Why should I send my music to you? Can you really help to improve my sporting performance?
I think there are several ways that properly edited music helps you to perform better and to achieve higher results. It’s a complicated answer, though, so I’ve given it its own page here.

What sports do you work with?
My main expertise is with solo figure skating, synchronized skating and ice dance, but I’m also happy to work on music for roller skating, team gym, cheerleading, cheerdance, gymnastics, synchronised swimming, equestrianism, and all forms of dance. Whatever your sport, if it needs music, I can help you with it.

I love this piece of music, but it’s too long/short/fast/slow. Can I still use it?
Yes! I can shorten or lengthen your music to the right duration, by a combination of editing and changing the speed. If a piece of music has the right feel for you, please don’t abandon it just because the speed or tempo are wrong. OK, so large tempo changes might sound a little bit iffy, but generally, if you like it, we can use it. Leave the details to me.

I want to hit a strong finishing position at the end of my routine, but it doesn’t work very well with the fadeout at the end of my music. Can you help?
Yes. I can usually find a way to make a more definite ending, by using stronger “hits” from elsewhere in the music or by getting creative with reverbs and effects. Creating strong endings from fadeouts has become something of a speciality for me!

I want to edit together two/three/eighteen different pieces of music. Is that possible?
Absolutely, it happens all the time. Send me all the source files and I can edit them together. If the pieces are radically different it might not be possible for me to make the joins invisible, the way I often can with a single piece of music. But I can usually still find a way for the pieces to flow fairly naturally and comfortably from one to the other.

What file formats should I send to you?
The better the quality of your source music, the better the quality of the finished edit. A wav file imported from a CD (44.1kHz, 16 bit) is ideal, but a high-quality mp3 usually sounds pretty good too. Try and aim for a minimum bit rate of about 220kbps – higher is better. My usual recommendation is to use Qobuz or 7Digital, but iTunes and Amazon downloads are absolutely fine. Please feel free to send me higher-quality formats if you like – I’ve worked with vinyl and FLAC in the past, and 24-bit or 32-bit files always sound great in the rink.

The one format I won’t accept is music you’ve ripped from YouTube – the audio quality is terrible, you would be violating copyright law every time you skate, and you’d also be denying the musicians any kind of reward for their work. If you like a piece of music enough to skate to it for a year or two, then you like it enough to pay 1.79 or whatever and download it legally!

The file I downloaded is an m4v/m4a/aac/aif/ogg/flac file. Do I need to convert it to mp3?
No. In fact, please don’t try! I can work with any file format. And the mp3 algorithm is designed to make files as small as possible, so every time you save something as an mp3, up to 90% of the data in that file is thrown away. So please send me the original file you downloaded, whatever flavour it is, and let’s keep the number of mp3 conversions to a minimum.

How do I send my music source files to you?
If you’re sending files smaller than about 10MB, feel free to email them to me. If the files are bigger you’ll need to use a dedicated file transfer service. There are lots of good free ones including Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox, and if you don’t have any of those I recommend WeTransfer.

Whichever option you use, please send files to info@theskatingmusicguy.com. And if you use a file transfer service it would be helpful if you could let me know in the message box whose music it is. At some times of year I get many files each day, and it’s difficult to keep accurate records if I don’t know who those files belong to!

I imported a .wav file from a CD or downloaded a file onto my computer, and now it’s in my iTunes library. How do I send it to you?
Unfortunately this isn’t something you can do from within iTunes. If you try to share the music with me, iTunes will just send me a link to buy the track rather than sending the track itself. So you need to find the file on the hard drive of your computer. The trick is knowing where to look.

Whether Mac or PC, your computer is likely to have a default folder on the data drive named “Music”. Within that folder, navigate to iTunes/iTunes Media/Music and you’ll find folders containing all your music. Depending on your iTunes preferences the folders will be organised by either artist or album. You just find the right one and the file you need should be inside it. Once you have found the file, you can attach it to an email or (if it’s bigger than about 10MB) use a service like wetransfer.com to send the file to me.

If all else fails, you could just perform a search of your computer, copying the name of the file from your iTunes song list and pasting it into the search box.

Unfortunately this trick does not work on an Apple mobile device like an iPhone or iPad. You’ll need to use a device that allows you file access, such as a laptop, desktop computer or Android mobile.

Do you sell music?
No. I provide a service, not a product. I edit and remix the music you provide. That means you send me the source files, from a CD or iTunes or whatever. I will edit the music and send a finished file back to you. I don’t sell you the source files, you have to find them yourself. (That being said, I can offer advice on good music to use if you’re short of ideas!)

Will I run into copyright problems if I use this piece of music?
I have to leave that side of things to you, I’m afraid. Generally speaking you’ll be fine, but this is a complicated area, and one of the reasons I only work from music files you provide is that I don’t want the copyright and royalty complications involved in selling other people’s music. One thing I would say is that if a piece of music means enough to you that you’d perform with it, the artist who worked hard to create it should be rewarded. Buy CDs or downloads honourably and legally if you can, and take care to accurately complete any music selection forms for competitions so that the royalties go to the right people!

