MUSIC GUIDELINE

1. Subject
This document is intended to regulate the
musical part during WRRC competitions.

1. Subject
This document provides the musical
guidelines for WRRC competitions.
 MUSIC GUIDELINE
2. Music Definitions
2.1. Time signature and tempo
4/4 = 1 Bar

Expressed in Bar Per Minute: BPM (uppercase).

The music used in a RR competition is divided into 4 (four)
beats (takts) in one bar – ie. 4/4. Note: Originally, bpm
means beats per minute, i.e. bpm. It is very important not to
confuse bars/minute and beats/minute! Because the bar per
minute means how many 4 beats (takts) there are in one
minute (1 bar = 4 beats). To make it easier to follow: bpm
(lowercase) = beats/minute, you should use the notation
BPM (uppercase) = Bars/Minute!
1. Figure – Time Signature
48 BPM (bars per minute) = forty-eight times 4 beats = 192
beats = 24 times 8 counts (beats or takts). Ex.: One and half
minute 48BPM music have 288 beats, i.e. 36 times 8 counts).

3. Figure – Basic Rock Instruments
(from left: BassGuitar; Basic Rock Drum Set;
ElectricGuitar)
MUSIC GUIDELINE
2.2. Rock’n’Roll/Rock music style
The birth of Rock'n'Roll music is linked to the
advent of the electric distorted guitar. In the beginning,
Rhythm'n’Blues and Country music patterns were played
with the "new" guitar sound, in today's terms "cover"
songs were written with a new sound, and then new songs
were written with the electric guitar as the lead
instrument. Classical Rock’n’Roll was usually played with
one or two electric guitars (one solo, one rhythm) and an
electric bass guitar.
To identify Rock'n'Roll music, an electric distorted guitar is an
important and necessary accessory! Fast tempo is not a
sufficient parameter to define a musical style! It should be a
requirement that only music containing an electric rock
guitar should be played at competitions.

4. Figure – RR ”Drum Clock”
5. Figure – Rhythm accents, 2 bars in 48BPM and 1 bar in 24BPM
MUSIC GUIDELINE
2.3. Rock’n’Roll/Rock rhythm style
The drum set consists of at least a bass drum, a
snare drum and cymbals.
At a minimum, the music used for competitions must
clearly show a heavy or strongly accented bass drum on
the odd beats (on-beats), and a snare drum or claps on the
even beats of the music (off-beats). The first beat of the bar
(downbeat) is usually the strongest accent in the melody and
the likeliest place for a chord change, the third is the next
strongest: these are "on-beats”. The second and fourth are
weaker – the "off-beats" (upbeats). (see Figure 4)
It is very important to understand the 4/4 rock rhythm that
- the first beat of each odd bars is the biggest accent,
- the next big accent is the first beat of all even beat.
- the 3rd beat of all bars is the secondary accent,
- and the 2-4-6-8. beats is unstressed.
(See Figure 4. and 5.)
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2.4. Music Intro and Outro
An INTRO is the opening section of a piece of music, usually before the singing begins.
See the figure 2. where is an example: 4 bars (2x8beats) is in the introduction.
An OUTRO is the section that ends a music. Therefore, an outro can be considered the opposite of an intro.
The OUTRO can be a closing beat, or it can be longer, which can deviate from the original tempo. However,
deviated tempo part is not included in the so-called RR part. (See 2.5.).

