Snoman R. Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques

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PART 3

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Some of the main distributors in the UK for dance are:

■ Intergroove: 020 8838 2000

■ 3MV: 020 7378 8866

■ Kudos: 020 7482 4555

■ Pinnacle: 01689 870622

DISTRIBUTING VIA THE INTERNET

While white labels invariably provide the most promising way of getting your

track noticed, especially if you produce dance, if money is tight then internet

promotion may prove a more viable option. Indeed, the lines between web

designer and musician are drawing closer as more and more musicians are

developing their own websites and nearly all have a website even if its only

purpose is to keep fans informed of when and where the next gigs are.

Designing a website is a professional business, and as it’s essentially acting as

the face of your music, it must be well developed, easy to navigate and able

to exude a professional feel. This latter aspect is especially vital if you plan to

charge users to download the music – if the site looks cheap and tacky, it isn’t

going to instil a lot of conﬁ dence in the buyer.

Once a website has been created, it has to be promoted. The ﬁ rst step towards

this is to register a domain name, and this should be kept short, sweet and

memorable. An IP address that uses long drawn-out page names or squiggles

is not only difﬁ cult to remember but a pain to type in, and is considered taw-

dry by many web users. More importantly, do not use banners or pop-ups on

your own site. These are often voted as the most annoying part of the web and

many users avoid any sites that feature them like the plague. Similarly, it is not

worthwhile paying for a website to advertise yours with a pop-up window as a

proportionate amount of knowledgeable internet users will employ software

that prevents them from appearing.

Once you have a domain name, it can be submitted to a search engine.

Additionally, a number of search engines will allow you to add your URL to

their engine by clicking on the appropriate link but it is also advisable to pur-

chase software that is speciﬁ cally designed to submit URLs to most search

engines. Wolf Submit Pro is considered by many as the best software for this

but there are various other recommended software packages such as Addme.

Of course, there’s much more to registering a domain name and simply plac-

ing it in a search engine because unless you already have a fan base no one is

going to be able to locate the site. Simply typing in MP3, independent bands

or dance into a search engine isn’t going to result in just your site being dis-

played, there will be thousands to choose from. To prevent this, it’s a much

better idea to create a site dedicated to a subject that your potential fans might

be interested in, or something a little more fun such as ﬂ ash-script-based games

with your music playing in the background. Alongside this, you could place the

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band history and full MP3 downloads on a separate page with a link to them

from the main website. This way, if anyone ﬁ nds the music interesting they can

jump to the ‘real’ page.

If you take this approach, remember that not everyone has access to a broad-

band connection, so don’t attempt to place a full track in the background, just

choose the best snippets and loop them. As a general rule of thumb, it’s advis-

able that any web page should load faster than you can hold your breath, using

a typical V90 56 K modem as a reference speed.

Furthermore, try typing in some keywords that relate to your genre of music

and ﬁ nd out who the top bands are. Once you have their addresses, contact

them and ask if they would be willing to exchange links with you. Similarly,

join or start your own webring. This is a group of sites dedicated to the same

subject that are interconnected together with links. Essentially, this forms a

virtual chain allowing a visitor to go forwards or backwards through it, visit-

ing each site in turn. You can ﬁ nd out which webrings deal with your genre of

music, or start your own by visiting www.webring.org .

Notably, it isn’t advisable to set up a new webring if there is one already cover-

ing your interests. Most webrings will insist that a number of factors are met

before you can join in. Consider translating the website and the vocals in the

music, if there are any, into different languages such as French and German

too. This opens up the site to more visitors which will hopefully lead to more

clicks on your site, and by translating the songs to different languages there is

a better chance of them being played on a foreign radio station. For instance,

many stations in France and Germany insist that a certain percentage of the

music they play is in the native tongue.

Although all these methods will go towards promoting your site and music,

it isn’t a good idea to charge visitors to download any music unless you are

well established. Although offering small samples of the music before charging

to download the full track may seem sensible, it will easily distract potential

customers. A much better approach is to allow users to download all of your

music for free, but ask them for contributions if they do.

Most people will take anything if it’s offered free, and not only does it allow

them to evaluate all of your music, if they like it they’ll tell friends about it

which helps spread the music. As an additional incentive, you could create a

members-only area for those making contributions, giving them inside infor-

mation on the band, access to ‘limited edition ’ tracks or the chance to remix

one of your tracks. This latter approach can obviously be beneﬁ cial to both

parties. Above all, remember that when starting out promotion is substantially

more important than royalties from sales; the more promotion you receive, the

bigger the chance that a label may snap you up.

