I am surprised.
- 10% chance: It is no longer available.
But don't despair - there is sometimes a creative way to get exactly the record you want.
You must be patient.
If you are into square dance calling for the long term, you can bet you'll eventually get all the records you really want.
With tax and shipping, records cost about $7 each, maybe a little more.
I order just about every record that I hear that I really like, then am happy with whatever comes my way.
Records can't be returned, so I give those that turn out to be mistakes to friends who are curious about calling.
Tape Service
I subscribe to BRS's cassette tape service.
Once or twice a month, I get a cassette tape in the mail that has a sample of 10 "new release" records on it.
Each has a cut from the "music" side and a cut from the "called" side of the record.
A fair number of the singing call figures listed on all8.com were collected by listening to and noting the figures from these tapes.
The tape service costs around $15 for 10 tapes.
As a tape service subscriber, I get a little discount when I order records.
Only thinking about calling at this point?
I highly recommend that you subscribe to a tape service now.
Two reasons...
- You want to start building up your record collection.
Even if you don't order any records, at least keep track of the ones you like.
You'll want to have great records when you start calling and it will take a while to build up a decent collection.
- You want to hear the variety of callers singing on these records.
This will help you develop rhythm and timing and give you a vocabulary of "filler words" that will make your calling sound polished.
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What WAS the name of that record?
Most callers are very willing to share with you the name and label information of the record they are using.
Simply walk up and ask them after the tip.
Do not approach the caller at the beginning of his/her tip when they are busy preparing and writing down key couple information, etc.
Alternative Square Dance Music
Alternative square dance music is simply music from sources other than the square dance music industry.
With powerful software, even free software, available to record and edit music on the common PC,
it is now possible to get a wide variety of music from many sources and reformat it (if necessary) for square dancing yourself.
I think it's vital that we callers support our square dance music industry.
That said, I think it's almost a given that the modern caller needs to be able to find and reformat "alternative" music for him or herself
to keep the activity fresh and current.
Remember when you are working with copyrighted music, there are some legal issues to keep in mind.
A great tune for square dancing will have...
- Tempo very close to 128 BPM (Beats Per Minute).
Keeping the vast majority of your music in the range 123 to 131 BPM would be good.
You can probably get away with 118-134 BPM, but tempos too far from the ideal become unpleasant to dance to.
- Good beat. That doesn't necessarily mean a thumping loud beat, but rather a recognizable beat that gets YOUR foot tapping and body swaying.
While it isn't so important to me, some callers want a lot of "up beat": one AND two AND three AND four AND.
You should try calling to a piece of music before spending a lot of time preparing it for use.
- No prominent instruments in your vocal frequency range (400Hz to around 6KHz) that you'll have to call over.
The very worst music to call over features a clear prominent solo voice that will be in direct competition with your voice.
The worst instruments to call over are those that are bright and "hold" notes such as brass instruments
(saxophone, trumpet, etc.) and strings (violin, etc.), but can include almost any prominent solo instrument.
Percussive instruments playing staccato notes are much easier to call over and include piano, guitar, banjo,
some fiddle techniques, xylophone and steel drums to name a few.
Unfortunately women will need to be more particular about sounds in their vocal range because their higher-pitch
voice will have fewer audible harmonics necessary for clear speech dancers can understand.
Some callers can get otherwise unusable music to work by turning the volume way down when they call.
As a dancer I find low music volume makes the beat harder to hear and the energy lower.
Pumping the music volume up and down (up between words, down while speaking) in an attempt to achieve both
vocal clarity and music volume can be distracting and even annoying to some dancers.
- 32 or 64 beat phrases.
Phrasing is like a musical "paragraph" of musical "sentences".
Between phrases it should feel as though the music is moving from one section to another,
perhaps with the feeling of taking a breath between.
In square dance music, this will ideally happen every 32 and/or 64 beats.
Phrasing matters more to some callers and dancers and less to others.
I find when musical phrasing differs from my ideal of 64 beats,
it affects me differently depending on how much "off" it is.
I'd say 8 beats off (meaning a 56 or 72 beat phrase) is "distracting", 4 beats off is "annoying"
and less than 4 beats or any odd number of beats off is "completely unusable".
