Do You Master Dance Music ?
This is the one of the most often asked questions, we receive from our Clients.
The answer is YES we do!. It is actually our plat du jour:)
Let me start with a little introduction to the subject of Dance Music. The definition is very wide.
I remember when I was a youngster, falling in love with the sound and music of the Massive Attack, the Bristol’s famous artist. In music magazine, the review of their acclaimed album Protection, was under Dance Music section. Well, I found it a bit weird, because back then my definition of dance music was different. So let’s establish without going to much into the details, what really is dance music ?
Dance Songs
The logic is suggesting, that any kind of music allowing you to dance can be classified as a dance song, wright ?
Therefore, wouldn’t you say that groovy reggae song with classical Caribbean rhythm isn’t a dance song ?
We are not talking about typical genres considered as a DANCE MUSIC, namely – disco music, techno music, house music, drum and bass, trans music, goa, psy-trance, break beat, jungle, EDM (electronic dance music) etc.
The focus here in this article is on the genres off the borders of the ‘classical dance music’:)
So let’s get back to initial topic of this article – Mastering Dance Music.
Considering our work through last 8 years, Red Mastering Studio, provided music mastering for more than 1000’s clients, and 80% of that work was a wide define dance music. By wide define I mean genres like reggae, soul, funk, rnb and hip hop.
We could loudly say that we do specialise in mastering dance music!
The thing about music is, the music needs to be heard/listen, so below are prepared chosen audio examples of a dance tracks, audio mastered by our mastering studio.
Starting with sweet Jamaican vibes:
If your feet and your body still not getting the groove, another great reggae song:
Ok, we are moving on with adding another spice in the music, different rhythm, and groove, and how could you miss Donna Summer when we talking about dance music ?;)
Not so far from the Disco, and actually chronologically, just before we got Funk Music, oh yeah, who doesn’t like the funk? and the one below is a funk with a twist.
We need to slow our dance mode a little bit, to save energy for later:), so here we are with beautiful soul music, great to dance with beautiful girls too
As you noticed we are actually moving back in time after the jump from Reggae Music to Disco Music, and following with Funk and Soul, so now here we go with real Blues with some cool funky attitude
We got back almost to the roots of dance music, which certainly is blues, now we time-jump-forward to our modern times, and here we go with Hip Hop track, unconventional, because it’s not in English language, as most of the hip hop is:)
Let’s be honest about the fact that Hip Hop Music mastering is our main job, just check our hip hop songs playlist here. So we can move on with just one Hip Hop track, can’t we ?:)
and Bristol’s made genre – Trip Hop
It’s time to get to the core of Dance Music, so here we go with some beautiful electronic dance music:
moving further we cannot avoid House Music, from Chicago, Detroit, NY, London, Berlin…all around the world, house music took over
and let’s be honest here again… we master a hell of a lot of house, deep house, techno, tech house music, so we cannot just stop on one example, here is another chosen song :
and now we moving from Chicago and House Music tradition, into Detroit and Techno Music capitol!, below – Techno Track mastering sample :
and one more, more minimalist, more groovy and dark techno
and finally, we go some good old drum and bass