Right. How bored are you with reading right now? You've just gone through the other page, maybe tried it out, and are now coming back to this, and are about to sit down and go through more of my ranting. Sorry....

If you get the chance though, press ctrl-d to bookmark this page or something, disconnect from the web, and go screw around on your decks for a while. Don't tape yourself, don't really listen to what you're doing, just stick on various tunes, and play around, remember that you WANT to do this. All this reading and practise will probably get on your tits after a while - and you might end up not enjoying it as much for while. Fair enough, it happens to us all. So, go have some fun for a while, remember you're just learning, don't give a toss about what you're doing right or wrong, get it out of your system, then come back and start reading again.

So, now we're gonna have to delve into beat structure. Why? Well, in the last page, I didn't mention when to start the tune, I just said start it. Why? To do so would be to complicate matters. In the last page, I was just concerned with passing info about how to start the tune, and how to match the beats of two tunes. Now I'm going to get into when you start the tune for the mixes to sound correct. To do this, you have to improve your placement of mixes. Something that, though I know what I mean, might end up confusing the newbie, so if you have any queries about what I'm saying, make sure to get in touch. Again though, please ask something, please don't just say "Tell me about Beat-Structure" because I'll just think you can't be arsed reading this crap below you. Cheers mush's and bushes!

Before I get into this though, another note/warning/apology/backtrack - whatever. I've had swinging reports on this page. Some say it's bang on in terminology, some say it's confusing. Read on to judge for yourself, and then go to the example page, which is linked to at the bottom, to try to fully understand.

This page goes through the SIMPLEST of structures of a song. To live and die by this structure is to be self-damaging. It's only here to show people that any tune DOES have a structure, but the structure of each tune can be as individual as a finger-print. This is here only to show the beginner what to look out for when it comes to structures. (Man, how many times can I say the word "Structure" in one sentence!!)

I will also re-iterate the fact that my terminology may (and probably does) still differ from that of other sane people. And that a lot of it is aimed at people who don't know anything about reading music. People who are studying music at University (or, hell, even primary school) will get a good laugh at my simplifications. Plus, I got my Mum to read over this for me, to make sure I haven't make any HUUUUGE errors anywhere - and we all know that Mum's are always right.

In dance/house/trance music, you'll find in most cases the time signature is 4/4 this means that there are FOUR CROCHET BEATS to ONE BAR. The fact that they're crochets doesn't matter much here, but in case anyone wanted to pull me up on this simplification, I thought I'd put it in.

In it's simplest form in dance music:-

Beat 1 is a Bass Drum
Beat 2 is a Bass Drum and Snare (or clap)
Beat 3 is a Bass Drum again
Beat 4 is a Bass Drum and Snare Drum (or clap) combined again

So what you'll find is that the normal simplified drum pattern for this one bar is:-

Bass Drum - Hi-hat (tchss noise) - Bass Drum with Snare - Hi-hat (half a bar)
Bass Drum - Hi-hat (tchss noise) - Bass Drum with Snare - Hi-hat (second half of bar)

This is where I slipped up originally, I was counting the hi-hats as a beat, when in fact they're just fillers (Hence why they're not in bold)

For the purposes of taking you through this, I'm going to talk in terms of Verses and Chorus's. I know that dance music doesn't really have discernible Verses or Chorus's, but they are kind of there, you just have to be imaginative. I'll describe it by running through a pretend tune - it doesn't reflect any specific tune out there, just a pretend one in my confused ickle head!

Ok, the beginning of most tunes is an intro. There are some out there that bang straight into the meat of the song, but they're not very DJ friendly, so I won't mention them.

The intro can either take the form of a really basic bass drum beat, or it can be a musical intro, all those nice whizzes and noises and vocal samples and stuff! Or it could be anything else for that matter, but if I spent the time to go through them all, when it's pretty obvious that you'll know what the intro is, we'd be here all day, and both of us would get bored.

Realistically, an intro can last as long as you want - hell, some of the tunes I get sent, I sometimes wonder if the intro ever stops! But in this case we'll talk in terms of a 8 bar intro (with the most popular length being 8 or 16 bars).