To further promote your music, it is also worth seriously considering signing to

an internet label (iLabel). Not only they have much more ﬁ nancial clout and

promotional inﬂ uence but some also pay royalties based around how many

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times your music is downloaded or listened to. This, however, can be fraught

with complications similar to when signing with a normal record label, so it is

sensible to shop around. What to look for depends on what you want to gain

from the signing but there are some things you should look out for.

First and foremost, ﬁ nd out how long the iLabel has been online and how pop-

ular it is. The label needs to be both big and professional enough to attract visi-

tors for you to sell your music. Naturally, registering with any iLabel is useless

if no one can ﬁ nd your music, so it’s a good idea to look for one that features

plenty of genre categories. A website that encapsulates every genre of dance

music under one name in the search isn’t going to help those looking for a

speciﬁ c style of music. Using narrower categories will help to funnel potential

listeners towards your song. Also ensure that the site categorizes these genres as

accurately as possible. After sitting through a download, you expect it to at least

be the right genre.

Another important consideration is what, if any, software do you need to access

and download from the site. A few iLabels use their own proprietary download

system, resulting in a visitor having to download and install software before

they can even access the music. Others will not let you download a small snip-

pet of music without requiring you to ﬁ ll in various forms ﬁ rst, while some put

stringent requirements on the version of browser that’s needed to access the

site and others are so laden with graphics that those with a slow internet con-

nection have to wait 5 min before they can even begin to browse the site. Any

of these can distract potential customers. Many visitors will simply be brows-

ing and only those who are incredibly patient or enthusiastic will put up with

missing around to access the music, and even their patience can wear thin if it’s

all too convoluted.

On this same subject, the overall design of the site is important. It’s a safe bet

that they have all been programmed by professional designers but some are

complex to navigate and ﬁ nding a speciﬁ c genre of music can be a drawn-out

experience, almost bordering on torturous. Ideally, they should be quick to nav-

igate and you should be able to ﬁ nd the genre within a minute of entering the

site. More crucially, the site should also reﬂ ect the style of your music. If you’re

producing music that’s considered ‘cool’, you need to register with a site that

projects a cool image. Moreover, ensure that the website vets all music before it

can be posted to the site. All successful record companies only sign and release

music that they think will sell and make an effort to ensure that they are profes-

sionally recorded and mixed. The internet doesn’t have any of these ﬁ lters and

there can be nothing more annoying than spending time downloading an MP3

that promised to be good but turned out to be self-indulgent rubbish. To avoid

this and provide some security of quality, iLabels such as Peoplesound.com vet

the recordings ﬁ rst and hence stand a larger likelihood of being visited.

If you already own a website, then it’s worth checking that the iLabel will allow

you to place a link to your own website. Some iLabel sites only allocate a single

page to each artist and it is difﬁ cult, if not impossible, to ﬁ t all the information

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about yourself on one page. By including a link to your own page, potential

customers can jump to it to ﬁ nd out more about you. If you don’t already own

a site and have no plans to start one, then look for an iLabel that offers promo-

tional pages and permits you to advertise upcoming gigs, new album releases

or merchandise. What’s more, some iLabels will even offer web space with

an address that you can use and these may be the best option if you have no

home page.

While in a few cases all this is supplied free, many iLabels will charge you for

the services they provide by taking a percentage of any royalties you are due.

The amount varies widely from site to site, with large sites that have hundreds

of visitors every day taking a higher percentage than the one that only attracts

a couple of hundreds a week. This begs the question as to whether you will

make more money signing to a large site that pays fewer royalties, which is fre-

quented by lots of visitors, against a site that is not as popular but pays a higher

royalty rate. Obviously, this is something you’ll have to consider carefully but a

few factors that could help you decide are the terms of the iLabels contract.

Most reputable sites will not ask for exclusive rights but signing to those that do

means that you can’t post the music to any other sites, thus limiting the poten-

tial market. On top of this, if a major record label discovers you, the iLabel may

not let you terminate the contract with them until it has run its course. Few sites

impose these kinds of restrictions but it is worth examining all the contractual

clauses before you agree. Finally, consider that some sites will not send you a

cheque for royalties until they have crossed above a certain amount while oth-

ers will send them religiously every month. Both these methods are potential

double-edged swords: if you’re paid only when the royalties have crossed over

a speciﬁ c total, it could be a while before you see any return, but if they’re sent

religiously every month, you may be cashing cheques for only a few pounds.