16 beats off I may not notice. 12 beats off I definitely would.
I find rock music and Latin music tends to have more flexiblity in phrasing throughout the song
while disco and techno music usually (but not always) has highly regular phrasing.
You may react to the phrasing differently depending on how closely you time your calling with the music.
Additional comments about choosing music
- Variety is good but "too strange" can alienate some of your dancers.
If you know your audience, you'll likely make good choices.
I find it helpful to imagine myself calling to a piece of music in front of my group.
- Avoid music you don't like!
Too often I see callers, in a desperate attempt to attract younger dancers, choosing completely inappropriate music for square dancing.
Young dancers want GOOD music, not simply current music.
YOU know the difference.
- Sometimes a dancer will suggest something.
That doesn't mean it will be good for square dancing, or even that THEY will like it for square dancing.
You need to judge if you can call to it.
If you want to be polite, you can play their song between tips.
Ok, let's get to work.
Five steps: Discovering, Obtaining, Digitizing, Cleanup, Formatting
Discovering title and artist/label information of songs that are good
- Hear what other callers use (since it is SO much work to find good music)
- Listen everywhere you go and make a note.
I use a voice recorder
(this model is old and probably not available any more).
- Measure BPM of your music collection (here's mine),
sort by BPM and consider songs in the 110-140 BPM range (planning to tempo-shift those outside of 124-130 BPM)
- Search for songs you remember being good.
At Google, enter the word "lyrics" followed by any unique words in the song you can remember.
- Listen through CDs on Amazon,
Yahoo Music,
Barnes & Noble.
(I have convenient search boxes to these on my home page)
- Subscribe to Rhapsody or other on-line music service:
iTunes, Napster and Yahoo Music are examples.
I definitely recommend Rhapsody (about $10 a month).
- (not that I recommend it but...) I do use illegal music download sites to find certain versions of songs.
What I'm after isn't an illegal copy, but title and artist information for a particular version of a song that may not be available to audition (hear before you buy) from available retail sources.
I consider this fair use.
- If you want techno music, there are DJ sites where you can audition music available primarily on 12" vinyl but sometimes on CD.
I use DJ Nexus, to find very new music with that strong techno beat.
The vast majority of this type of music is excessively boring, endlessly repeating the same musical riff over and over in as little as 8 or even 4 beats!.
I find "House" or "Disco House" to be the most usable, but much of this too is very boring.
I have found some great music that no one else has, but the hit rate is low - around 1 usable song in well over 1000 auditioned.
Good luck!
Obtaining a legal copy
- Purchase it on-line (see CD and on-line sources listed above).
I also use (especially for DJ music):
JunoRecords
Mark's Classics
GEMM
Beatport
Discogs
- Find a karaoke version.
(I have convenient search boxes to karaoke sites on my home page).
A number of my best songs are from karaoke versions.
- For regular square dance records: eBay - This NOT the best way, but it is a source I use.
My advice: Don't buy less than about 100 records.
You want a whole collection, not a few records from stock that's been looked over and picked through.
Usually the larger the collection, the better chance you'll find records of real value.
- Put up your own website with a wanted records page.
(Here's mine)
I occasionally get email from callers or widows looking to sell anything from a single one of my wanted records to an entire collection.
Be aware that shipping lots of heavy records costs money.
- Swapping with other callers. This is not something I've done, but Vic Ceder
publishes his wish list and lists duplicates he's willing to trade.
- sd-callers email list. This discussion forum for callers can sometimes be a way to find out about records and equipment being sold.
Occasionally someone will post asking for a specific record - I don't know how successful this is.
Since sd-callers is now hosted by ALL8.COM, contact me and ask to join.
Digitizing to a digital computer file
Digitizing is simply getting an analog audio signal into digital ones and zeros so computer equipment can do all the fun things with it - editing and easy electronic storage for example.
- Since my calling equipment only amplifies a mono signal, I usually record or convert all my music to mono at the first step.
Mono recordings use half the memory and computer disk space and make editing go twice as fast as stereo.
Sometimes one channel will have more vocal or loud instruments than the other (somewhat typical on karaoke recordings) and so you might want to record in stereo
then mix to mono with a left/right mix other than the usual 50/50.
