How do I make music for a dance routine?

Start from your counts. Veena is an AI DAW with a personal music producer built in. Describe the song you want and CoProducer builds it with you — beats, chords, melody, arrangement and mix — as real tracks you can edit, mix and export. Free, in your browser. Give it the BPM, the number of 8-counts and every cut point, and it builds the track to fit.

What BPM should a dance routine be?

Pick the tempo your movement wants, then build to it. As a starting point, hip hop grooves often sit around 90 to 100 BPM and house or commercial dance around 120 to 128. In Veena, tap the tempo of choreography you've already set with Tap Tempo, or type any value from 40 to 300 BPM, and CoProducer builds at exactly that speed.

How many 8-counts are in a song?

In 4/4, one 8-count is two bars, and it lasts 480 divided by the BPM in seconds: 4 seconds at 120 BPM, 3.75 at 128. So a 2:30 routine at 128 BPM is 40 eight-counts, or 80 bars. In Veena, count 1 of 8-count n is the first beat of bar 2n minus 1 on the ruler.

Can I use the music in my dance videos?

Yes. Veena's terms say you own the Output you generate, and commercial use is open on every plan, including the free one. Drag your rehearsal video onto Veena's timeline, line the hits up with the dancers, and export an MP4 with your new music under the picture, or a WAV and MP3 for the sound desk. Exports have no cap and no watermark.

Make Music for a Dance Routine, Counted in 8s

To make music for a dance routine, start from your counts, not from a song. In Veena, you give CoProducer, your personal music producer, the tempo, the number of 8-counts and every cut point, and it builds an original track that hits them all, as real tracks you can change. Free, in your browser.

Choreographers count in eights. Songs don't

You built the routine on counts: a four-count freeze here, a lift on the five, a formation change that needs the music to drop out for exactly two counts. Then you go looking for music, and the song fights you. The intro is 13 seconds long. The chorus lands a count early. The ending fades when you need a hit.

So the usual job becomes surgery on someone else's track: cut, crossfade, hope the seam doesn't show on the sound system. And when the video goes up, the music still isn't yours.

Building the music to the counts turns that around. The track exists to serve the routine, and every hit lands where the dancers do.

The math: 8-counts, bars and seconds

In 4/4, one 8-count is two bars. Its length in seconds is 480 divided by the BPM. The numbers every choreographer ends up needing:

Tempo	One 8-count lasts	8-counts per minute
96 BPM	5.00 seconds	12
100 BPM	4.80 seconds	12.5
110 BPM	4.36 seconds	13.75
120 BPM	4.00 seconds	15
128 BPM	3.75 seconds	16
140 BPM	3.43 seconds	17.5

So a 2:00 routine at 120 BPM is exactly 30 eight-counts, and a 2:30 routine at 128 BPM is exactly 40, or 80 bars. Pick a tempo where your time limit divides cleanly and the ending lands on a downbeat instead of mid-count.

On Veena's ruler, count 1 of 8-count n is the first beat of bar 2n − 1, and count 5 is the first beat of bar 2n. Eight-count 17 starts at bar 33.

Make music for a dance routine in Veena, step by step

1. Write the count sheet

Here's a 2:30 routine at 128 BPM, 40 eight-counts:

Section	8-counts	Bars
Intro and opening pose	1 to 4	1 to 8
Section A	5 to 16	9 to 32
Break: dead stop, two counts of silence	17 to 18	33 to 36
Section B	19 to 30	37 to 60
Build into the finale	31 to 34	61 to 68
Finale, ending on a final hit	35 to 40	69 to 80, hit on bar 81

2. Turn it into a brief

Open the studio, sign in with Google and paste the count sheet as a producer's brief:

"Make an original 128 BPM dance-pop track for a 2:30 routine: 80 bars of 4/4 in A minor. Intro 8 bars, section A 24 bars, a 4-bar break that stops dead on the first beat of bar 33 for two beats, section B 24 bars, an 8-bar build with a Riser, and a 12-bar finale that ends on one big hit on bar 81."

Name the tempo every time. In Veena's own data, only 9.4% of first requests give a BPM; for a routine, it's the most important number in the brief. Already choreographed to a feel? Open the metronome, tap along to the steps with Tap Tempo, and use the number it gives you.

3. Pick the sound

CoProducer plans the sections, writes each part and offers 3 options in one carousel. Hover to hear, press Enter to keep. Choose the groove your dancers can count: a clear kick on every beat for commercial and house, a heavier backbeat for hip hop. In Veena's own data, EDM requests reach a finished first result on day one 90.7% of the time, and pop 87.3%.

4. Place the hits

Now tune the track to the choreography, one cut point at a time:

In the routine	Tell CoProducer
A freeze	"Stop everything on the first beat of bar 33 for two beats"
A lift on the five	"A crash and a big kick on the first beat of bar 48"
A slow-motion moment	"Half-time feel from bar 37 to bar 44"
A formation change	"Strip back to just the bass for bars 61 to 64"
The final pose	"One huge hit on bar 81, then let it ring"

Name your sections in the song-section ribbon under the ruler to match your count sheet, so "section B" means the same thing to you, your dancers and CoProducer. One Ctrl+Z undoes any change.

5. Rehearse against the video

Drag your rehearsal video onto the timeline; Veena reads .mp4, .mov and four more video formats. Watch the hits against the dancers, drag across the ruler to loop a tricky section, and switch on the metronome to count along. Need a slower practice version? Ask CoProducer for the same track at 110 BPM, export it, then press Ctrl+Z to return to 128.

6. Export for the sound desk and the socials

Export a 24-bit/48 kHz WAV for the venue, a 320 kbps MP3 for the rehearsal speaker, and an MP4 with the music under your routine video. Every export is free, with no cap and no watermark, and Veena's terms say you own the Output you generate.

Cutting someone else's song, and the other routes dancers take

Veena builds original music to your counts. The usual alternatives, from each company's own pages:

	Veena	Suno	Audacity	Mubert	Beatoven.ai
Price to start	Free	Free, with no monthly downloads	Free	Free, with an audible watermark	No prices on its site
Music built to your counts	Yes: bars, BPM and cut points in one brief	A generated render; editing in Studio needs the $30 Premier plan	No: it edits existing audio	Key and BPM changes from $39 a month	Background music, licensed for your videos
Using it in your routine videos	Yours: commercial use on every plan	"No commercial rights" on Free	Depends on who owns the song you cut	Non-commercial below the $39 Pro plan	Synced to your videos, with Beatoven keeping the copyright

Suno lists "No monthly song downloads" and "No commercial rights" on its Free plan (Suno's pricing page, September 2026), and Suno keeps ownership of songs made there. Its DAW, Suno Studio, comes only with Premier, at $30 a month.
Audacity is free, but it's an audio editor with no built-in instruments (Audacity, September 2026): cutting a commercial song into a routine mix still leaves the music someone else's.
Mubert's free plan carries an audible watermark, and changing a track's key or BPM starts at the $39-a-month Pro plan (Mubert's pricing page, September 2026).
Beatoven.ai keeps ownership of every track, and its terms say it "may license music to other Users that is the same or similar to Your AI Music" (Beatoven.ai, September 2026): the team you compete against could dance to your sound.

Five, six, seven, eight

The routine is the art; the music should serve it, count for count. Write your count sheet, paste it as a brief, and hear a track built to your choreography before rehearsal tomorrow. For a head start on the sound, see how to make a song with AI, or browse house music and K-pop for two styles dancers love.