Above all, although promotion forms a vital part in getting your music heard,

a much more important factor is the quality of the music you produce. If it’s

good enough, you can guarantee that people will hear about it and a number

of artists have been signed to labels through an MP3 demo alone.

MUSIC CHARTS AND PLAY LISTS (UK ONLY)

The ultimate promotional tool for any artist is being placed on BBC Radio

One’s play list and this is the holy grail of most record labels. In fact, labels

want their artists on this list so much that the producers of Radio One are

wined and dined continually.

These producers meet at the beginning of every week and listen to all the latest

releases to decide which make the A, B and C play lists for that week. If a sin-

gle makes it onto the A list, then it’s played three of four times every day. If it

makes it to the B list, then they recommend that it should be played once a day

and if it’s on the C list it’s entirely up to the DJ hosting the show. Once you’re

on any of these lists, you stand a much better chance of making it to the shops

that go towards making up the ofﬁ cial UK music charts.

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The ofﬁ cial music chart is compiled by a market research group known as

GALLUP. The ﬁ gures they use to compile these charts are obtained from the

sales records from just under a thousand shops spread across the country.

When anyone buys a record from one of these shops, the sale is registered and

stored on a computer. Every Saturday, at the close of business, GALLUP ran-

domly chooses 300 of these chart return shops and from them compiles the

charts for radio play on a Sunday evening.

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There can be little doubt that remixing plays a major role in much of today’s

music industry. It is now regularly used as a viable form of promotion even if

the original record isn’t dance, yet while some artists still scorn it as untalented

theft or the plague of today’s music scene, remixing has played a vital role through-

out music history since we’ve all been inspired by previous releases. Even clas-

sical musicians such as Mozart, Bach and Beethoven could be seen as remixers

since it wasn’t considered unusual for classical composers to borrow entire sec-

tions of someone else’s composition and rework it into their own style.

Although some may view this as stealing, it’s a natural progression that has

formed the basis of all music today. Artists have always derived the foundation

of their own music from what has gone before; disco formed the foundations

of house music, rap formed the basis of lo-ﬁ and trance borrowed heavily from

techno and house. Even pop music has encapsulated the most fashionable

pieces of every genre, creating a hybrid of all previous musical styles resulting

in what it is today.

The roots of remixing in the context of dance music, however, can be traced back to

1976 when a New York DJ, Walter Gibbons, altered Double Exposure’s single ‘ Ten

Percent ’. He blended the track into a disco fusion which went on to become the ﬁ rst

ever commercial 12-inch vinyl single, something that to many was seen as the ﬁ rst

ever modern remix. Building on this foundation, when the ﬁ rst electronic drum

machines and samplers appeared on the scene, DJs such as Kevin Saunderson and

Ron Hardy began to chop up vocal and instrumental passages mixing them with

four-to-the-ﬂ oor loops, manipulating them into something more danceable.

From these humble beginnings remixing has since become an industry all unto

itself with DJs such as Armand Van Helden, Joey Negro, David Morales, Timo

Remixing and

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CHAPTER 22

’ Everybody is inﬂ

uenced by someone else.

Thus, while complete originality is impossible

individual style is not … ’

Leonard Bernstein

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Maas and Grammy winners (who established a remixer category in 1997) Deep

Dish now worshipped as club legends. Remixing is also beneﬁ cial to everyone

involved, as both the author and the remixer proﬁ t from it because while the

author still retains copyright and thus is entitled to some of the proceeds, the

remixer gets to reap some of the beneﬁ ts of (hopefully) having a hit without

the hassle of doing everything from scratch.

While the basic premise behind remixing any track is simple enough – you take

someone else’s record, chop it up and then stick it all back together in your

own style – it’s much more complicated than it ﬁ rst appears and taking any

song and transforming it into the next club ‘hit’ is far more difﬁ cult than it ﬁ rst

appears. Since it commonly involves making the music suitable for the dance

ﬂ oor it requires plenty of familiarity with the dance music movement. Plus,

since you’re essentially turning a 4 min pop mix into a massive 8 min club hit,

it also requires its own style of production and arrangement.

