Dance Music Manual

Rick Snoman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429843891
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Acoustical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Dance Music Manual, aimed at the novice and seasoned professional alike, takes the reader through the software and hardware needed to create original, captivating, and professional sounding music.

Key features of Dance Music Manual include:

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• How to create compelling, professional-sounding original or remixed dance tracks.

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• The differences between different genres and how to produce them.

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• How to expose your tracks to their chosen audience and equip you with the skills to develop your career as a dance music producer and engineer.

Along with the book is a companion website, which provides examples of synthesis programming, compression, effects, MIDI files, and examples of the tracks discussed in this edition.

The new and improved fourth edition covers processes and techniques used by music producers, masters, mixers, and DJs. Each page is full of facts presented in a manner that is easy to absorb and implement.

Chapter 1
The studio centerpiece

Computer games don’t affect kids. I mean, if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

Marcus Brigstocke

The first requirement for anyone considering the creation of electronic dance music is whether to use a PC or an Apple Mac computer. Although there are a small number of dedicated hardware units that perform similar functions, the computer and its associated Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software form the centerpiece of almost every dance musician’s studio. Whether to use a PC or a Mac depends on many factors, but finances are often the main reason. A PC running Microsoft Windows is often a far cheaper alternative than an Apple Mac running OSX. But for most studios and artists, the Mac is the more reliable and hardy platform of choice. A secondary consideration is the DAW you want to employ for your music creation. Most DAWs run in both Windows or OSX but one in particular – Apple Logic Pro X – is only available for the Apple Mac.

Most DAW’s require a minimum of a quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 16GB of RAM, 100GB of free HDD space, and a screen resolution of 1280 x 768. These are the absolute minimum specifications; however, more memory, faster processors, larger HDDs, and plenty of display real estate are beneficial and will become a necessity as your skills grow.

In addition to the above, you’ll also want a high number of USB ports since some audio production software will require a USB dongle. These are to prevent software piracy, consisting of a hardware USB ‘key’ to be connected to the computer’s USB port before the software will function. One DAW in particular – Steinberg’s Cubase – requires a USB dongle to be connected before you can use the workstation.

To use further software plug-ins within the DAW, you may be required to use a Syncrosoft dongle, an E-Licenser dongle, or an iLok Dongle. Or, depending on your software of choice, all three of them. Just these alone need three USB ports, and that’s before you even consider an external USB HDD for additional storage, a suitable audio interface, and a USB piano keyboard. While you can employ a multi-USB hub for these purposes, some software protection devices and audio interfaces do not perform reliably through USB hubs. Also, many portable HDDs and some keyboards require a powered USB hub; thus you also need a free wall socket to power the hub.

Once the computer is chosen, the choice leans towards the appropriate DAW. With this software, you can record and edit audio, apply effects and processing, employ software representations of both classic and new synthesizers, and mix and master the resulting music. In fact, the DAW is such a powerful software application that some artists choose to create their music on a laptop alone.

Although all DAWs are similar regarding functionality and features, they do comprise different workflows and what works for some may not work for others. It would, therefore, be misleading to recommend any one specific workstation. Moreover, with the regular upgrades and updates that introduce new features (and usually bugs in equal measure), it would be unproductive to discuss the pros and cons of each. So, this chapter will not discuss specific options but instead cover the most commonly shared features to offer you a basic understanding.

Most DAWs divide their editing and workflow over several windows or pages. The most important of these is the arrange or session window. This is the page you’re greeted with on opening the workstation and consists of an overview of the entire project. An example is shown in Figure 1.1.

The arrangement page consists of individual tracks – created by the user – that appear down the left-hand side of the page. When creating these tracks, you typically choose between audio, MIDI, or virtual instrument tracks.

Figure 1.0 The 3rd Gen iLok software protection dongle

Figure 1.1 The arrangement page in Logic Pro X

Audio tracks

Audio tracks contain digital audio files. These could be to record audio onto, such as a vocal take, or they can be used to accept pre-recorded audio data held on the hard drive. These audio files can be dragged and dropped into the workstations arrange window where many workstations will display the audio as a region. Depending on the workstation, a region may be called an event, but these are interchangeable terms.

A region (or event) is a graphical representation of the audio file, displaying the audio waveform and its start and end points in the arrange window. The audio data is copied to a specific location on the hard drive but is only referenced by the workstation, and not imported into the project. This approach offers many benefits.

