Taking your figure skating routine music to the next level...

After the daunting and often lengthy challenge of picking music that the coach, choreographer and skater are all pleased and excited to be building a routine on, it is very easy to declare “mission accomplished”. Leaving only the job of throwing the music into a computer to make a cut or two for timing before you’re ready to go.

But...

• Is that as good as your music can be?

• Does it flow dramatically from beginning to end?

• Does it have a clearly defined and emotionally satisfying beginning and ending?

• Is it sonically consistent and present throughout?

• Does it really sound as though it was tailor-made for the performance you’re going to build on top of it?

No?

Instead does it sound somewhat pieced together; with maybe even jarring jumps in mood and flow at the cuts; with soft sections that are too soft; and an ending that is less a triumphant conclusion than a mere stopping?

Why settle for that?

Just as making a great costume is more than just stitching together pieces of fabric any old way, so it is with editing a great music mix. Both usually turn out a lot better with some expert assistance. So while I’m not that good with a sewing machine, making the most out of a chosen piece of music is something I have lots of experience doing.

My Goal for Your Music

My goal is for the final edited music for your routine to sound just as though you were lucky enough to stumble upon a track from a commercial CD that was a perfect fit… exactly the right length with the perfect dynamic curve…ready to go.

Seeing that, even with the vast selection of recorded music we have available to us, that “perfect fit – ready to go” track will certainly elude us, there are many techniques I can use to get us to that goal. Obviously the first will be edits - both for length, but also for variety or theatricality. Figure Skating is theater… it is drama… and as such needs music that is theatrical as well. Yet most commercial recordings are recorded primarily for other purposes… they are made tomeet theneeds of the nightclub or discotheque, or the concert hall, or the silver screen. Compared to those venues, music for skating often needs more dramatic variety – in a shorter period of time – than most pop/dance songs, film cues or classical works are going to provide.

So while some edits are simply about hitting the overall length of the program – most edits are also going to serve the purpose of making the music more dramatically interesting within our routine’s time restraints. All while making it sound like it was just recorded that way in the first place!

Of course, compared to the days when all we could was cut and splice tape – with computers, “cuts” are much more versatile. Beyond simple edits, it is now easy to do complex crossfades and overlays – as well as (to a varying degree, depending on the source material) affect tempo and key changes.

Beyond all of these expanded editing capabilities is the ability to add new musical parts to the existing recording for variety, to further “sell” a transition, and to sometimes just create an essential bit of music absent from the original recording entirely - as is often the case with endings.

With all of these techniques, judiciously applied some spectacular and amazing musical transformations can occur – and if done really well should sound like we did nothing at all… just as though you were fortunate enough to find the perfect track… a perfect fit… ready to go.

Our Partnership

It’s not uncommon to approach providing a service like this in a “tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it for you” manner – and if you really do specifically know what you want, I’m certainly willing to provide you that service.

But what if you don’t know “specifically” what you want?

Well that’s completely okay. Most of my clients come to me with “We’d like the slow part of this piece followed by the fast part of this one, but really have no idea how to get from one to the other. Plus it should end big – but both pieces end slow and soft” Or “We’d like to use this track, but starting in the middle somewhere, which still leaves it two minutes too long”. Those kind of general, non-specific instructions are not only okay, but actually preferred, as they can give me the opportunity to find the best solutions for the music at hand, often choosing from a far broader range of possibilities than you might have ever considered.

You see, I don’t look at this as a technical service as much as a creative one. You should feel free to leave as many of the musical details as you wish for me to figure out. You see you – the skater and your team – have already done the bulk of the musical work… by choosing just the right piece or pieces of music to work with (out of the thousands of choices available). Let me take it to the next level for you. Together we can insure that you end up with the best music for your routine possible.

Whenever you're ready to get started, or want to just get started discussing the possibilities, feel free to send me an email.