SESSION TAPES

The beginning of any remix starting with the source material, which in the

majority of cases is resourced from copies of original session tapes recorded

by the studio involved in producing the original track. For many, this is the

favoured approach because having the individual tracks allows to contort the

parts without the need to worry about ﬁ nding exposed parts of the original

that you can ‘borrow ’ and utilize in your own mix.

Today, nearly all producers keep the original samples. Provided you have some

charm and a little luck you may be able to get your hands on the samples

from the studios along with written permission to remix the material from the

record company involved. Even with this written permission, however, the stu-

dios may charge you to rent the session tapes from them, or simply refuse to

let you have them at all.

This isn’t as unlikely as it probably sounds, since they may not trust you with the

original tapes. The original artist may implicitly refuse to release them, the pro-

ducer may not want to let them go, if it’s an old recording they may have been

lost, or they could have been destroyed in a studio ﬁ re. Although this latter occur-

rence is rare, with all the electrical equipment contained within a professional stu-

dio it’s certainly not exceptional. If, however, the session tapes are available then

you can expect to receive the original recording on one of the ﬁ ve formats.

DASH

It is acronym for digital audio stationary head. These use two formats: either

quarter-inch tape that uses 8 digital tracks to record a stereo signal or half-inch

tape capable of recording up to 48 digital tracks. Price wise they can cost as

much as a three-bedroom house in the most expensive area of your town, and

therefore it’s unlikely that you would receive a recorded session on this for-

mat. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, though, and some remixers (including

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myself ) have received this format and usually end up taking them to a profes-

sional studio to have them copied onto a more acceptable media.

PCM

PCM derives its name from the method it uses to record: pulse code modula-

tion. This form of recording is also employed in the A/D converters in most

of today’s computer soundcards. PCM machines use ¾-inch video cassettes to

record but as the machines themselves are exceptionally expensive to purchase,

few studios use them for recording and so it is unlikely (although not improb-

able) that you’ll receive the track on this format.

DAT

DAT recorders are not as popular as they once were but if the track for remixing

is quite old you may receive it on this format. They record on a very narrow,

slow-moving tape and achieve a 48 kHz bandwidth by using two heads on a

rotating cylinder. The tape, when ‘loaded’, is always contacting the head even

while using fast forward or rewind and so allows you to ‘scrub’ (forward and

rewind the audio while hearing it) to locate parts that you want to use quickly.

This is almost certainly the format you’ll receive the remix parts on.

ADAT

Alesis digital audio tape works on a principle similar to that for DAT machines,

although they can record eight multi-track channels using SVHS video cassettes.

Although, like DAT, it isn’t as popular today, it was a popular format for studio

recording as it not only offers digital quality but also costs signiﬁ cantly less

than an equivalent analogue machine and allows individual instruments to be

stored in separate tracks onto a single tape for mix-down. Moreover, ADAT can

also be connected digitally to a computer for editing using the ADAT optical

interface, occasionally referred to as Lightpipe. This is another format you may

receive as a remixer. Some labels will transfer from ADAT onto CD for those

who do not own an ADAT machine, but they may charge for this service.

Pro Tools

This is perhaps the most common format you’ll receive, since most producers

today work on a Pro Tools rig. Generally, you’ll receive the Pro Tools session

ﬁ les which consist of a . ptf ﬁ le with two folders ‘audio ﬁ les ’ and ‘fade ﬁ les ’. If

you own a Pro Tools rig, you can just open the . ptf ﬁ le direct into Pro Tools; if

you do not, the audio can be found in the audio ﬁ les folder and imported into

any sequencer. However, be forewarned that not having access to a Pro Tools

rig will mean that you’re missing out on any effects, editing or processing that

have been applied by the engineer or producer and you may have to replicate

these again in your sequencer. One session ﬁ le I received had a note attached

saying Don’t solo the lead vocal! It’s been auto-tuned to shit! The standard vocal

audio ﬁ le contained in the audio ﬁ les folder was totally unusable and would

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have taken a good few valuable days of work to correct if I didn’t have access

to a rig.

BOOTLEGS AND INTERNET REMIXING

If you’re just starting out then permission is going to be incredibly difﬁ cult to

obtain as most large labels are not willing to let little known artists remix their

artists; for that, they want big-name remixers. Consequently, many aspiring

remixers choose to illegally remix a track in the hope that upon a small unof-

ﬁ cial vinyl press and release to club DJs, it will become a massive club hit and

a record company will search them out. These illegal remixes, known by the

industry as ‘dubs’ or ‘bootlegs’, are often created from creatively sampling the

original stereo recording.