You may prefer to keep your recordings in stereo through the entire process.
- Most editors (see exception below) need to have the music in an uncompressed sample based format, usually WAV or other PCM-type format.
If your music comes on a CD, this conversion is called ripping.
If your music comes as MP3 or similar compressed format, you'll have to make a judgment call.
Since MP3 is a "lossy" compression format, you need to decide if your edits will be worth a small loss in audio quality.
The additional loss will only occur if you save your final edited file to MP3 or other lossy compression format.
- This handy program: mp3DirectCut
let's you perform volume changes, fades, cuts and splitting of MP3 files directly without any additional loss in quality.
- Recording from Vinyl...
- Play on a quality turntable.
I use a Stanton ST.150 DJ style turntable with great results.
It has a lot of features but most important to me is direct drive (no belt).
The platter starts and stops on a dime which is a time saver.
Belt-drive turntables are certainly ok.
If your belt-drive turntable is very old (especially if the pitch wavers), you'll want to replace the belt.
They are still readily available.
USB Turntables such as Ion iTTUSB
are a new, and low cost option that converts the signal to digital inside the turntable and sends it directly to the computer over USB.
- Typically phonographs / record players / turntables have a "phono output" which,
because of how records are recorded, give a signal that is RIAA pre-emphasized.
This signal must be subsequently re-equalized to compensate for (cancel out) the pre-emphasis.
A "phono input" does this RIAA re-equalizing.
A "line level input", sometimes called "line-in", has a flat response (no equalization) and isn't as sensitive (doesn't amplify as much) as a phono input.
If your recording device only has "line-in", you'll need a separate phono preamplifier.
- To get the highest possible signal-to-noise-ratio (S/N), you want all your signals to be strong, but not overdriving the input.
You may (optionally) route your audio signal through a pre-amp or mixer for purposes of adjusting the volume level.
If the volume of a source (turntable for example) is too low for the input, the recording device will need to boost the weak signal which can easily pick up unwanted noise.
If the volume of a source is too high for the input, the signal can over drive the input electronics causing the signal to be clipped (flat tops on the peaks, raspy sound).
You want the signal matched to the input so it is strong, but rarely if ever clips.
Signal peaks (loudest, highest spike) should get within 50% to 100% of the maximum level of the recording device's input.
You can set this level by ear by turning up the volume until you start to hear distortion, then back off until you don't hear the distortion.
(Use the loudest part of the song for this test.)
You can see clipping distortion by recording some audio and then looking at the waveform to see if the tops are flat or go off-screen in the waveform display.
If the signal wave-tops look flat (cut off), but are sloped a little, this means the distortion is occurring earlier in the chain, probably not at the computer.
Remember that every analog input on a device can be a point where the audio signal can be too strong or too weak.
An easy test when there are multiple volume knobs in the signal path is to take turns turning one up and another down keeping the final signal level the same
and listening for distortion or looking for flat tops in the recorded wave shape.
Distortion can also be caused by a worn needle, poorly aligned cartridge, or incorrect needle pressure.
- (This step can be very important and easy to forget) Reduce the volume of all unused audio input sources to zero
all along the signal chain, including at the computer.
This can keep unnecessary noise (hiss) out your recording.
- You may want to disconnect any monitor speakers as these can cause feedback (rumble) into the turntable and may be a source of electrical noise pickup.
- Keep the setup away from electrical noise sources, and if possible, on a separate electrical circuit from them.
- It might be helpful to isolate ground loops with a 3-prong adapter
or (in the case of a laptop or digital recording device) run from the battery to reduce hum.
Electrically connecting (grounding) the turntable chassis to the computer chassis might help.
Listen with the needle on the record, turntable platter NOT turning, and the volume cranked way up to see which of the things above are important.
- Clean the vinyl.
Even with sophisticated noise removal software available, I can tell you it is MUCH easier to wash the dirt away.
I use a Nitty Gritty 1.5FI record washing machine with it's special fluid.
If the record is really dirty, I will pre-wash with a solution of mostly DI water, part isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, and just a drop or two of detergent per quart/liter.
(Find some recipes for wash solution here).
