Club Dance

Overview

Club dance is an umbrella term for electronic dance music that evolved out of disco from the 1970s onwards. Played in nightclubs, most of the sounds used in club dance are created using music technology rather than live musicians. Club dance relies on instruments such as mixing desks, drum machines, samplers and synthesisers; DJ techniques such as scratching; production techniques such as delay and reverb; and effects produced by the use of vocoder and filters.

Club dance has a huge number of subgenres, which names such as techno, house, trance, jungle and ambient. It isn’t necessary to know about each of these in detail, but you should aim to be able to identify the most common musical features and production techniques used in club dance music.
Club dance is improvised. Dancers stay in one place on the tightly packed dance floor and make up their own moves.

Important figures in club dance include:

  • Acid house: The Shamen 
  • Techno: Juan Atkins 
  • Drum ‘n’ bass: Roni Size 
  • Garage: So Solid Crew 
  • Trance: Sasha 
  • Ambient: The Orb 


Test Yourself

  • Name three types of digital effects that are used in club dance music, and describe what they do.
  • What is the difference between a synthesiser, sampler and sequencer?
  • Describe three musical characteristics of club dance music.
  • Name two club dance artists. 

Key Features

  • A fairly fast tempo and 4/4 metre.
  • Loops. In addition to drum loop, looped melodic ideas are common in club dance music, particularly bass lines. Listen out for a short melodic phrase that is repeated for long sections at a time. 
  • Repeated chord patterns. The harmony in club dance music is often very repetitive, with textures built up gradually over a repeated chord pattern. 
  • Samples. Short chunks of recorded sound, often taken from a different track, are frequently use in club dance music. 
    • These may be a spoken phrase, a short sung phrase or instrumental melody, a sound effect or some other noise. They will often be used many times in the same song, with various digital effects (FX) applied.
  • Synthesised timbres, which sound artificial and electronic. 
  • Regular phrases. Club dance music is often structured in 4- and 8-bar phrases.

Instruments

Club dance musicians make use of the following electronic instruments:

  • Drum machine: an electronic instrument that replicates the sounds of different percussion instruments.
  • Mixing desk: an electronic device used to combine (or ‘mix’) different audio signals, which can then be manipulated 
  • Sampler: an electronic instrument that allows you to alter and manipulate samples 
  • Synthesiser: an electronic instrument that often has a keyboard attached, which allows you to manipulate the sounds produced and add digital effects 
  • Sequencer: an electronic device that plays back performance data 
  • Decks: turntables for playing vinyl records 
  • Vocoder: an electronic device that combines a vocal track with synthesised sounds to give it a ‘robotic’ sound. 

‘VOODOO RAY’ (HAC09 MANRAY EDIT) By A Guy Called Gerald 

This is an example of acid house (a style which developed from techno), and was released in the late 1980s.

Characteristic features include:

  • The 4/4 metre and constant tempo of 120 bpm. 
  • The extensive use of loops:  
  • Rhythmic (the interlocking percussion patterns from 0:34).
  • Melodic (such as the ostinato in the bass from 0:34).
  • harmonic (such as the ‘piano’ at 1:14).
  • The way the texture is varied by introducing or dropping loops and combining them in different ways. 
  • The use of vocal samples – for example, ‘Voodoo ray’ at 5:49 is a sample of the comedian Peter Cook from a comedy record released in 1976. 
  • The use of effects such as reverb (added to the voice), delay (eg at 0:23 to create an echo) and panning (eg from 1:06 to 1:10). 
  • The use of atmospheric sweeps, whooshing noises and other sound effects. 
  • The extensive use of syncopation.

'WHY?' (MATT ‘JAM’ LAMONT REMIX) By MIS-TEEQ 

This remix became a popular UK garage hit in the early 2000s and contains many of the features of UK garage and R ‘n’ B.

Listen out for:

  • The instrumental timbres, which consist of synthesised or sampled sounds. 
  • The syncopated drum pattern and fast, syncopated hi-hat rhythms which have been quantised. 
  • The ‘chopped’ sound of many of the instrumental samples which creates a stuttering feel.
  • The extensive use of loops: drum loops, melodic loops and looped chord progressions.
  • The synthetic sound produced by the vocals, which have been time-stretched to fit to a fast tempo.