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Energy control; let me begin by saying this is a term I came up with myself as it's not something you can look up in an EDM (electronic dance music) encyclopedia. Rather than trying to define it, I'd like to talk more about energy control and hopefully draw some kind of conclusion towards the end.

What do chart topping dance artists all have in common? Are they all brilliant composers who write stunningly beautiful melodies? Are they all exceptionally skilled producers and engineers? Do they all bring something brand spankin' new to the table? What they all have in common is what I like to refer to as extremely good energy control. Think about it for a second. What is the underlying purpose of a club track? I don't think I'd be far off by claiming it is to emit and thereby create energy. Where is a club track most at home? In a club - with lots of people on the dance floor. What do people do on a dance floor? They dance. Do all club tracks engage people to the exact same extent? Of course not. With that said, I believe that how much energy a club track creates greatly depends on the level of energy control its creator has, more so than anything else.

So what is energy control anyway? Energy control (or the lack thereof) as a whole is a combination of many, many things, even more elements than I'm aware of. To complicate things even further, these elements often rely on each other dynamically. However, most of these bits and pieces fall under two main categories which I consider the most important aspects of energy control: pacing and arrangement.

PACING

I chose pacing instead of tempo because energy control and the subjective matter of good or bad pacing applies to any tempo. Pacing is not an easy thing to explain with words in this context so I'll give examples of when pacing goes wrong:

- TOO HIGH. This is when a song feels impatient, like it's outrunning itself, rushing to get the message across. It might make your grandparents start sweating while they grab the nearest bottle of wine with a ridiculously fake smile on their face when you play them your club track. For most of you reading this, you'll understand what I mean when I say that some tracks can feel a bit stressful, regardless of tempo. A downtempo track at 60 BPM can sound very impatient whereas a drum'n'bass track at 160 BPM can sound cool and solid. When the pacing of a track is just right, it feels confident. Controlled.

- TOO LOW. This is when a song is overly repetitious and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Keep in mind that I'm specifically talking about dance because although energy control is universal, dance is generally built on a very different recipe than pop. I think even George Michael would have trouble coming up with a ten minute pop version of "Last Christmas". You get the idea. However, there's ambient music out there which lasts for over half an hour that doesn't suffer from this problem. Jean Michelle Jarre's relatively uneventful "Waiting for Cousteau" lasts for a good 22 minutes but never seems to stand still or not go anywhere. In this case, I would argue its success lies in the fact that it's quite random and provides the listener with a sensation of calmness as opposed to flat out boredom. With that said, I could easily make something in a similar vein that sounds repetitious and starts getting boring in less than a minute.

ARRANGEMENT

Although there are no absolute rights or wrongs when dealing with progressive arrangements, I think it's fairly universal when a track seems to feel like it's progressing the right or wrong way. Common mistakes amongst beginners are, like previously discussed, either too much or too little patience. Building on what I wrote about pacing, I would say arrangement is an extension of that. You can get the pacing just right but still mess things up by arranging things poorly. I can relate to this because although I've been doing music since I was 16, I didn't produce full-length songs properly until Boom Jinx was born just a few years ago. It was a nightmare for me to learn how to arrange a track fairly well and learning how to do something versus mastering it are worlds apart. I can cook but I won't be cooking for royalty anytime soon. I can play the piano but I won't be holding a concert anytime soon. You get the idea. Becoming a masterful arranger is much more difficult than getting to grips with basic pacing too. If there is one thing dance dons like Pryda, Chris Lake, deadmau5 and Trentemøller are exceptionally good at, it's arrangement/progression. I chose these artists as examples because they don't always make particularly musical tracks but have become enormously popular without being lucky. These guys are good at a lot more than just coming up with a great arrangements but I strongly believe they wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as they are without this particular skill. It takes a certain skill to make relatively uneventful, minimal or compositionally simple music sound like a Porsche driving comfortably from the city to the countryside at 65 MPH; control, patience and confidence with very little abuse of a lot of potential power. I personally believe that whilst they have other distinct or unique skills, these could suffer more than their arrangement skills without necessarily hurting their massive impact on the dance scene.