It'll be a nice, simple intro, which at the end of our 8 bars will do something to let us know that it's about to hit into the meat of the tune. Think of Alice Deejay - Better Off Alone (Ok, don't - I know it hurts) at the end of its intro, there's a kind of "whee whee WHEEP" thing going on, which lets you know that it's going to bust into newer territory. Or it could be a drop in the beat for one bar, or whatever, the important thing to know is that the intro ends - other wise it'll be a really boring tune! ("aren't they all" (Mother's comment))

Next, in our little made up tune, we'll hit into the meat of the tune, in this case, going into the verse. Our virtual tune will have a verse length of 16 bars also. You'll notice in most tunes that after 4 bars of the verse, there will be something to mark the progression into the next four bars - which is when a lot of tunes will progress to something a little different (say they'll include more facets to the hook, include a more complicated bass or drum pattern - something like that). It'll probably just be a cymbal, or some kind of punctuation, but it's good to listen out for it.

Here's where I invoke the wrath of everyone. I (now) call these four bars a PHRASE. What you call them, is up to you. Frankly, I've had so many emails telling me so many different things about this that I've given up. It's what I call it. You can call it "Steven" if you want to. It's just a way of thinking that it's (mostly) a discernible section of the tune. After these 8 bars (2 sets of four - half a verse - 2 phrases), there will be another change. Most likely, there will be a build up of some kind, maybe a big "Whoosh" , a drum roll, a drop in the beat for a bar - a vocal sample (see BBE's "Oh yeah" in 7 days...) or simply another cymbal. But what likely happens is that the energy of the second half of the verse that this leads into (I'm confused) will be greater - maybe even more sounds, a more powerful bass line, or another hook line will be introduced or a change of key. (I call the driving melody to a tune the "hook", I.e. BBE's "Diddle-du, Diddle-du" in "7 days and 1 week" is what I call the hook)

So, that's another 8 bars, with the same kind of break between the sets of four bars as before - giving us 16 bars of the verse - or four phrases. Then we go into the 'chorus' of the tune.

In summary then, there are 4 sets of four bars ( 4 x phrases) to the verse - with these four phrases split into two sets of two phrases. If you're confused by the idea of 2 phrases joining together, and making up half of a verse, then mail me and I'll try to talk you through it.

So now we get into the 'chorus' of the tune. This is more likely to be only 8 bars (2 phrases) in length which could have a nice build up between the phrases and another nice punctuation when coming out.

More often than not in dance stuff, we now encounter the beloved mini BREAKDOWN or bridge. Here, the power of the tune will sometimes drop out - losing the bass drums, leaving only a low phat bass with little hook like noises going in the background. Or it could be the other way round, the musical side drops out leaving only the bass drums and maybe a simple bass melody - or anything to set it apart from the rest of the tune, it all depends what they wrote!! For average every day bridges between the Chorus and the next Verse, these breakdowns will only really last 8 bars - 16 at the most, otherwise the dance floor gets itchy! Normally a crescendo (build up) occurs in the last four bars, and BOOM, you're back into the meat of the verse again.

In the next verse, the same as before will happen - not necessarily with the sound of the tune, but still with the 4x4 phrase format.

Chorus - kinda the same as before really. Not much new here!

Now (in our virtual tune) we hit the monster breakdown (which is what Mum says she has every time she listens to this stuff!!). In the one that I seem to have playing through my head while I go through this, the breakdown will last 16 bars.

A lot of the tunes I listen to will use the first 8 bars as the proper breakdown, then use the next 8 as the build-up back into the tune.

After this monster breakdown, "WATCHA!" we're back into the tune again - most cases it's back into the chorus again, but in some cases it's the verse again, or if the author wants to fox you, a bridge (mini breakdown) between the monster breakdown and the next part of the tune (which, if the monster breakdown built up nice, will have a lot of power, (i.e. the bass line and simple drums will still be there) but it's still different from the sounds of the chorus or verse.

So, next we get into the chorus thing or verse thing, followed by their opposite (if it's a chorus then we'll hit a final verse - or if a verse we'll hit chorus territory again) If it goes into the verse then chorus thing after the breakdown, there's a good chance there'll be another mini breakdown which is then followed by two or four chorus's.

This chorus will either keep going until the end (Dj unfriendly fade out) or there will be 16 bars of just beats or something to help out the Dj when it comes to mixing the next tune.

So that's our pretend tune. There are numerous variations to this format, but the reason I went through it is so that you know how music is set into structures - or parts, which will help you in the mix - and is also referred to in the Advanced Mixing Techniques page on my site. We can now map out our pretend tune like this:-

As I said at the top of this page, I hope that none of this ended up being too confusing to either of us! If it has been, mail me with your difficulty, and we'll sort out how to make this a bit more user friendly.

Which I have been requested!! I have gone through the structure of Way Out West's AJARE, and included a 28Kps version of the tune in RA format. Click HERE to go to it.