If you choose to repeat the same region 100 times in the arrange page, the workstation repeatedly plays the same audio file 100 times. This reduces the amount of hard disc space required as it doesn’t have to store multiple copies of the same audio file. You can use editing tools to manipulate regions. These include cutting, slicing and rearranging the audio; modifying its pitch; reversing and creating fade in and fade-outs. However, since only the region is edited and not the audio data themselves, it ensures that many edits are non-destructive and can be undone numerous times if required.

While basic audio editing is performed in the arrange window, in-depth audio editing may only be available in a sample edit window. In many workstations, this window is opened by double-clicking on an audio region.

Figure 1.2 Audio ‘regions’ sliced and edited in Logic Pro X

The features in a sample editor window will vary, but they will feature further audio editing options such as normalizing, sample reversing, time stretching, dynamic manipulation, and slicing. Even though some of these functions can be performed on the arrange page, it is important to differentiate between editing in the arrange window and editing in the sample editor window.

As previously discussed, any editing performed in the arrange window only applies to a region and does not affect the audio data stored on the hard disk. Conversely, in many cases, edits carried out in the sample editor window will affect the audio data directly. This means that any edits performed in the sample editor window will be reflected in the arrange page. So, if you were to reverse a sample in the sample editor window, every copy of that region in the arrange page could also be modified.

Because of this, if you wish to make an edit in the sample editor window, you may need to first create a secondary audio data file for the region you’re editing. This way, further copies of the same regions are not affected. This is commonly found in an audio menu as a duplicate region or convert region. By doing so, any changes made to this audio data will not affect the rest of the events or regions in the arrange page that point to the original file.

MIDI and virtual instrument tracks

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) tracks and virtual instruments tracks are fundamentally the same as both can contain MIDI events. MIDI is a protocol that was established in 1983 for digital musical instruments to communicate with one another. The data transmitted in MIDI consists of simple commands such when to play a note, for how long the note is played for, and how hard the note is struck (aka velocity).

Within a DAW, a standard MIDI track is created when you want to send note data outside the DAW onto any attached hardware synthesizers. Alternatively, on a virtual instrument track, the MIDI remains internally routed to a software emulation of a synthesizer that is graphically represented within the confines of the workstation.

Regardless of whether the track is a virtual instrument or MIDI track, only very basic editing can be accomplished within the arrange window. Here, you are often limited to inserting, deleting, slicing, and moving MIDI regions around the arrange page, much in the same way as audio. Further in-depth MIDI editing is performed within a specific piano roll editor.

The piano roll editor is like an advanced musical conductor. You can enter notes and send the subsequent event data to any number of external hardware or internal virtual synthesizers. This is shown in Figure 1.3.

A piano keyboard appears down the left-hand side of the editor and denotes the pitch. To the right is the quantization grid on which the notes are ‘drawn’ (inserted) with a pencil tool. When playback begins, any notes in this field are played from left to right at a speed determined by the tempo of the piece. If many notes occur at the same position in time, they will play simultaneously.

Alongside drawing notes via the pencil tool, it is also possible to record MIDI data live. By connecting a MIDI capable piano keyboard to the DAW via a MIDI or USB connection, notes played on the piano keyboard will be recorded live on the piano roll. It is important to understand that audio is not recorded from the keyboard.

Figure 1.3 The piano roll editor in Logic Pro X

Indeed, many MIDI keyboards do not produce sounds, only data instructions, and the DAW records these instructions such as note on/off and velocity.

Once recorded, the timing of these notes can be modified, and notes can be lengthened, shortened, or deleted to perfect the performance. Once editing is complete, this MIDI is transmitted to any connected synthesizer or sampler that will repeat the performance in whatever sound is currently selected.

Further editing windows may be available such as music notation or specific editing environments. These additional editors depend highly on the workstation, and since the majority of electronic musicians spend their time moving between the arrange page, piano roll, and sample editor, they are beyond the scope of this book.

Arrangements

Any successful electronic music track will employ multiple audio and MIDI channels on the arrange page of the workstation. These are arranged from left to right (over time) to produce the finished music. Similar to the piano roll, these audio and MIDI regions may be layered under one another to play simultaneously or one after the other to create builds and drops. A typical arrangement is shown in Figure 1.4.

In the arrangement page, it is possible to perform multiple functions including copying and repeating regions across the length to produce an arrangement. For example, if there is a one-bar drum loop region in the project, this region could be repeated so that it plays for any number of bars throughout. The same could then be performed with the bass and lead regions etc.

Figure 1.4 A typical arrangement in Logic Pro X

With playback initiated, a timeline moves from left to right to play all the individual channels and regions simultaneously. It is also through this arrange page that you can insert any number of processor or effects plug-ins onto any number of channels.

Plug-ins are the most significant de...