2. Figure – Standard Rock Music structure (Stanza = a line in a verse)

2.5. The Rock’n’Roll Part (RR Part)
The Rock'n'Roll part (RR part) in competition is the part of the music where the Rock’n’Roll rhythm style is
played and where can clearly heard the tempo and the accents.
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2.6. Definition of the Bridge and Intermezzo:
Bridge: Out of melody and unchanged tempo or
Not out of melody and unchanged
tempo.
Intermezzo: Out of melody and changed tempo(!).
The two concepts or terms mean similar musical
solutions. But the 2 terms are different.
Bridge: a musical transition between 2 types of music.
Originally, in music, especially Western popular music, a 6. Figure - Bridge and Intermezzo in the Music

bridge is a contrasting section that prepares the return of
the original piece of material.
A bridge can also be a short transition between two
different RR-form themes. It is usually used in lengths of
2-4 bars(!), but the length of the transition depends on
the composition. Its main characteristic is that the tempo
does not change during the transition. So, the Bridge can
be out of melody but at the same time with an
unchanging tempo. (See Figure 6.)
Intermezzo is a similar term, but it can be not
only out of melody, but also with a change of
tempo and style. Therefore, in RR competitions
we distinguish between the terms Bridge and
Intermezzo. A clumsy example for intermezzo:
- Song ‘A’ is ‘Jailhouse Rock’ then
- intermezzo is ‘Für Elise’ and then
- Song ‘B’ is ‘Blue Suede Shoes’,
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6. Figure - Bridge and Intermezzo in the Music

Whys: Many couples and formations have their own competition music that has been cut or mixed to
include Bridge or Intermezzo. Formations in particular often use it, as their final music is relatively
long, so they colour the final composition by using a variety of music.
However, it is very important for the judges that the amount of RR part meets the minimum amount of
rateable RR music. If an intermezzo is used in a production, that time should not count towards
rateable RR music.
If a Bridge(s) is(are) used in the music then the tempo is not interrupted and therefore counts towards
rateable RR music.
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3. Cutting/use a quality music
3.1. Composition issue

The WRRC shouldn't allow music where the music is cut

in the middle of a sentence in the lyrics or the lyrics
become meaningless. Music is a work of art!
So as like as the artistic paintings. If anyone mess with
the painting (ex. Mona Lisa), paint over the original, it
will be a very ugly painting and will not be liked by the lay
viewer, they will hate it. If someone doesn't have the
money to hire expert musicians to make your own
competition music, use original music, but don't fake the
music! A good musical cut is created when the original
lyrics makes sense, when the bars (odd and even) and the
modulations are not damaged, when the sound is not
false and not distortion.
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3.2. The Double Drum Set Problem
A lot of music comes to the music committee with a double
drum kit in the music. There are several problems with this,
but the main problem is the decrease in quality, which is
unworthy of an international competition. If we want to
understand why it is not a good idea to mix a double-tempo
drum kit over slow-tempo music, it is worth looking at how
the rhythm of a basic rock song is built up.
As you can see in Figures 7. and Figures 4., in the case of a
double drum set, when the original basic tempo is relatively
slow (e.g. 24BPM or 96bpm), the overmixed double-tempo
drum set (e.g. 48BPM or 192bpm) will create opposite
accents, and making the unenjoyable music. To make it easier
to understand, a summary animation has been produced to
illustrate the complexity of this issue, and visually make it
7. Figure – Double Drum Set
easier to understand why it's best to avoid the double drum
sets problem.
VIDEO link here!
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3.3. Tempo Correction
Nowadays, speeding up (less often slowing down) music and adjusting the tempo precisely in a digital
environment is quite common.
However, it is important to know what happens to the music when you speed it up, i.e. increase the tempo.
The most common algorithm is called Time-Scale Modification (TSM). The Time-scale modification (TSM) is the
task of speeding up or slowing down an audio signal’s playback speed without changing its pitch. Music signals
are diverse — they comprise harmonic, percussive, and transient components, among others. Because of this
wide range of acoustic and musical characteristics, there is no single TSM method that can cope with all kinds of
audio signals equally well. In the lucky case, there will be less degradation if each instrument is given a separate
TSM algorithm. This requires that each instrument is available as a separate sound file. Let's face it, in an
amateur environment this is unlikely to happen. (See Figure 8.)

For all these reasons, it is important that the tempo correction

must be a maximum of 30%.
For example: If a piece of music has a tempo of 37BPM (148bpm)
and we speed it up by 30%, we get about 48BPM (192bpm)
music, which is still relatively good quality.

