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How to Mix a Song for Dance

Dance groups and competitive cheerleader teams commonly dance to mixed songs, an edited song that consists of clips of several songs cut into the same track. Mixing your own song for dance used to require expensive studio equipment or pushing the buttons of cassette players at the precise moment, creating a big margin for error. Modern digital technology allows you to edit song clips, mix a song, and insert transitional effects through the use of music editing software. Try to choose songs with similar tempos for smooth transitions between song clips.

Instructions

    • 1

      Rip the songs for the mix from your CDs and convert them to mp3 file format if they are not already saved to the computer. Put all the songs together in a single folder to make it easier to find them when editing.

    • 2

      Open your audio editing software; although each software program is different, they all work in basically the same way. You can purchase the software, but free audio editing software is available, including Audacity, Wavosaur, DJ Audio Editor, and Power Sound Editor Free.

    • 3

      Open each song individually with the program and select the beginning and end of the portion of each song you would like to mix.

    • 4

      Open the "Edit" menu and select the option to cut the indicated portion from each song; save each portion of each song into a different file, but number each clip file in the order you plan to mix them.

    • 5

      Open a new file with the editing software and insert the song clips in the desired order. You can listen to the finished product and rearrange the clips as needed.

    • 6

      Add in any desired effects to the mix song, including transitions between clips, echo effects, and adjusting the treble and bass for each song.

    • 7

      Save the finished file to your computer. It can then be burned to disk and distributed to each member of the dance team for practice.

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