A soft bristle brush helps in this step.
If the record is new or has only very light specks, I might use only a puff of air from an aerosol/air/canned/spray duster.
- Center the record on the turntable platter.
This step can dramatically improve wavering pitch (out of tune) sound that is most pronounced at the end of the record.
Slop in where the center hole is punched in the vinyl and hole clearance around the center hub of your turntable (45 RPM adapter) adds error that allows the record to rotate off-center.
Here's how I center my records:
Play the record.
Carefully observe the swaying motion of the tone arm in time with each rotation of the record.
To help see minute movements, rest your palm on the base (chassis) of the turntable and rigidly stretch out a finger (like a little measuring stick) so it almost touches the tone arm.
As the record turns, note a feature on the record label that correlates with the most outward (away from the center) point of tone arm sway.
Leave the needle on the record and stop the turntable platter.
Without disturbing the record, rotate the platter (if necessary) convenient for the next step.
Carefully press your finger tip onto the turntable PLATTER very near the outer rim of the record, and in-line with the label feature noted above,
then slowly roll your finger on the platter surface toward the record to contact and nudge the whole record.
The nudge aims to center the record which ideally will be a distance equal to half of the amount of total tone arm sway observed above.
Repeat. Sometimes it takes me 4 or more tries.
With practice you'll get better at judging how far to nudge the record to reduce the sway enough to eliminate pitch problems.
Sometimes the record hole contacts the center hub / 45 adapter before the record is fully centered.
If this happens, remove the 45 adapter / center hub, re-measure tone arm sway and (carefully) nudge again.
I made a 45 adapter / center hub that's 1.27mm (0.050") smaller in diameter to allow extra nudging room and even THIS adapter needed to be removed to fully center a few records!
- Save as WAV or other PCM-type sample format.
I use CoolEdit Pro 1.2 (old but still available on eBay) which continues to be plenty powerful.
In 2003 CoolEdit went to Adobe Audition.
Audacity is a similar tool and free.
Windows Sound Recorder (comes with all versions of Windows) is a bare minimum solution, but will record audio from the computer sound card just fine.
Digital Cleanup
- Let me give you one piece of advice to guide you in all of your edits - If you can't decide if an edit you make is an improvement over the original, always choose the original.
Every edit of this nature adds distortion and makes it harder to go back and fix things later as your editing skill improves.
If you can't decide how much of an effect to add, always add just a little less of the effect.
If yon don't know how much noise to remove, remove a little less than you think is the right amount.
- Pops, clicks and crackle - These are artifacts usually only on vinyl recordings caused by small particles (dirt) and scratches.
I find the vast majority (but certainly not all) of the objectionable noise on most vinyl recordings to be pops and clicks.
Sometimes there are so many of these that it sounds like a constant background noise (called hiss),
but after many restoration projects, I find the results from this step alone can produce (and have produced) near CD quality sound.
The problem with virtually all "automatic" pop and click removal algorithms is they inevitably miss some defects and remove some desirable percussive sounds.
Brass instruments that have a naturally "spiky" wave shape are particularly difficult.
Automatic pop and click reduction algorithms tend to remove chunks of the "bite" from sound of a held note of a brassy instrument.
The trained human ear is much better at judging which sounds are musical and which are undesirable.
A recording in reasonable condition will have a manageable number of these pop and click artifacts,
and it is possible to remove each one manually without too much time and effort, and with near perfect results.
Recordings in poor condition can be substantially improved using this technique, but it can quickly become tedious.
Details on removing pops and clicks manually (Some of this may not mean much until you've done it a lot)
- Clean the vinyl!! - See "Clean the vinyl" under "Digitizing" above.
- Your audio editing program will need to have a "spectrum view" or "spectral view" which is almost essential for this process.
In spectrum view, I find setting FFT size (sometimes called "spectral bands") to 128, "window function" to "Hanning",
choosing "logarithmic" and range of 120dB gives the right amount of detail.
Zooming in to a width of around 0.130 seconds let's you see artifacts at a scale where you can easily select them with a mouse.
Ideally you want to play the song, hear an offending pop or click, zoom in, see it, remove it, zoom out again and resume playing.
