Hard Dance

Hard Dance is an electronic dance genre mixing influences from Eurodance, hard house, hard trance, and hardcore. Hard dance incorporates strong synths, percussion and echo effects from Eurodance and a lot of pitched up trance music and is generally regarded as happier sounding music. Hard dance is distinct and separate from hardstyle or reverse bass which typically consists of a deep, hard-sounding kick drum, intense faded or reversed basslines accompanying the beat, a dissonant synth melody, and detuned and distorted sounds.

Eurodance often carries a positive, upbeat attitude; the lyrics usually involve issues of love and peace, dancing and partying, or expressing and overcoming difficult emotions. The early to mid-1990s Eurodance vocals were frequently done by a solo vocalist or a mixed rapper-vocalist duet. Sometimes non-rap vocals are used. Almost all Eurodance emphasizes percussion and rhythm. The tempo is typically around 140 beats per minute but may vary from 110 to 150.

Hardcore is typically faster than hardstyle, ranging from 160 - 200+ BPM. Hardcore songs usually have less distorted and more compressed kicks than hardstyle. Hardcore songs, such as Rock the House and The Pressure, have been mislabeled as Hard Dance when in reality they are actually hardcore.

The color associated with this genre for Monstercat is green. It is important to note that the following subgenres are classified as Hard Dance under Monstercat, for labeling purposes. These include:

• Hardcore
• Hard Trance
• Hardstyle
• Happy Hardcore
• Freeform
• Gabber
• Powerstomp
• UK Hardcore

Hard Dance is one of the fewest released genres on Monstercat.

The most common subgenre of Hard Dance as of October 2017 is Happy Hardcore.

Trivia

• Hard Dance began being posted in every 3-4 monthly Monstercat album as of 028 Uproar, due to Stonebank producing this genre more often. It began appearing even more since 030 - Finale, because of Hard Dance artists Darren Styles, Gammer, Kayzo, and others.
• The start of 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018 began with a Hard Dance song. In 2017, nanobii, instead of a 3rd Stonebank song in 2015, 2016 & 2018, returned to Monstercat with Chipland. 2018 was Sky is Falling by Stonebank And Darren Styles (featuring Emel). 2019 became The Government.
• Since Sky is Falling was the first release of 2018, that means that a Hard dance song was the first ever and founding release of Monstercat: Uncaged and the fourth streak of a Hard Dance song in a starting year.