Im using Acid Music Studio, but any Loop based program Works.
To start with decide what Kind of sound you want to work with, and if you want a slower dance track or a fast one. Obviously your loop collection/ability ot create your own tracks will be a deciding factor.
There are lots of styles of Electronic dance music. Just to generalize, you could make something funky, a disco-esque song, something spacey, a video game influenced 'chip tune', a Big Beat Punk-techno type track, or maybe just a simple; but fun, '4 to the floor' club track.
Lets start with the Beats.
In a Break-Beat style dance track, the beat is strong but staggered. Think of a good funk track. They use strong beats, but they don't emphasize any certain parts of the beat.
A '4 to the floor', sometimes called the 'gay-bump'; due to the origins of this style in gay clubs, is your standard boom-boom-boom-boom beat, meaning a kick on every beat. For that style its all about the steady kick beat, and everything else is put in place to keep it from getting boring to fast.
For slower songs you want a beats per minute of under 120, for fast dance tracks 130+ is best. It just depends on how slow or fast you want it to be.
Decide whether you want to work with a steady beat or a broken-beat.
After that is where it get fun. There are plenty of basic beat loops you can use, I like to layer 2 or 3 simple loops to create more complex sounds.
You can also take a beat loop and cut and paste an arrangement you like.
After you have your beat you can move onto the more artistic area of electronica music.
Depending on the style you want to work with you should use somewhere between 3 and 8 additional elements.
You can use more or less, if you do it right.
By using pan and volume changes you can make one loop "move" around in the music.
By using pitch, and/or adding effects onto duplications of a loop you can make one turn into many.
If you are using a lot of small elements that come into and out of the track rather than repeating for longer periods of time, you can use as many as you need.
The idea is to keep the people dancing to the beat, but without letting them get bored of the music.
You can also incorporate breaks into the track. This is when the music or the beat stops briefly and new elements take over, or even small periods of silence can be used. You then jump back into the track, I like to add new elements that continue through the song after a break.
In conclusion, making a Dance track can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Just remember to keep it fun for yourself, and it will be for your listeners as well.