I have shortcut keys for these operations.
It does take a while to be able to hear a click and be able to zoom to the correct location but patience and practice is about the only thing you'll need.
- To remove the click, swipe the mouse to straddle the bright vertical streak in the spectrum view and operate the "fix single click" function to remove it.
Again, I have shortcut keys for this and consider it a mandatory feature to be able to press a single key to operate this function.
My setup: (note the location of these keys on the keyboard)
- [Z]="pan one screen view to the left"
- [X]="fix one click"
- [C]="pan one screen view to the right"
- [SPACE]=toggle play/stop
- I also set the mouse scroll wheel to zoom by a very large amount: 1000% or even more.
- A very high pitch click, a "tick", needs a very narrow, and carefully positioned, selection around the artifact to be removed.
You can get confirmation that the artifact is a high frequency tick if the vertical band in the spectral view is very narrow
and doesn't go all the way to the bottom (meaning no low frequency content).
You always want the narrowest selection width possible to capture a tick because the click removal algorithm
can introduce a new artifact into lower frequencies which is particularly audible if there is loud low (bass) note being held.
Try to select the very center 20% to 30% of the tick as it appears in the spectrum view.
As you're starting out, you may want to switch back and forth between wave and spectrum views and compare what you see.
- A very low pitch click, a "knock", will need a fairly wide selection around the artifact to remove it.
These can be very hard to see in the spectral view as their signature doesn't go all the way to the top like most other clicks (meaning no high frequency content).
Setting the FFT size up to 1024 or 2048 and zooming in vertically (frequency) to the very lower portion of the view can help reveal these.
When the FFT size is larger, horizontal resolution is proportionally reduced so you'll need to zoom out in the horizontal (time) dimension.
The wider selection width needed makes it more difficult to remove these without adding artifacts.
Sometimes I'll use undo and try again effectively sliding my selected region a little more to the left or right but always including the artifact to get a better result.
- A very loud click, "a pop", may have to removed in multiple passes.
I get good results by selecting about 80% of a pop's width and "fix one click" several times at the same location.
I also find my editor does a better job if I remove little clicks near the pop before removing the pop.
- A click in the middle of a long, held, brassy note, if removed in the usual way, can remove a whole cycle of the waveform leaving an audible void.
Some tricks for this case...
- Zoom WAY in so you can select only about 5 to 10% of the middle of the click.
If it's a little offset from the regular vertical bands that are part of the held note, zoom in enough to select 10% or less of the very center of the click.
If the click is exactly centered on the regular (desired) waveform's spike, you'll need to reduce the click, not remove it.
Select 5% or less in the of the center of the click and repeatedly "fix one click" to gradually reduce it until it's about the same level
(brightness) as the surrounding peaks and the artifact will become inaudible.
- Select the click, but instead of "fix one click", open up the filter tool and reduce (maybe only 3dB) above 1000Hz.
Repeat this until the click blends in to the surrounding signal.
The 1000Hz is a typical value.
If you study the spectrum carefully, you can see from the scale which frequencies to reduce.
- Switch to waveform view and look for regularity in the waveform in the vicinity.
Swipe another very-similar-looking cycle of the waveform and paste it over (replace) the cycle containing the artifact.
Be careful to match both the width of the replacement cycle and both zero crossings EXACTLY.
- Find another similar passage in the song and see if you can substitute a matching note or beat over the one with the artifact.
- If there isn't much bass present, you might get away with deleting (simply removing) one whole cycle with an artifact in it.
This is harder to do than it sounds because many harmonics can be disturbed by a cut.
- [This is advanced] This is a trick to use when there's a prominent bass line, few mid-range frequency components
and mostly mid-to-high frequency clicks (which represents the vast majority of clicks in general).
Divide the spectrum of the whole song using complimentary high pass and low pass filters creating two files
that when added together, reproduce the original song exactly.
(I might suggest a crossover frequency somewhere between 200 and 500 Hz)
Remove clicks only from the high frequency file then merge (add) the two back together at the very end.
This technique prevents unwanted distortion from being introduced into the bass line when clicks are removed.
Note you cannot change the length of either track in this process if you expect to successfully rejoin them.