A proportionate amount of remixes that have done particularly well during the

past few years have been dubs since the general agreement is that it’s better to

‘ask for forgiveness than beg for consent ’. If permission is refused before the track

is even constructed, it could result in a potential ﬂ oor-ﬁ ller disappearing forever.

For example, Richard ‘X’ created an instant hit when he mixed a certain old

soul tune with Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric to create Freak Like Me for the

lovely Sugarbabes and Eric Prydz certainly did well with his remix of Valerie .

This type of remixing is becoming increasingly popular since it doesn’t require

you to be a musician; you just need a keen ear and a little luck.

In fact, many top DJs are renowned for spending weeks slicing and dicing yes-

teryears popular tracks, removing the drums and other elements and replacing

them with more ‘club’ style timbres to create special versions of tracks for their

sets. These are often created with just the original track and a laptop running a

sequencer – usually Ableton Live.

While it would, of course, be irresponsible to encourage these illegal activities,

some larger labels will request a dub remix to gain an idea of what you intend

to do before they will release the session tapes, so I feel it is only practical to

discuss the techniques used.

At the time of writing there are no processors, hardware or software that can

reliably remove a single instrument or vocal from a complete mix, so many

dub remixes are constructed from a mixture of exposed parts (commonly at

the intro and middle eight) and hardline EQ’ing to home in, and hopefully,

expose speciﬁ c instruments.

The familiar parametric EQ found on most mixing desks isn’t suitable for this

form of aggressive tonal cutting, though, requiring the use of specialist proces-

sors such as the Electrix EQ Killer. This is an extremely aggressive three-band EQ

unit, allowing you to pinpoint and extract speciﬁ c instruments. It doesn’t pro-

vide the perfect solution however, since its performance at stripping frequen-

cies from a mix depends on the type of music you’re working with and isn’t

suitable for extracting vocals.

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Rather, for these, it’s more prudent to search record stores or the internet and

ﬁ le sharing programmes such as Torrents for ‘accapellas’. These sometimes

appear on the ‘B’ side of a record and are a vocal only mix which can be gratuit-

ously sampled, contorted and rearranged to sit on a new arrangement along-

side the exposed instruments from the original mix. Of course, downloading

or copying accapellas is illegal, and something I cannot condone – and I urge

you to purchase the original!

If this sounds too much like hard work, or you prefer to stay on the right side of

the law, the internet provides plenty of downloadable session tapes from smaller

labels and lesser known artists simply for the sake of promotion. Often referred

to as ‘sample packs ’ and usually in MP3 format they allow you to download and

remix their work which they can later judge and often release if it’s ﬁ rst-rate.

However, if you choose to acquire the original parts, the most important aspect

of starting any remix project is deciding which parts should remain and which

should be discarded. Naturally, this judgement is most likely already made

for you if you’re creating a dub remix as there will only be certain elements

exposed in the mix that you can use.

Alternatively, if you’re approaching a remix using the original multi-track

recordings you have to make a conscious decision. Nevertheless, both will

require you to leave just enough of the original to deem it a remix while at the

same time not including too much of the original so that it simply becomes

a trivial variation.

Fundamentally, a good remix should feature all the good things that the ori-

ginal does, and more. Therefore, it’s important to know what the good features

of the original are. This means that you need to listen to the original as often as

you can until you know the track by heart, so much so, that you not only hear

but actually feel where the focal points are.

Usually, this is down to the main hook of the record: the instrumental mel-

ody or vocal lines that you just can’t get out of your head. However, in many

instances there is more than just one hook line in any popular record. In fact

there are usually two, three or sometimes four, all of which manage to indent

their way into our subconscious minds but in such a way that we only per-

ceive that there is one. As a result, while you may feel that the main instru-

mental hook or vocal is the one of importance to keep while remixing, our

minds work on a much higher level and simply hearing one of the smaller, less

frequent hooks can often remind us of the original record too. To gain a better

understanding of this, we need to look at the common tricks employed by pro-

ducers and songwriters when producing a ‘pop’ record.

Although dance music is often scorned as being far too repetitive, all pop

records use the same amount of repetition to drive the message of the track

home, only in a more devious way. One of the most classic techniques

employed is to subliminally reinforce the message of the music by replacing

the vocals with instrumental copies. For instance, many tracks will open with