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Dance Music production: playing with subtle tempo changes?


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I would be curious to hear how many dance music producers just set Logic to a straight tempo for a whole track, vs how many like to sometimes play around a bit with the tempo as the track progresses?

 

There are the obvious tempo changes that you can hear on certain tracks: dramatic accelerandos or ritardandos that create wide tempo variation effects.

 

But what I'm mostly interested in right now is the subtle variations which the listener may not hear right away, like adding a couple of bpm to a section to make it take off, or slowly accelerating a section just by a few bpm over 16 bars for example, or maybe even over the whole track, to add to the excitement... does that happen or are DJs expecting a straight tempo throughout the whole track so they can easily fit it into a set...?

 

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on that one.

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I always try to do that. a few bpm changes here and there make a huge difference, even on a straight-ahead dance track.

Wo would you be willing to share more details? Where in the track and why? Any particular techniques, like speed up the tempo when the kick comes back after a break? Or just however you feel like it depending on the track?

 

I was doing that in Rock / Industrial Rock or even Reggae and Pop songs, and it was often just the chorus being a bit faster (maybe 2 or 3 bpm), or the last section of the song speeding up slightly. I remember a song that was based on a Waltz rhythm, and we just had to play it with the chorus 4 bpm faster, or it wouldn't sound right. It's once we started playing the song to a click that we realized we were naturally speeding up for each chorus, and if we didn't speed up the choruses, they would sound like the band was dragging.

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It's very much a feel thing for me. I'll often do a little bit faster coming into/out of a solo/chorus, or slow down a tick or down in a break down.

 

Even more than adjusting a tempo track, I use the 'humanize' feature A LOT.

 

and, now that I've learned the Groove Quantize From Audio thing, I'm ALL over that :)

 

Dance/techno stuff is easy to make sound robotic. Making it sound human is a whole different thing.

 

Michael Waggner once told us....'There's no emotion on a grid'.

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I would be curious to hear how many dance music producers just set Logic to a straight tempo for a whole track, vs how many like to sometimes play around a bit with the tempo as the track progresses?

 

There are the obvious tempo changes that you can hear on certain tracks: dramatic accelerandos or ritardandos that create wide tempo variation effects.

 

But what I'm mostly interested in right now is the subtle variations which the listener may not hear right away, like adding a couple of bpm to a section to make it take off, or slowly accelerating a section just by a few bpm over 16 bars for example, or maybe even over the whole track, to add to the excitement... does that happen or are DJs expecting a straight tempo throughout the whole track so they can easily fit it into a set...?

 

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on that one.

 

I would be VERY reluctant to mess around with the actual tempo of a track that was intended for the dance floor, unless you undid the changes you made to each section.

 

Scenario:

DJ drops a track, queues up another, pitch matches the new track and sits back to let the tune roll out.

Time to mix in the new tune, but the one playing is now faster. Has to readjust the pitch and well as deal with eq, mix, fx etc.

Then to top it all off the whole set is now running 3-4 bpm faster than it was. Throw in one or two more tunes like that and your talking 10-15 bpm. :?

 

In an effort to humanize you music there are a few things that are commonly done, or could be done.

 

- Use of old breaks in your production, even in the background behind you main break. If need be slice the kick out and run it through a hi pass. Just gives a bit of spice to the whole break.

- As above, but manually move your main kick and snare to where the kick and snare fall in the old break, essentially copying the groove from the break (provided the old break is more or less in time).

- Putting your kick and snare on top of the beat, which is to say still in time but inched forward from the quantize line. This is a common trait for adding excitement in all forms of beat driven music ala Tony Williams. Of course the opposite can be done to add tension. Having your cake and eating it too.

 

My 2c

cant think of anything else. Hope some of the info is new/useful.

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  • 1 month later...

I second the last opinion : don't mess with the tempo if you want to stay DJ friendly.

 

This is especially true now with CD-based turntables with loop capabilities : a DJ may want to leave the first track looping indefinitely on 2-4 bars, while he mixes in the next one, and the last thing he wants to happen at that time is a tempo change :)

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Yeah if you want a dancefloor friendly track, do not touch the BPM's. DJ's will hate for that, back in ye good ol' eighties i had some tracks where i switched from 4/4 3/4 beats, i got so many complaints. Even now when i release records where the tracks don't begin with a straight beat i get dj's telling me, look i like your track but i wish i just started with a beat. DJ's are lazy people ;-)
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hi :) i use sometimes the bpm change for the special effects! i prefere not using the project tempo the system become unstable with many audio tracks. you can use the project tempo for the especial effects but i recomend you to bounce the tempo change parts if you want to play live. you can also use audio files created using doppler (pitch and tempo changes) effect and than add to the project. (gold wave sound forge) another good automation effect is changing pitch apple au. with some delay and reverbs creates an very nice effect

 

the tempo of the music must be aways the same also for this tempo chage effects when its possible, if you want the djs o play your songs without problems.