- THE GOOD & THE BAD. One of the most important things to do when you're arranging is to tie things together well. Poor arrangements often fail on doing that. Club music normally has two primary states where it's either flowing or in some kind of suspended mode. An example of suspended mode is when something as fundamental as the kick (bass drum) drops out. You're consciously or subconsciously waiting for it to come back in and re-establish the groove. The kick is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dance music... it will be back. In trance, one of the most common ways of introducing melodies is breakdowns. If you remove the entire breakdown from a trance track that follows this recipe, the arrangement is royally screwed. The melody will be introduced too abruptly and will break the natural flow. Generally speaking, the more attention an element requires, the more you should prepare the listener for it. The suspended states of taking out fundamental elements like the kick or bass temporarily, slowly fading things out, going into a breakdown and slowly building things back up all serve a purpose. Suspended modes are useful to prepare the listener for a change or something new. They're also very useful to break (to then re-establish) the listener's focus with the added benefit of increasing their patience and renewing their appreciation without dramatic change in the content itself. Many beginners seem to feel an urge to constantly add new elements instead of playing around with suspense. From a psychological point of view, when you listen to a beat, no matter how cool it is, your brain will eventually lock onto it for so long it will get repetitious. Your appreciation will start to fade. Creating suspense is a useful way to avoid this. Here's a simple illustration: You're listening to a pounding beat. It sounds great; you're tapping your foot or nodding your head to it. Suddenly the kick drops out and there's a weird, high-pitched sound coming in. Although you won't be, for the sake of argument let's say you'd be thinking "what the hell is this?" (To some extent, this is what you'd subconsciously feel anyway.) Then, the high-pitched sound drops out and the kick comes back in. "Oh yeah!" You're now appreciating the same beat much more than you did before this happened only a few seconds ago. This is what I like to refer to as rebooting the listener's attention, renewing attention and appreciation. You can build on this far beyond this simplified example. Fading things in and out, playing with filters and so on are also commonly used to stretch things out (by that, I mean the length of a track) because no matter how good it is, anything added that doesn't change will get repetitious after a while. Even something as simple as a fade-in, where an instrument or element slowly comes in will buy valuable time because in a listener's head, the brain is constantly working to stabilize, grasp, or lock onto the wholeness of what they're listening to. Listeners are subconsciously most at ease when they can do that but much more prone to run out of patience and become bored. In high-energy music, you can successfully control how much and for how long they appreciate this preferred sate by mastering the use (interaction) of suspense and release.

You can break energy control down into many bits and pieces but like I said, I believe they somehow fall under these two main categories: pacing and arrangement. Take a really good dance track, double the tempo of the hi-hats and suddenly the pacing is messed up. Take a really good dance track and remove a two minute block anywhere in the track. Now the progression is hurt and arrangement all messed up. Take a really good dance track and boost the low-end (bass) with 6dB. Now it has too much energy and has lost its confident, balanced feel. Take a really good dance track and attenuate (reduce) the high-end (treble) with 12dB. Now the track doesn't have enough energy and sounds like it's in some kind of suspended mode, waiting for release. You can play a bassline very quickly and successfully increase energy or play a piano very quickly and flush pacing right down the toilet in the blink of an eye. At the end of the day, energy control is a subjective thing but I do believe the majority of people (especially experienced producers) will let their musical taste differ much more than their interpretation of what is good or bad energy control.

The reason I chose to write about this particular subject is because of how important it is. Many aspiring and experienced producers alike are more concerned with their sound and production than they are with their arrangements. To conclude, it is my belief that energy control may be one of, if not even the most important element of good (read: successful) electronic dance music. You're not going to get far by being good at only this aspect of making music, but it's a much better place to route your attention and devotion than fine-tuning EQs and compressors for hours like I do, or spending a fortune on new computers, synthesizers, samples and effects.

I have yet to become a masterful arranger myself... I've just become more and more aware of its importance and how the psychology behind how it really works.