A Brief Guide to Dance Music Production


Electronic music is making a comeback. Dance music production is one of the most popular genres of electronic music today. This blog post is a quick guide to dance music production and the various types of electronic music you can use for different genres.

Dance Music Production

The most popular types of electronic music are: House, Drum & Bass, and Dubstep. The best way to find new artists in this genre is to search YouTube for “house music,” “drum and bass,” or “dubstep.” You will be surprised at how many people are using these terms in their titles!

This type of dance music production has a lot more variety than other styles. This can make it difficult to find your own style, but there are ways around this problem.

Here’s some tips on how to get started with dance music production: Start with a song that has been written by someone else. Find an artist who fits your style and look at what they did to make it work for them. This will give you ideas on how you can do something similar with your own tracks!

If you want to take things further, try remixing other tracks. Look at how they were mixed together and see if there is anything that could be changed or improved upon in order

So what do we consider a style of electronic music here? Well, this list looks at the various type of genres that have spun off from the parent genre of electronic music itself. These include styles like dubstep and house, which have sub-genres like progressive and tech house.

We’ve included some of the more popular genres, but there are literally thousands more out there. It’s also worth noting that these styles are often interlinked and plenty of producers use elements from more than one genre in their work.

If you’re new to dance music production, you might want to check out our free guide on how to make electronic music first.

The following is a list of some of the more popular dance music genres. Each genre has a description and links to sample tracks from artists within that genre.

Ambient: Ambient music has no set formula, but is generally intended to be relaxing and non-intrusive. Ambient music is often found in elevators, or on hold while talking on the phone. You can find ambient music on most commercial airlines.

Breakbeat: Breakbeat music is a style of dance music that has breaks (pauses) in the music. Breakbeat is commonly used in drum and bass, jungle, house, and big beat music. Breakbeat has a very fast tempo and can be difficult to mix with other songs due to the brevity of the breaks.

Drum and Bass: Drum and Bass (DnB) is characterized by very fast breakbeats that are usually between 160-180 beats per minute (bpm). Drums are mixed with heavy basslines and synthesizers are often mixed in as well. DnB is also known as Jungle due to its origins in Jamaican dancehall culture.

Dubstep: Dubstep is characterized by an emphasis on bass lines, drums and off-beat rhythms. Many dubstep songs feature barely audible

There are so many different types of electronic dance music that it can be a little confusing as to what genre is what. Here’s a quick run down of the more popular types of EDM:

Bass Music

Bass music has been around for quite some time now and incorporates many of the heavier sounds and bass lines that are heard within the dubstep genre. In recent times it seems that there has been a progression in this genre incorporating more organic and subtle elements with deeper, sub-bass lines along with an emphasis on minimalism, creating a very dark and synth heavy type of sound.

Drum & Bass

This genre is sometimes referred to as Jungle and is normally associated with the early days of dance music. This style is characterised by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–180 BPM), heavily syncopated percussive loops, and basslines containing prominent sub-bass frequencies.

Dubstep

Dubstep was born in London in the 90s and has continued to grow into what it is today. The genre has seen an explosion in popularity over the past few years thanks to artists like Skrillex, Burial, Benga and Skream, who have all pioneered their own unique styles within the Dubstep genre.

House

  • This genre of Electronic music originated in Chicago and Detroit in the early eighties. The term “house” comes from CHICAGO HOUSE, a style of HOUSE MUSIC that is characterised by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat. Other elements include repetitive piano chords and synthetic bass lines. This genre is popular with DJ’s as it is very easy to mix two or more house tracks together.

    Techno

  • Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) that is predominantly known for its usage of repetitive beats, sounds, and melodies. Techno was created in Detroit by a handful of DJs like Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Eddie Fowlkes during the mid 80’s. Techno music inspired the development of many other EDM genres such as drum n bass, dubstep and trance.

    Tech House

  • Tech house differs from techno because of its heavy use of samples and loops as opposed to synthesizers. It mixes up tech house with other musical elements such as funk, jazz, soul, disco and afro beat to create a

    Drum & Bass

    Drum ‘n’ bass (also written as drum and bass and commonly abbreviated to D&B, D+B or DnB) is a type of electronic music which emerged in the mid 1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–180 beats per minute, but using “half-time” and “double-time” variations), with heavy bass and sub-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres led to many permutations in its overall style.

    House

    House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago in the early 1980s.[1] It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984,[2] then in other metropolitan areas within the United States. In the mid to late 1980s, house music became popular in Europe as well as major cities in South America, and Australia.[3][4] Today, house music remains popular around the world. Due to Chicago’s rich history of

    INTEGRATED PRODUCTION SUITE

    An integrated production suite is a program that allows the user to do everything they need to create a finished track. In other words, in one program you can arrange your track, record a vocal or instrument and make the final mix.

    Some examples of integrated production suites include:

    Propellerhead Reason

    Apple Logic Pro

    Ableton Live

    CUBASE

    Cubase is Steinberg’s audio, MIDI and video recording software. It is also one of the best known, with some long-time users swearing by it. It has been around for nearly 20 years and has gone through many iterations. While it does not have all the features of some of its competitors, it does have a very strong MIDI editing section and a very flexible mixing console. Cubase also includes many plugins from third-party developers like Waves Audio and Antares AutoTune, which are not included in competing products like Logic Pro.


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