 

psytrance ...

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  • 1 month later...

I cannot remember off the top of my head the exact track, but I remember listening to a track on one of Satoshi Tomiie's CD mixes (Renesaunce I think) where the artist very subtly altered the tempo of various elements within the song. The overall song tempo remained the same. I thought is was quite interesting how the various elements "shifted" throught the song. It gave the song a strangly delightful techy sound.

 

If I remember the exact track I will let you know.

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  • 2 weeks later...

yeah, in my 15 years as a club dj you would never hear any serious underground music that was made for clubs/mixing... gimmicky records, yes.. Off the top of my head... "winx.. i am ready" being one. "lil louis, french kiss" being another. both great records, but the only two examples i can think of that anyone might have heard of that actually worked.

 

The harder it is to mix in and out of, generally it will get played less in a club environment - for any other type of music its open game though...

 

 

my 2 cents.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Man, that's great feedback. They say you can't make Dance music unless you DJ and I guess we just found out why. Never would have thought of that, but it makes perfect sense. And at the beginning of the thread I thought "cool idea"!

 

I guess not for dancefloor use.

 

J

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Yeah no way would you ever change the bpm of a track intended for the dancfloor.

 

You can by all means half or double it from time to time... i.e. a Drum n Bass tune falling into half time for a breakdown or something can have a good effect.

 

In saying this... I have noticed a few Breaks styles popping up with changes into dubstep tempo's (from 135 to 110). But even then, when the tempo's change it is only for a minimal time, and it alwasy comees back to the original so a dj can mix out of the track.

 

 

 

myspace.com/asparknz

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110 -135 is hardly subtle.

The whole thing was about dinky differences that make it less robotic.

Not absolute tempo changes.

 

On the contrary... this thread was about absolute tempo changes... not minor shifts in your programming to 'humanize' stuff.

 

A drastic change in tempo has a better effect (for short moments) on the crowd, and is far more obviouse to the dj..... If your in the mix and a tune changes by one bpm your not gonna notice too much and its only going to create problems

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Some artists have used not so subtle tempo changes in breakdowns and build-ups since slowing down a rather fast track (128-135bpm) can get your audience go insane for a minute or two or for the rest of the night.

 

Humanizing beats is ok as far it's done carefully with style. If it sounds good it most likely is!

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That's the whole point of the question really.

Do you want it robotic or human?

Here's part of a transcription I did of a trio (Sax,bass and drums) which chugs along nicely,but the variations are surprisingly big and numerous.

There are also a load of rits and ralls,but they are intentional and exagerated.

I know it's not dance music,but it grooves like a plough!

:D

And hopefully demonstrates a point!

1417961689_HBTr.thumb.jpg.441e6b30dfa391bc886060db13347458.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Being a dj myself I understand what you are talking about.

 

You may be able to "humanize" or change tempo slightly on certain elements of the track(samples or instruments) but if you mess with the beats/drums/bass line then the track will not be played by a dj very often.

 

If I find a track that I really like and buy it and then get it home to mix on turn tables and I cant get it to mix with anything i will never play it out in the club.

 

If you do want to mess with tempos at least keep the beginning minute and half and the ending minute and a half consistent (may help the dj)

 

Im new at producing so this is all just a rookies point of view :)

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Being a dj myself I understand what you are talking about.

 

You may be able to "humanize" or change tempo slightly on certain elements of the track(samples or instruments) but if you mess with the beats/drums/bass line then the track will not be played by a dj very often.

 

If I find a track that I really like and buy it and then get it home to mix on turn tables and I cant get it to mix with anything i will never play it out in the club.

 

If you do want to mess with tempos at least keep the beginning minute and half and the ending minute and a half consistent (may help the dj)

 

Im new at producing so this is all just a rookies point of view :)

keepintg the begining and end the same doesnt cut it either.if your beatmatching off a track youll be trying to match the tempo thats playing in the middle.

keep it the same throughout.

humanizing isnt necessary.its dance music,not a symphony

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I always try to do that. a few bpm changes here and there make a huge difference, even on a straight-ahead dance track.

