What is Dance-Hop?

It's time to realise that the charts have been crossing over two of the most club-friendly genres for some time now. It's time to pay attention to one of the biggest new sounds of the new millenium. It's time to ask some questions...

What's it about?

Dance-Hop is about merging together offbeat rhythms with constant, 4-on-the-floor ones. The funkiness of hip hop with the driving beats of club music, merging with some of the most uplifting and sexy synths to make a genre so danceable that it could turn a school disco into an underground exclusive clubnight!

When did it start?

It's not a new idea to merge hip hop and dance, but it's never really hit the charts with any weight in the past - the Hip House fad in the 80s briefly combined rap with dance beats, but it's taken a while for the crossover to really find its feet and become accepted in its own right as a chartworthy genre.

How did it start to get popular?

When hip hop and R&B artists such as Flo Rida, Taio Cruz, Will.i.am, Usher, and Akon all followed suit in adding dance and euro pop elements to their songs, the style was cemented into the minds of the masses. Massive hits like "sexy bitch", "dynamite" and "OMG" have really pushed the synth heavy sound to the fore of pop music.

Why is Dance Hop so club-friendly?

The undeniably danceable 4 on the floor kick drum beat that carries the song has been proven again and again to be a success in the club atmosphere, combining that with electro house synths associated so strongly with summer parties and the vocals from rap and R&B give the clubgoers hooks to sing along with. It has it all.

How can I make it?

Get yourself over to primeloops to grab "Da Sound of Bounce" for a start - that pack pretty much sums the genre up perfectly. Experimenting with conventionally dance-y sample packs in a hip hop context (try alternating between a dance beat and a hip hop one) can be a sure-fire success too!

Give square wave synths a chance and be generous with the glistening top end to get that uplifting feel. Most importantly, when writing it, make sure you can't resist dancing to it as you're laying those synthlines down!

5 Promo Tips for Big Shows

Wow! Good news; You landed that big show! Whether it's a support slot or a packed night, when a gig comes up that you just know is going to be brilliant, you need to make the most of it.

Here are 5 ways to do so!

1. Have too many CDs

Both to sell and to give out - especially if you know there will be influential people there. Getting your music out to people is a lot easier if you actually have your music to give out in the first place. A 3 track CD, preferably with a nicely printed design on it (something informative and relevant to your style - make sure contact details are on there!) should do the trick.

2. Promote it yourself

If you can get people there to see you, they can help to intice the crowd into moving. It's a chain reaction situation - get the front rows moving and it'll slowly echo out further back! So get your mates there, do some flyering and even try and get on local radio to encourage people that are going to help out a local act by going suitably mental on the dancefloor.

3. Find excuses to talk to the bigger acts and promoters

Don't pass up the chance to thank them for putting on the show / allowing you to play with them! While you're at it, you may as well give them a free CD as a token of your appreciation. If you can get chatting and make friends with bigger acts and more successful promoters, that's what's going to help you secure more big shows in future!

4. Mean Business

Get a tonne of business cards printed. This can be a brilliant technique - get some carefully selected fans to hand them out, or be more personal and do it yourself, chatting to as many people who saw you as possible. A business card can be tucked in a pocket rather than being dropped on the floor, making it more likely that the punter will check you out!

5. Jump off something

Well, I suppose "Stand Out" might be better, but I find leaping off PA systems works reasonably well to do just that. If you are a fan of maintaining the integrity of your spine, however, hiring some impressive lights, doing a cool cover or donning some attention grabbing garb may be similarly effective and more pleasing to the venue's health and safety manager.

So get preparing for how you're going to make the most of the opportunity - don't just let it slip!

To break or not to break

When writing electronic music, there are several schools of thought when deciding how to write the percussive side of things.

But which one suits you? It's time to take a look at what's available for the aspiring beat makers out there...


BYOB (Build your own Beat)

Get yourself a nice drum sequencer and stick some samples in, then build your beat from scratch. This one is for the control freaks out there who want absolutely every part of the beat to be as they envision it.

The advantages of this method are that you get exactly the rhythm you want, with no compromises. It'll also be much more unique to you, and you'll walk away with the smug satisfaction of being the creator of the loop.

The disadvantages include that it can take a while to get it how you want, it can sometimes feel lacking if you can't find punchy / airy enough samples and if you're not feeling inspired, you might get frustrated before you even get to the rest of the sounds in your song!


Loops

Do you despair at making beats from scratch? Find yourself frustrated that you can't just get straight to work on something? It's time to get loopy with some pre-programmed percussion!