- Hiss, hum, and other undesirable constant background
Hiss removal is almost always a spectral subtraction of the noise floor from every frequency component throughout the song.
This actually distorts the whole signal.
If the level of distortion is less than the hiss, then there's a benefit.
The lower the volume of the signal. the more distortion by proportion is introduced by removing hiss.
You need to consider the softest sounds to evaluate the hiss-to-distortion tradeoff.
Hiss reduction artifacts are most easily heard in the "reverb tail".
Over-used hiss reduction (overused in my opinion) turns an open airy sound (albeit with hiss) into a muffled, tinny, sometimes squeaky sound that is anything but natural.
To me the sound becomes "dead", and worse overall than the hiss which the human brain can more-or-less ignore.
Unless the hiss is intolerable, I probably won't do ANY hiss reduction.
Even then I err on the side of caution and leave more hiss in the song than I would like.
It's usually the last step and I always make a backup copy of the version before hiss removal.
A vast majority of the objectionable noise from vinyl recordings is pops, clicks, crackle, and the like, not hiss,
hiss reduction is NOT effective for removing pops, clicks and light crackle.
Removing Hiss - Some tricks
- Use the largest possible FFT size to get the best representation of the hiss to remove
- Take the time to remove all pops and clicks from the hiss noise sample as these artifacts in the noise sample can skew the frequency content of the hiss giving inferior hiss removal.
You actually want a "clean" hiss sample to get a good results
- Another trick: Cut quiet sections (with the right kind of hiss like you want to remove) from throughout the song and paste them end-to-end to create a longer noise sample.
Be sure to edit out all hints of tone and get rid of any artifacts between these pasted-together sections.
- Sometimes the hiss varies in amplitude throughout the song.
In this case, reduce hiss in multiple passes, perhaps going over the sections with louder hiss a second or possibly a third time with a weak application of the hiss reduction each time.
I use the same reference noise sample for every pass.
- Sometimes the noise, while present throughout the song, is only noticeable at the very end or during quiet sections.
In this case, only remove the hiss where needed.
- Tape Drop Out
- Gaps
- Heavy Distortion / Clipped signal
- Burst of Noise
- Wavering Pitch / Pitch Correction
- Tempo Correction
- Lost fidelity
- Cleaning Bass
- Adding Punch
- Reducing Vocals
Formatting music for square dancing...
- For singing calls, the standard is: 7 sections (phrases), each exactly 64 beats, plus an 8 or 16 beat "intro", plus an 8, 16 or sometimes 32 beat "outro" (also called a "tag").
Of the 7 phrases, the 1st, 4th, and 7th (the opening, middle and closing breaks) are typically the "chorus", while the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th are the "verse".
This is not a rule.
Whatever fits well with the song is the best way.
- For patter
- Some callers like to use "track marks" or "loop points" that allow certain music players, usually running on a laptop, to loop the music without the extra memory use of a longer song.
This can also offer the caller a degree of interactive control of the music.
My player (a 2nd Generation iPod Nano 8GB) doesn't have this feature, so...
- I like to have a single track longer than I plan to use already pre-looped.
I've standardized on about 12 minutes (11-13 minutes) long for my patter tracks and that still feels right to me after 5 years.
To end a tip anytime, I wait for the end of a phrase then drop the volume or slowly fade out.
Some callers prefer shorter; very few prefer longer, which means other callers can use my music for a guest tip, etc.
- I make sure there is something in the music which alerts me the music will be ending soon, but won't be noticed by the dancers.
This works as a timer - a clue I've been calling (usually teaching) too long and should think about winding it up.
This "something" in the music is usually in or just before the last phrase and can be...
- The original last phrase of the music which I didn't include in the looped portion
- A pitch change (usually up 1/2 step) in the original music which I may have pitch-shifted out in the looped portion
- A hint of the tag line mixed in
- A stronger up beat, a slightly unusual chord, something extra added in the background, a missing drum hit, etc. It's fun to be creative
- Since I have the whole 12 minutes recorded, I like to add extra variety into the music which is not possible with static loop points.
- Looping Techniques
- Precise Loop Timing
- "Bridges"
- Matching the end of the song with the beginning
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