8. Figure – Tempo Correction

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3.4. Quality requirement
3.4.1. Overloud issue
All music should be normalized to -3dB! Playing/using
"overloud" music should be prohibited.
Many trainers try to add more dynamics to their competition
music with the clever solution of increasing the amplitude,
i.e. making the recording louder within the file.

Unfortunately, it is not enough for them that the technician

or acoustic engineer uses the potentiometer on the audio
mixer at dance competitions. That is why we often come
9. Figure – Overloud
across overdriven music, which also makes listening to music
in a large arena unenjoyable.
An overloud music recording permanently loses its quality,
so even if you normalize the music file afterwards, the
distortion will remain.
(See Figure 10.)
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10. Figure – Overloud - peaks

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3.4.2. An easy solution to avoid overloud
Before anyone submits their music to the music
committee for approval, we respectfully ask that you take
the following steps!
Of course, those who are quite experienced in the field of
music editing applications can do the following steps with
their own applications or software.
If you don't have audio editing software, then first, open
this link: https://www.audacityteam.org/ and download the
Audacity Software and install it. It’s absolute free, open
source, cross-platform software for recording and basic
editing sounds and very easy to normalizing any audio file.

2. Open your file (menu: file/open..)

3. Select all (Ctrl+A) and open the “normalize”

(menu: Effect->Volume and Compression->Normalize…)
9. Figure – Overloud
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4. In the Normalize box please set minus 3 decibels and
apply it.

5. Finally, export your normalized audio file to a storage.

(See Figure 11.)

11. Figure – Normalization of an Audio file in Audacity Software


3.4.3. Quality requirement of audio files.
In case of mp3
- In case mix down or rendering down (save as)
from lossless audio files:
- Before compressing a lossless audio file to mp3
format, it is important to set the parameters:
o Format: MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (mp3)
o Recommended bit rate: 320 kb/s
o Channels: 2 channels (stereo)
o Recommended sampling rate: 44.1 kHz
- In case mix down or rendering down (save
as) from lossy audio files:
o If the source file is of poorer quality than the
recommended settings, especially if they are of
different quality, it is still worth using the
recommended settings, regardless of the fact that
the sound file will not be of better quality.
MUSIC GUIDELINE
In case of m4a or mp4a
- The MP4 is a digital multimedia container
format most commonly used to store video and
audio, but it can also be used to store other data
such as subtitles and still images, and it’s most
modern container format. It’s also a lossy
compression method! Using the mp4 audio codecs
only makes sense if you reach the MP3 quality
settings as described above!
(Note: The best solution would be to use lossless
audio codecs, such as FLAC, but since it results in a
much larger file size, and the size of the servers is not
suitable for this, so it is worth using the MP3 settings,
as parameters indicated above.)
*.mp3 *.flac *.wav
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4.2. Lenght of music
A surprising amount of music comes to the music committee that is very close to the time limits defined
by the regulations (minimum and maximum dance time, intro and/or outro, etc.). However, the solution
to this is extremely simple, although it requires more to understand.

Simple math: - If according to the rules, the RR part must be at

- What is the tempo of the music you want?
48BPM.
- What does 48BPM mean?
There are 48x4 counts in one minute, i.e. 48 bars.
- If there are 48 bars in a minute, how many bars are
there in a minute and a half?
48 bars + 24 bars = 72 bars.
- If there are 72 bars in a minute and a half, how
many times can we count up to 8?
We can count to 8 in 36 times.
least one and a half minutes long, then how much 8-
count RR music is needed?
36 pcs.
- What is the solution to know without a stopwatch
whether the dance time meets the minimum
requirement?
We count how many times we can count to 8 in our
own choreography.
- If you don't want to push the minimum limit, what
do you do?
I add an extra 4-8 counts to the RR part choreography
and pay attention to the intro/outro so that I don't
get too close to the maximum time.
It is that simple.
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