Dance Music - Creating Better Playlists 

When it comes to dance music, iPods and MP3 players have changed the way we play our music. Back in the day, unless you had a DJ, the music at parties usually consisted of a collection of CDs, tapes or records being played one after the other. Every now and then someone would have the foresight to compile a “mix” of their favorite songs on tape or CD, resulting in a fairly continuous play-list of good tracks, without all the duller tracks in between.

Nowadays, most people have some form of MP3 music player and generally have hundreds or even thousands of songs at their disposal.

Of course, not all songs are party hits, so in the event of a party most people create a dj music play-list with all the good songs.

Generally the play button gets hit and apart from people replaying or skipping songs, the MP3 player is left alone to DJ for the night.

You don’t have to be a DJ to keep the dance music going all night and sounding good. Get a Napster membership and you can get dance music for your own parties. You can try it here: (Millions of songs. Unlimited access. Get a 7-day trial of Napster.)

Here’s a few things you can do to take your playlists to the next level.

Know the BPM of your songs

Beats Per Minute, or BPM for short, is a measure of the tempo of a song. Knowing the BPM of a song can help you arrange it with others songs that have a similar BPM. Arranging your dance music this way creates consistency in tempo and provides better continuity for people who are dancing. More about arranging songs in your playlist below. .

Trim your songs

A lot of songs have long drawn out introductions, long fade outs or talking and skits at the end. All these things can ruin the continuity of a dance floor. By trimming these bits off a song you can keep the transition between songs relatively seamless and people can continue dancing from one song to the next without those uncomfortable moments in between where there’s either no music, or it’s too slow or quiet to dance to.

A good piece of free software for trimming unwanted bits from the beginning and end of songs is MP3Trim. You simply load an MP3 into it, listen to the first and last few seconds of it, then adjust as necessary.

If you’re using iTunes to play your dance music, you can easily adjust the start and end position of a song. Simply right click on a song and select “Get Info”. Choose the “Options” tab of the window that pops up and look for the “Start Time” and “Stop Time”. This is a nice, non-destructive, way of trimming up a song.

Normalize your songs

Have you ever noticed dramatic volume changes from one song to the next, often resulting in someone making a mad dash for the stereo?
 
A lot of the songs in your collection will have come from a variety of sources: various CDs, recordings from tapes and records MP3 music, etc. This results in a collection of songs that have been recorded at different volume levels for one reason or another.

Normalizing your songs will bring the volume levels in line with each other, so that the volume stays fairly consistent.

An easy way to normalize a collection of MP3s is to use a free piece of software called MP3Gain. You simply load your MP3s into MP3Gain and set the maximum volume. MP3Gain will then analyze your songs and tell you what volume adjustments need to be made to each song in order for its volume to reach the maximum level you’ve set.

Some songs may have their volume increased, others decreased and some may not need adjusting. The result is a collection of songs that sound roughly the same volume when played back, so you don’t have to keep reaching for the volume control!

One of the great things about MP3Gain is that it doesn’t affect the quality of the MP3 file. It works directly on the volume information of the MP3 rather than the actual audio data.
 




Arranging the songs in your play-list

As mentioned above, by knowing the BPM of your songs you can group them together with other songs that have a similar BPM.

This means you can keep the tempo of the dance music relatively consistent. Abrupt changes in tempo, such as going from a fast song to a slow song can clear the dance floor pretty quickly.

If you have a variety of musical genres in your play-list, try grouping songs of a similar BPM and genre together, e.g. play three hip hop songs together, then three pop songs, followed by three rock songs, or something like that. Changing genres every song breaks the continuity and can also clear the dance floor pretty quickly! You can’t please everyone with your selection of dance music, but you can give people with different tastes the opportunity to dance for a least a couple of songs in a row.

If you know roughly how long a party is going to go for you can arrange the songs in order of slowest to fastest BPM. That way the night gradually builds up into the dancing part of the party. A good pattern is to start slow, wind it up into the faster stuff then bring it back down a bit. Depending on how long the night goes for you could use this pattern a couple of times then finish with some more slow stuff. Slow stuff at the end is also a nice subtle way to tell people that it’s time to leave.

So there you have it - a few ways you can prepare and organize your dance music a little differently than your average slap-up playlist. Most people won’t notice these things individually, but overall people will notice there’s something going on with the dj music. They may not be able to put their finger on it, but they’ll know that there was something different, something good, about the music at the party.
 






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