Find a rex loop player or something similar (most sequencers natively support .wav file looping) and you can jump in at the deep end by chucking a percussive loop right into the mix, making it sound awesome straight away and giving you a cool starting point.

The advantage here is obviously the speed of access; the workflow with loops allows you to quickly fill up your track with a beat so you can concentrate on the melodies - if you are more of a melody person than a passionate percussionist, perhaps this is the preferred paradigm for you!

The disadvantages are that it might not be unique, particularly if you use a loop that is overused (Amen breaks, I'm looking at you!) - However, by slicing the loop into sections and re-arranging it, you can get something more tailored to your needs. You still won't be able to take individual soloed hits to make cool fills unless you have them separately, though.

So each method has their advantages and disadvantages, but perhaps the way forward lies in another method...


Use Both!

Chucking a loop in and backing it up with some punchy one-shots, or filling out a minimalist beat with an airy, interesting loop means you can get something more unique and not lose your mind trying to perfect that break without any external elements!

While this may still take a while, one way around the aformentioned problem of losing your spark before you can get to the melody-making is to set aside a day for making beats. Build a bunch of breaks, then when you want to make a song, you'll have your own pack of custom loops ready and waiting for you to utilize them in your next smash hit.

Otherwise, use the loop to build the song, then go back at the end and re-build it as you please with your own one-shot beats, so you don't lose that valuable inspiration.


So try some new methods, find the break-making workflow that works for you and get to... uh... work!

Synthesix - 6 different methods of making synth sounds

Do you feel you're in a rut with your productions?   Struggling to create new sounds?   Or simply on the lookout to expand your synthesized horizons?

Well here are the synthesix - 6 different methods of synthesizing sounds...

1. Additive

By giving complete control over every harmonic or partial in the sound, additive is one of the most versatile, but also difficult synthesis methods to get to grips with.
However, it's a simple concept - reconstructing complex sounds out of really simple ones.   A collection of sine waves all played at different frequencies to create the sound.

Generally, additive synths will give control over just a few groups of partials, just to simplify things, so it's a little more user-friendly.


2. Subtractive

Far less computationally expensive than additive and very commonly used, subtractive synthesis begins with an oscillator that generates a waveform such as a sawtooth or square wave, then uses filters and the like to remove harmonics from the tone, altering it - kind of like when you say "ahhh" and slowly close your mouth until it becomes an "oooh" (if you can resist actually doing that now, you have an inconceivably strong will!)


3. FM

Frequency Modulation or FM synthesis is a fast-track to interesting and obscure tones.   Perhaps this is why they are so popular with Dubstep producers, who frequently employ FM synthesis to make increasingly more disgusting bass synths.

This is done by frequency modulating a waveform (when the amplitude stays the same, but the frequency is modulated) with another waveform.    This distorts the tone and gives all kinds of unexpected and fun sounds!

If you modulate a wave with another wave that's frequency isn't an integer multiple of the original wave (I'll give you a moment to wrap your head around that one, it took me a while) then you can get dissonant and even percussive sounds from it!


4. PM

Phase Modulation or PM is what you get when some Japanese synth manufacturers decide to prove just how smart they are.   While the rest of the world's computers were struggling under the strain of subtractive synthesis, Casio's researchers let their processors have a holiday with PM.

PM simply processed the samples of each wave at a varying speed.   By reading out the first part of the wave really fast, then holding the loudest point of each high and low point of the wave for longer than normal, it created a really interesting tone with a tiny computational cost.

The most brilliant part however (and much simpler to understand as well) comes when you add in the second wave in the PM synth.   For example - if you have a square wave in slot 1 and a saw wave in slot 2, it would play a square followed by a saw over and over again in quick succession, making a completely new tone.

These are great for making unusual resonant tones.


5. Granular

A close relative of sampling, Granular synthesis involves cutting samples up into really tiny segments of only a few milliseconds long called "grains", then playing them back at different speeds, phases, volumes and pitches to create all kinds of intriguing timbres!

You'll probably know the sound as the one from the film The Matrix, where neo has the silver goo going down his throat after taking the red pill.

It's great for that time-stretchy sound and more for ambient soundscapes and effects than lead synths or basses.

6. Wavetable

Wavetable synths are basically modified additive synths.   They have tables of different waves made up from additive synthesis, saving the user from having to make each individual wave.

Then, they allow the producer to play back the waves looped in quick succession, also allowing them to determine how far through the wave the loop should begin, resulting in some very unusual harmonic sounds!