As promised an extremely brief summary of the class covered:
As with most things, there are exceptions to every generalisation, but most music we listen to at ceroc is built up in phrases of 32 counts. (For example, in Wade in the Water each verse or chorus is made up of 32 counts.) Dancers tend to divide these phrases into blocks of 8 – four per phrase.
So counting out loud you would hear a dancer say:
“1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
3 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
4 2 3 4 5 6 7 8”
After the 1st “8” we replace the 1st count with either 2, 3, or 4 depending on which “8” we are in. This is so we don’t lose where we are in the phrase. As you start to become aware of phrases in the music you will notice how certain patterns or elements repeat at the same part of each phrase. There is a break on the 1st count of the 4th 8 of every phrase in Wade in the Water (Eva Cassidy) for example, or a break on the 5th count of the 4th 8 in Julie London’s ‘Sway’.
The 1st and 5th counts of each “8” are called ‘down beats’ and these tend to be emphasised in the music. (Dancers often refer to every odd number as a down beat, which would include counts 3 and 7.) When you start to be able to recognise where these down beats are in the music you will be able to start to phrase your dancing, anticipate breaks and pick up on repeating patterns in the music. A simple example we used was to simply have your ‘rock steps’ occur on either a 1 or a 5. Its no big deal if you don’t, but the dance will tend to look and feel more together with the music if you do.
A small minority of music played at Ceroc may not fit the above model exactly. For example, there may be a ‘bridge’ or ‘tag’ between phrases (1 or 2 “8s” of music before starting the next phrase) or music like blues that is built in phrases of 6 8s. Also, a lot of music may have in introduction before the main phrases start, sometimes just a few notes, sometimes as much as two “8s” (16 counts.) 99% of music played at Ceroc is in a 4/4 time signature, which means there are 4 counts (beats) to every bar. But you should be aware that there is a lot of music in other time signatures, the most common are ¾ and 6/8, although we also played a couple of examples in 5/4, and 7/8 in the class just to get good at recognising patterns. Some music does not have one constant time signature. None of these examples would be played at Ceroc (except perhaps as an experiment or by mistake!) since it is too hard to get ceroc to ‘fit’ these kinds of music.
Lastly, just a reminder, that most recent evidence points to the fact that music is predominately a learned ability (not innate) so if you find it difficult, then you just need to do a little more learning! Some people take longer to learn some things than others, but as long as you don’t mind spending some time really listening to music, perhaps getting people to help you pick out the beats and phrases, you will find you can recognise all the most important elements of the music we play at Ceroc and incorporate this knowledge into your dancing… Its exciting and its fun!
Good luck!
A
Ps if you are reading this without having done the class at Blaze I am afraid I am going to have to charge you a small fee. Just kidding. Although I think reading it without having someone take you through examples with music will probably just be confusing, so don’t be discouraged – just find someone who can explain it to you whilst listening to music and I’m sure it will make perfect sense.
As one who didn't attend the class (Originally Posted by Amir
), could you give examples of such pieces of music Amir, please?
I think I'm ok with 3/4 music but not sure with 6/8 and 5/4 and 7/8...
and thanks for posting the summary of your class in the first place!
"Take Five" is the standard example of 5/4 music. There are others.
5/4 - Theme from Mission Impossible,As one who didn't attend the class (
I think I'm ok with 3/4 music but not sure with 6/8 and 5/4 and 7/8...
and thanks for posting the summary of your class in the first place!
"I'm Going to Leave You" - Nina Simone
Parts of "Good Morning Good Morning" - Beatles
parts of "Within you Without You" - Beatles
7/8 - (or 7/4) Money - Pink Floyd
6/8 - Please Please Please - James Brown.
You could also browse through:
List of musical works in unusual time signatures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And for 6/8 time 6/8 time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Be aware that sometimes, for example, you could write 2/4 music as 4/4. In fact if you look at old sheet music, a lot of tango used to be written in 2/4, but now they tend to write the same music in 4/4. For us dancers and listeners it makes no difference. It is kind of like how you might say something is 1 meter long, and someone else would say it is 100 cm long. It changes how you think about it but not what it is. Perhaps a resident forum musician can explain this better.
Excellent Post Amir.. I had been getting a personal masterclass from Caro during my usual (ie. infrequent) Tuesday night classes. It's something I want to understand and implement in my dancing, I don't FULLY understand but I'm getting there.
Superb thread!
V.good post and this was the essence of a workshop at Rock Bottoms I attended recently (run by S&S of JiveNation) - all about hitting the breaks.
It was the best workshop I have attended. Forget learning new fancy moves - this is what I want. In this workshop we broke down 'Filthy Gorgeous' - (1-2-3-4, 5-2-3-4 etc) and incorporated some basic hits/freezes etc.
Of course, some people just do this (hitting breaks) naturally, others learn it through experience of the music - and some people might be able to do it by listening and counting.........
........either way, more pleeez.
Really Beo, as the following will cruelly show, I'm not very good at this and you want to hunt Amir down and book yourself to his musicality class(es, he's got several on different sub-topics) asap.
thanks a lot for all this Amir.
I've finally come round to reading wiki, getting all those pieces of music and listening to them.
So....
About 5/4 music.
What I understand from wiki, is that you should be able to count it in multiples of 5, right ? Do we also group bars by 2 (like 1 heavy + 1 light in 4/4 music), and therefore count in sets of 10 ?
The only tune that seemed to make sense to me that way was Take Five (Dave Brubeck). Am I right in thinking that it can be counted in major phrases of 40 beats, at least at the beginning ? (I get lost at some point).
- I'm going to leave you, Nina Simone... that track sounds very complex to me, I don't understand it. First of all, if asked to clap on the beat, I can clap at 3 different tempos,. Although the fastest one seems to be comprised within the slowest one (c. 40 bpm), like it happens for waltz music ? Is it the fastest one that should be counted 'in sets of 5' ? Sometimes I seem to be able to 'fit' 5 counts in there (the fastest tempo) but also I tend to fall back to sets of 4 from time to time.
- Within you without you - I understand it even less than the nina simone one.
- Good morning, good morning - this one seems a bit easier - I can find bits in sets of 5 (or 10) beats and bits in set of 4 (or 8) beats. Although I seem to find 'irregularities' in the sets of 10 and I'm not sure about the transitions.
Music in 7/4
I listened to Money (Pink Floyd) - finally one that makes sense
I can hear very distinctively sets of 7 beats. Although I am not sure about major phrases?
I think I'll leave it here for tonight, and listen to those tracks a bit more.
Would be grateful if anybody could shed some light on my interrogations
Interesting to see a thread started on this subject. I have been selecting pieces of music with a very clear 32 count phrasing (without any of those sneaky extra 8's that are in some music) so that I can try MJ excercises where one can use higher energy patterns in the 5,6 7,8 of the 4th 8 count, and bringing it back down to a simple low key pattern to start the first 8. I'm hoping this will add tonal depth to the dancing.
M
Such as?
FYI:
5/4: The theme from the Bill.
7/4: Solsbury Hill (sp?), Peter Gabriel.
Maybe you need to be an old git like me, but aren't these are all prices in old money?
.. just adding my four-penneth
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