Is this a good song to step to?

Over the course of the last 8 years or so, people have been making song files. These song files were made to interact with Dance With Intensity (DWI), Stepmania (SM), and Flash Flash Revolution (FFR). Some were created to one day be played on a dance pad – and others were solely created to be enjoyed on keyboard.

I thought about this idea, and it has intrigued me – what exactly is a good song to step to?

So, I considered the various types of music – and how it would fare in terms of fun play for the dance pad or for keyboard.

Let’s take a list of music genres and see what we get:

• Alternative
• Ambient
• Blues
• Break
• Classic Rock
• Classical
• Country
• Dance
• Downtempo/Chill
• DnB
• Electronic
• Folk
• Garage
• Grime
• Golden Oldies/”Oldies”
• Hip Hop
• Holiday Themed (Christmas)
• House
• Jazz
• Jungle
• Lounge
• Pop
• Rap
• Rave
• Reggae
• Techno
• Trance
• Wonky

Note: I realize I may have missed some, that some of these may actually be genres within a genre, and so on – but for the sake of argument, here is a working list.

Now, let’s look at this list a bit more closely – I would say that most of these genres have music that can be converted into step patterns. The only exception would probably be Ambient – this is music you use to relax and/or fall asleep – so I doubt you would wanna play anything that falls under “ambient” on a keyboard, let alone a dance pad – unless a babbling brook with animal life bustling in the background is your dance forte.

Aside from ambient, every genre here has music that can be used for keyboard or dance pad fun. Certain music within these genres may not lend themselves well to stepping though. Here are a few examples:

Music that isn’t clear sounding
Some people choose to make steps to music that just isn’t recorded all that well – it’s garbled, messy, or not balanced. All in all its absolutely horrid to listen to, let along dance to.

Music that is from a live recording
Same problem as above – the recording tends to be garbled or not balanced – and this in turn usually ends up with a horrible dance chart.  If possible, try to find a studio recording of the song you want to use – it’s clearer and is easier to step.

Music that is dissonant
If it sounds like scraping, screaming, or highly irregular and sporadic, chances are it won’t do well as a step chart – it won’t be fun.

Music that is monotonous
If there is little or no harmonic variance combined with a static rhythm is usually a prelude to a boring step chart.

Dialogue
Dialogue can be fun if it’s part of a song – but it has to fit and not be overused. Using an extended recording of dialogue (as in the entire song) can be cute as a gimmick, but it gets old fast.

That’s all I got for now – so keep on stompin’~

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~ by legendaryn8 on December 16, 2008.