 

Actually im totally down with that, and my current outfit is a dancefloor orientated live electronica act. Example...one of our new tunes the intro/verse is 150bpm, the chorus is 152. Really brings the 'feel' alive.

 

I seriously think subtle changes are great and have always programmed that way, even in a previous rock band, and when lending a 'producers' hat to someones track, "...how bout you push the chorus just a little..."

 

Cool

xx

Cx

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Just saw this thread. Tempo changes in dance music? Well, there was a time when it was an unavoidable byproduct of remixing records. Here's my take (and experience over many years working with David Morales, Frankie Knuckles, Shep Pettitbone, and other NYC-based DJ-turned-producers)...

 

In the pre-DAWn of time, a record to be remixed would come to a DJ/remixer/producer in the form of a 24 track tape. Sometimes it was 48 track. The sync box of choice to drive the machines (drum machine and sequencer) to run along with elements of the original production (most notably, the vocal) was the Roland SBX-80. In fact, it was one of the only choices available at the time for that task. Occasionally I'd use the emagic Human Touch accessory to the Unitor for Atari 1040 running Notator to get the click, usually when the SBX didn't seem to be behaving. But generally, a beat map was made in the SBX and an Akai MPC, Emu Drumulator, Linn 9000, 808 or 909 were sync'd to the SBX's different clock outputs (MIDI clock or Roland Sync) and off we went. Even if the kick was programmed on one of those drum machines as part of the original production, once they got recorded on tape their playback was no longer going to be as machine-like as the drum machines themselves. This is because of the nature of analog tape recording and playback: there was always a little speed variation ("wow") in the tape speed, so the machines had to follow the variations in timing introduced into the recording.

 

Oh, and for those not familiar with the SBX, it was driven by timecode taken either directly off of track 24 of the tape, or, the same by re-shaped by a Lynx if the code was bad or getting bad. And the source of the click would usually be the click track from the original production printed on a track. But sometimes we'd get a click from live played drums. Those were fun times (not). So the remixes back in the day (we're talking mid to late 80's through the mid 90's) all had more "feel" if they were in fact remixes done against the original 24/48 track production. And we followed the tempo and feel of the original song.

 

Occasionally we'd get acapellas on a DAT. And in those cases it was my job to lay up the phrases into a sampler and trigger them in time with a new, very machine-like beat. Timestretching was almost non-existent then, so it wasn't always possible to up the tempo. We'd just create a whole new song using elements of the original vocal. Those didn't necessarily have as much feel as "feel" as trax done against the original production. And I have to say, there was something extremely cool about the steady, unwavering beat of those records.

 

The first machine available to do realtime time stretching was this beast of a Lexicon box called the 2400 (if memory serves). The first track ever sped up for purposes of a remix using this device was Pet Shop Boys "Left to My Own Devices". I forget how far up we took the tempo, but it was a significant change from the original. It was, I believe, a single channel device so we had to stretch one track at a time. One full day later, all 24 tracks were time compressed and aligned. Youch! But it wasn't a perfect device, there was plenty of jitter. So there was still some "feel" to the tracks.

 

It wasn't until sequencers started to be able to handle audio tracks was it possible for remixes to take on a quite mechanical feel on a more regular basis. Even though time stretching wasn't that good within DAWs at that time, it was at least possible to take a vocal phrase and cut it up as a piece of digital audio, tightening up the timing to suit a faster tempo. Sometimes we'd time-stretch vocals within an Akai sampler. And the Lexicon machine saw more and more use, at least with the remixers I worked with, as the technology slowly advanced became started to become possible to speed up a track, maintain the pitch of the vocal, and have a much more machine-like feel to the overall result.

 

So I guess all this is to say that there was a time when dance music had more feel to it and DJ's spun those records just as they do today with records that have a more robotic feel. Some DJ's still spin disco, or mix disco in with more current records. Somehow they make it happen.

 

I still work with David Morales on occasion, and his beats are relentlessly mechanical, and it feels great. The feel comes from the vocal or the sounds themselves. That's not to say that dance records can't have feel, but in terms of the basic beat (kick/snare/hat), I'd have to say "no". If you want feel, throw a loop in that hasn't been recycled to death, or have the feel come from the elements of the track itself as I said. Or have a wobbly-sounding bassline introduce some feel against the kick. Stuff like that.

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