Ballroom

What it is

Kenny Dope and Louie Vega put out The Ha Dance in 1991 on Cutting Records, built on a chant lifted from the film Trading Places, and the Black and Latino ballroom houses of New York took it and never gave it back. Three decades on, most vogue tracks are still a version of that loop. Vjuan Allure's harder edits in the 2000s set the shape everybody now uses, and MikeQ, Byrell the Great and Divoli S'vere built Qween Beat out of it. The music exists so that categories can be walked and judged, with a commentator on the microphone throughout, which is why the arrangement is stop-start and why the crash is louder than anything else in the mix. It belongs on this list because it is a club record where a single sample does all the punctuation and the drums underneath are deliberately plain.

What it sounds like

One sound above all others: the Ha crash, which is a cymbal, a brass stab and a shouted syllable arriving together as a single hit with no tail. Under it a dry kick, a thin clap and eighth-note hats, all kept simple so the crash has room. Horn stabs and a rising synth line come and go. The commentator is a real part of the arrangement rather than a feature, chanting over the top, calling categories, counting the dip. Records are mixed loud and flat with almost no reverb, because a ballroom PA and a commentator's microphone are already competing and anything wet turns to soup.

Key elements

• The Ha crashCymbal, brass and voice in one hit, on beat 4, doubled onto the a of 4. Everything a vogue performer does is timed off it, so it is mixed as the loudest element in the track.
• The five countA run of five crashes climbing into the top of the next bar. It is what a dip is counted over, and it is the moment the whole room is waiting for.
• A plain four-four underneathKick on all four beats, plus a push on the a of 2 and, in the second bar, another on the a of 3. It is deliberately unremarkable, because the crash cannot be the loudest thing in the bar if the kick is competing.
• The commentatorChants, category calls and counts, cut into the track as rhythm rather than laid over it as a vocal. Many instrumentals leave gaps sized for a specific chant.
• Stop-start arrangementEight bars in, everything cuts to the crash alone, then everything returns. The music is arranged around performance, so the drops are where a performer needs them, not where a producer would put them.

How to get them

• Build the crashLayer a bright crash cymbal, a short brass stab a fifth above the root, and a sampled vocal exclamation. Gate the whole thing to about 250 milliseconds so it stops dead rather than ringing.
• KickA dry, punchy 909-style kick tuned around 55Hz on all four beats, with one extra on the a of 2. Keep the tail short so beat 4 lands clean under the crash.
• Program the five countFive crashes on consecutive sixteenths at the end of bar two, climbing 70, 86, 98, 110, 127. That ramp is what the room hears as a countdown, and flattening it removes the cue.
• Leave room for the chantMute the hats and clap for the last beat of every fourth bar. Producers in this scene write the hole first because a commentator will be filling it live.
• ClapThin and short, on 2 and 4, high-passed at 400Hz. It exists to hold the bar together while the crash is doing something else, so it should not be interesting.
• Mix flat and loudNo reverb on the drums, minimal on the stabs, and the crash 4 to 6dB above everything. This is played in rooms with a live microphone running, and headroom is not the goal.

Reference points

Masters At Work for the original record, Vjuan Allure, MikeQ, Byrell the Great, Divoli S'vere, Kevin JZ Prodigy and the Qween Beat roster, and the New York ballroom houses whose culture this music belongs to. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.