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I'm an avid fan of Eurobeat, so I decided I'd make a ReMix in that style. I got the melody and the chords down, but I'm having a hard time coming up with the harmony and rhythm. I listened to many examples and looked a bunch of MIDI files based on them, and I can see it's really complicating. But I figure there must be some simple process in how it's put together so that I can do it myself. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'd use loops and mess with them, but I'd rather come up with something original.

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I would say that eurobeat goes right between trance and techno. About figuring out about harmony and chords and stuff, there is no way you can just learn that from other persons. But it's possible to help you, and give you some advice. Here's my best advice for you:

Spend some time everyday finding the right chords for different melodies and make some remixes of them. Doing that you'll automatically learn how to find the right chords and you'll start understanding the whole thing.

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LOL

This website is OMG. How does he know all this?

Half-the subgenres he makes up...especially in the DnB catagory.

Eurobeat is pretty damn far off from both Trance and Techno. I like to think of it as the bastard child of Disco and Happy Hardcore. Techno and Trance put together (Tech Trance?) reminds me of submarines...its nothing like Eurobeat. Learn some knowledge foo!

Anyways, my advice is to listen to the songs that are you inspiration, listen to the typical song structure, notice how most songs' sections are made up of bars that are a multiple of 8 (8 bars, 16 bars, 24 bars, etc.). Also, one of Eurobeats trademarks is what I like to call the crazy-ass snares, I'm not sure what the technical term is but what I mean is whenever it reaches the end of the 8 bars or whatever the snares pick and go at a rapid fire pace, it's kinda like a snare roll. Make sure you have some really fast synths in the background (not arpeggios though) to help mantain that sense of speed.

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"What've you got?"

"Well, there's Club House. Progressive Club House. Progressive Trance. Progressive House Trance. Trance Breaks Club Trance. Breaks Trance Club Trance Trance Progressive House Trance. Trance Trance Club Breaks Trance House Trance. Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Polka Trance Trance and Trance. Or some lovely jazz curteousy of the Michael Garding quintet, with guitar, bass, drums, piano, sax and Trance."

"Have you got anything without any Trance in it?"

"Well, there's the Progressive House Trance. That's not got much Trance in it."

"But I don't want any Trance!"

"Trance trance trance trance, trance trance trance trance. Lovely Trance! Wonderful Trance! Lovely Trance! Wonderful Trance!"

"Shut up!! Shut up!"

"Look, why can't she have the Progressive House Trance?"

"That's got Trance in it!"

"Not as much as Trance Breaks Club Trance."

"Look, can I have Progressive House Trance without the Trance?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Blaahh, because then it wouldn't be Progressive House Trance would it?"

"I don't like Trance!"

"Hush dear, I'll have your Trance, I love it! I'm having Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Polka Trance and Trance!"

"Sorry sir, Polka's off for the day."

"Well can I have Trance instead?"

"You mean you want Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance Trance and Trance? Ugh!"

"Lovely Trance! Wonderful Trance! Lovely Trance! Wonderful Trance!"

--quoted from abg @ trance.nu forums

the moral: it's much easier if you simply provide a sample song of the style you're trying to go after. =)

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I'd love to link you to an example, but whenever I try to upload a file it just doesn't work. I tried my 1&1 website thing, Fortunecity, and even Putfile, but it's just not working. You can always find your own by looking up super eurobeat or something.

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I would say that eurobeat goes right between trance and techno. About figuring out about harmony and chords and stuff, there is no way you can just learn that from other persons. But it's possible to help you, and give you some advice. Here's my best advice for you:

Spend some time everyday finding the right chords for different melodies and make some remixes of them. Doing that you'll automatically learn how to find the right chords and you'll start understanding the whole thing.

Eurobeat is more closer to house than techno. Just nitpicking here. In fact it is more house than trance.

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I would say that it's a good thing that there's something like the EDM Guide because scouring several hundred forums for people's personal definitions 1) takes too much time and 2) sucks, especially if people say just the word "techno". There's Detroit, there's Richie Hawtin, there's Adam Beyer and there's Ken Ishii. There, the singular definition of "techno" has become worthless because it's all but not all are alike.

So, a central reference is a wonderful thing :).

Anyway, this sounds very much like something that'd appear in Dance Dance Revolution. The origins of this are from Italo-dance and happy hardcore.

The bass is the easy part. If you're familiar with a 16-step interface; bassdrum goes on 1-5-9-13, and the bass comes inbetween, together with the hihats.

Use sidechain compression on the bass so the song starts to pump. Choose a tempo that's 140 bpm or higher. The bassdrum is typically "plastic". Don't use realistic bassdrums for this.

Gather all the orchestral hit samples you can find. Choose 1 or 2. You hear 2 distinct lead sounds; don't do everything with a single supersaw but alternate between one and the other lead.

Also, an old favorite is a synthetic-sounding piano (Korg M1) where you play heavily quantized chords+bass with.

A rule of thumb is that it should sound like someone increased the playback speed. This is nice; it means you can compose your song in a lower tempo and then use a wave editor to crank the pitch 2 semitones up.

TheRugi: it would help tremendously if you could tell us which song you are trying to remix, and what application (Reason, FL Studio, whatever) you use. That way you can get more specific advice.

*edit* made an example. Don't mind (the lack of) mastering or EQ, it was a quicky and merely to illustrate the point. Reason for the source, Soundforge for pitching it up 2.5 semitones.

http://www.theheartcore.com/music/eurobeatloop.mp3

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I'm trying to Eurobeatize the main Fire Emblem theme, due to the lack of Fire Emblem ReMixes on this website, especially since it's an awesome game. I have Garageband 3 and Logic Express, though I'm much more familiar with Garageband and not at all familiar with Logic.

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I admit that my knowledge of the Dancey scenes is lacking, but I thought a rather essential part of Eurobeat was the chipmunk vocals. NFI how to do those, beyond recording and pitch shifting. Or just singing like a chipmunk. Whatever.

Oh, and Eurobeats in the house section of Ishtur's guide, if that helps anyone looking for examples.

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I admit that my knowledge of the Dancey scenes is lacking, but I thought a rather essential part of Eurobeat was the chipmunk vocals. NFI how to do those, beyond recording and pitch shifting. Or just singing like a chipmunk. Whatever.

Oh, and Eurobeats in the house section of Ishtur's guide, if that helps anyone looking for examples.

None of it (to my knowledge) is pitching up to sing like a chipmunk, the only stuff I can think that did that was Old-School Jungle (like, The Prodigy's earlier stuff and Acen). You just have to sing fairly high in pitch, or get a japanese chick to sing for you and you instantly have J-Pop.

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