How are finished files delivered?
Once I’ve edited the music I’ll create a unique folder for you in my Dropbox and upload your files there, then email you the link to that folder. The link is permanent, so you can bookmark it, and if you come back to me in future years I’ll keep uploading all your programs to the same folder so that you have a nice neat library of all your master copies. Any time you need to re-download your files in future, they’ll be there.

What kind of file will I get back from you?
I can provide almost any file format you need, but the standard files I send for each program are a 320kbps mp3 file and a CD-quality wav file. Each time we make a new version of the program, these are the two files I’ll send you. 320kbps is very high resolution for an mp3, so that file is fine to use for both competition and training, and of course it has the benefit of being a very small file, perfect for storing on your phone or quickly copying to a USB stick. The wav file is around 10x bigger and the resolution is correspondingly higher, so that file is your true master copy. If you ever need to make a competition CD, or a video, or indeed convert the program to any other file format, the wav is the file to use.

What if I don’t like what you’ve done, or it doesn’t work on the ice?
Don’t worry – if you hear anything in the program that you’re not happy with, or if it doesn’t work with your choreo, just let me know. I’ll fix it and send you a revised file.

How long will it take?
At quiet times of year (autumn & winter) my turnaround time is around 1-2 weeks. It ramps up through the spring, and peaks at around four weeks by early summer. I’m working on ways to bring that time down a bit in the long term, but in the meantime there’s only one of me! So please make sure you contact me well in advance of the date when you actually need the music.

Sometimes clients ask me if I can expedite their program for an additional fee. I generally don’t like to do this, because it seems to disadvantage those clients who were good little girls and boys and sent their programs to me weeks ago. :) Nevertheless, if you have a hard deadline and you’re really stuck, let me know. If it’s possible for me to prioritise your program and move it up the queue, I will, and I’ll charge you an expediting fee. But please be warned that it’s not usually possible, especially in spring and summer when my schedule is absolutely full.

I use Izotope Ozone (and my friendly local ice arena) to make sure your programs sound perfect on the ice.

The files I sent you were in stereo, but the one I got back from you is mono! Stereo is better, right?
If you’re listening in your living room, yes, stereo is better. But ice rinks and sports arenas are acoustically very different from your living room. Almost all ice rinks have mono sound systems, many of them incorrectly wired, and if you played a stereo recording on them some of the instruments would seem too quiet or too loud or could even vanish completely. There would be no point in having stereo speakers in an ice rink anyway: the music would sound different at different locations within the rink, which would be inconvenient for the audience and almost impossible for the skater!

I spend a lot of time optimising your mix for sports venues using specialist mastering software and a calibrated studio. I check my finished programs in my local ice arena to make sure the mix sounds 100% right on the ice. And yes, the final program I send you is almost always mono rather than stereo. All of this ensures that your music is resilient and will sound loud and clear even in the most challenging of ice rinks.

The upshot of all that is that the file you get from me will be sonically different from the original. In your living room, it may even sound worse. But in an ice hall or sports arena it will sound clear and loud, with a real “wow” factor that the original didn’t have.

What hours do you work?
I work roughly 9.00 to 18.00, Monday to Friday. I am based in Finland, so these times are Eastern European Standard Time (GMT+2). I can work outside these hours in emergencies, but I try to keep my evenings and weekends free to spend with my family. Anyway, at weekends we’re often travelling to skating competitions!

What languages to you speak?
My working language is English. I do speak a little Finnish and a little French, but not well enough to use them for work, I’m afraid.

My coach/parent/friend has edited my music already. Why would I come to you?
Coaches do a great job of selecting and editing music – they know better than anyone what will suit a particular athlete or team. On the other hand they usually aren’t musicians and haven’t spent thousands of hours working with music production tools as I have. Most coaches realise this, and in fact a lot of my work comes from coaches who want me to improve their rough edits. I find it very helpful to receive edited music from coaches alongside the original source files, because it gives me a clear idea of what’s needed, but I have yet to find a coach’s music edit I couldn’t improve.

I have (or my friend or family member has) some music editing software. Why can’t I just edit my own music?
You can! If you have a deep understanding of music and you take the time to learn how to use your tools, you can achieve great results. There are lots of free programs out there to get you started – I’d recommend Reaper on a PC or Garageband on a Mac for editing, Tokyo Dawn Labs’ Kotelnikov is a great mastering compressor, and for limiting I love Vladg’s Limiter No.6. Of course, when you’re ready to trade up to a more professional result than you can achieve on your own, you know where to find me!

I want something really tricky and unusual. Can you help?
Yes. I don’t just edit, I’m a fairly experimental musician too, and if you need something crazy I have lots of equally crazy techniques for realising it. I love stuff like this. Bring it on!