How To Make Dance Music That Inspires Choreography | Rhythm Guides
EDM PRODUCTION
Learn how to make dance music and build ups using a rhythm guide in this dance music production tutorial. A rhythm guide is like a visual tool that helps you organize the BPM and frequency of a song. So making a rhythm guide at the very beginning of your music workflow can be very useful after you have created sample libraries, unique sounds and found a spark.
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Dancers, or your fans, like to dance to the beat of a song. There are two different phases of a beat in a song, the half time phase and the double time phase. A song starts out in the half time phase then switches to the double time phase using a build up. So a dance song usually has a half time phase, a build up, double time phase and then repeats. Syncopate the second half time phase with some extra groovy tune.
It is important to understand that the half time phase, the build up and the double time phase will still have the same underlying beat. If you trying to create headbanging music, you usually want to use a quarter note beat under 100 BPM. To make the build up and double time phase feel faster than the half time phase you should be phasing in more sounds. Learn more about phasing in sounds with this Checkerboarding EDM Tutorial.
Then never be afraid to give the dancers a break by momentarily removing the BPM. You can give your dancers a break during a quick turn around, a vocal chop or other exciting chop sound.
EQ (Frequency)
The frequency of your sounds help dancers move their feet and arms more. You can think of the frequency as the face of your song. Its like something in your song that makes it memorable. Learn How To Make Your Music Stand Out and Get Fans To Talk About Your Sound by making memorable faces.
Bass
The sub bass really helps build the foundation of a song and create that vibration feeling. Knowing how to properly distort bass adds movement and texture to your music. Check out our free bass sound design tutorials from the Ill.Methodology Bass Sound Design workshop to learn about distorting bass.
