Actively listen to music by counting "sets of 8" (Photo by Guido Slotboom)
You will not find a class on hearing the beat of music (if you teach a class in that, throw me an email, we should talk). It’s rarely touched upon in ballroom dance classes. You must learn the beat on your own. Don’t fret, it’s simple, just listen to music (like with an iPod or whatever). Ahem, make that actively listen to music.
If you don’t have natural ability in music seek help to both get started and for occasional feedback. This could be a musical friend, a dance partner who is musical, a dance teacher or even strangers at a social dance who look competent. After your music maven gets you started, it’s up to you to practice—a lot. It’s the training on your own that develops the skill, not something your teacher does. There’s not a switch that gets flipped from “no rhythm” to “rhythm”; it’s a process, which will take days, weeks or months depending upon your ability. Use your teacher, as well as other musical people you pass along the way, to occasionally test you and give feedback. Getting feedback from others can be a quick process, even just a minute or two, so you’re not asking much.
To learn the beat you could tap a foot or clap hands or march in place. These are all okay and if you have an ear for music or prior musical training that may be enough. But for the rest of us, the secret to hearing the beat is counting music, specifically, counting the sets of 8 (waltz, the exception, is in sets of 6). Why? Because sets of 8 define the beat of the music (technical info: musicians compose dance music in four-beat measures and two measures are naturally paired to create a set of 8). You can practice counting sets of 8 anytime you listen to music—commuting, working out, in the shower, drifting off to sleep at night. (I used to practice counting sets of 8 to the background music of movies.) As you count you can also tap your foot as it’s good to involve the full body. I used to gently shift my solar plexus left and right, back and forth, simulating taking steps. Or sometimes I’d just nod my head back and forth to the beat. Marching in place to the sets of 8—doing a weight change on every beat—is the best as it most resembles dancing, plus you can practice your timing, that is, the coordination necessary to make the weight change exactly on the beat.
To get started simply have your music friend count sets of 8. Starting on a count 1, have them count: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” and start over. Listen for the accent on the count 1 (count 5, the first beat of the second measure, has an accent too but to a lesser degree) and how a count 1 sounds like the beginning of a “sentence” of music. Use very easy music, stuff with a medium slow tempo and with sets of 8 that are easy to hear. For example, blues would be easy, salsa would be hard. It would also be helpful to use music with easy to hear downbeats and upbeats. This training exercise by Skippy Blair, which involves your hands, is an excellent way to start (scroll down to the one minute video, “Skippy Blair counting sets of 8 combined with a hand exercise”).
When I first started, I used to go up to my teachers after classes and ask them to count sets of 8 to the practice music—just to hear how it’s done—which could take as little as 30 seconds of the teachers’ time. After I had some competency, I’d ask my teachers after class to listen to me count sets of 8 and give feedback. I would also approach strangers at a dance, who looked musical, to observe me tap a foot or clap or march in place or count sets of 8 (it’s no biggie for them—people love to show off—especially if you compliment their dancing first). If you’re taking private lessons, start the lesson with a few minutes of counting sets of 8. Nobody to help you? Check out this free four minute video of me counting sets of 8 (scroll down to “Counting sets of 8 in easy music”).
Even if you’re an intermediate level dancer, spend a few minutes with someone musical and just listen to music. Let them test you to a variety of music with a range of difficulty, tempo and genre. Definitely throw in something hard like salsa—uptempo Latin with lots of percussion. In addition to the feedback you get, note your confidence—are you always 100% certain of the beat or do you guess a lot?
The good news is that you’re probably not rhythmically challenged. You’ve just never been taught how to hear the beat. It’s a lack of education, not a lack of ability. Granted, even after training you may not be the best, but it’s certain that you can get better.
If you struggle to hear the beat of music, describe your problem in the comments below. What have you tried to learn the beat?
(See also this related post, “Warning: Ballroom dance classes do not teach how to hear the beat of music”)
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Jim,
Dances last two weekend went well. I was able to comfortably keep sync’ed to the beat most of the time, do the step pattern, and chat with my partner. This took over 4 months of doing a bit every day at home. Got positive feedback from my partners or spontaneous lessons, as the case may be :-). Maybe 10% of where I want to be – which I account as significant progress. Thanks to your book which blew smoke off the dance floor’s terra incognito.
Eric, I’m giving you a “congrats” because you’ve reached what I consider a very important milestone: the ability to dance and talk at the same time. That means you’ve trained your body and your sense of rhythm to dance, to some degree, automatically. Now that your basic dancing is becoming “thoughtless,” you can begin to think about other things like dance technique and musicality.
This is great progress—and for others who are reading this, note that it took Eric, as he says, “over 4 months of doing a bit every day at home.” Ballroom dance is hard, it takes time and, in addition to instruction, you must train on your own. Even with this success, keep it in perspective: you will have bad nights, dance partners who you don’t connect to, and you will learn new dances that will make you feel like a total beginner again.
You describe mens dance issues in a viscerally compelling way. It captures the essence of my frustration. Your videos have got me wanting to dance rather than dreading. Perhaps I can look forward to dance survival in style rather than mere dance survival?
After buying your book I went to a very nice used book store and bought anything that either had a practice CD or had foot patterns counted 1-8 like you described. “Social Dance: Steps to Success”, 2nd edition (by Judy Patterson Wright) has diagnosed many of the issues you have and provided a very detailed learning process. The CD includes getting the counts, ID’ing music to dance styles. Rather dry compared to your writing, but thorough in its text.
Eric, glad to hear I’ve inspired you. I point out in my book that doing a survival dance, and doing an improvisational dance with style, are not that far apart. To do both just limit your footwork to double rhythm (STEP STEP) and single rhythm (STEP HOLD) and really listen to the music. Keep the footwork simple but connected to the music. Practice by shadow dancing at home, alone, to a variety of unfamiliar music. Try to match your singles and doubles to what’s going on in the music (blank rhythm is handy too–no weight changes in two beats of music, which is a HOLD HOLD–for doing dramatic pauses). Work on dancing through your mistakes and extending your body to create nice lines (esp. when you do a dramatic pause). Get comfortable standing still on the dance floor for a few beats; let the musical phrasing tell you when to start stepping again. Notice how some music is easy to dance to and some music is hard. There’s probably not going to be an “aha moment” but I bet, as time passes, you’ll find your musicality and competence improving. Dancing to the music is what will impress your partner and make you look good–not robotically dancing through a long list of step patterns that doesn’t fit the music.
Moving with the beat but more free-form, and staying sync’ed to the next phrase start – are fun. This adds alot to the pleasure of the dance. I’ll have to try stopping for that dramatic pause. In the past, stopping would not go well since I had little idea on when to start again.
Eric, ballroom dancing is a three-way partnership between you, your partner and the music. Most casual social dancers lack musicality. If you think dancing to the music is fun for you, imagine how much fun it’ll be for your dance partners. It’s easy for dance teachers to teach, and for students to learn, three or four step patterns in an hour. But it’s hard to teach musicality, and it’ll take way more than an hour to learn, so it’s rarely taught. You’ll have to pick it up on your own. Even if you find someone who can teach it, unless you have talent, it’ll still take many hours of training.
A typical move for a “dramatic pause” is to do a dip. (I don’t advise dips with unknown partners—risk of injury, many partners don’t how to do it and many partners will resist.) In my book (page 117) I suggest doing like a one-eighth mini-dip. This let’s you strike a nice line with your body without the risk of a dip. You can use it to catch something going on in the music, like an accent or the thematic resolution of a musical phrase. Lesser resolutions in ballroom music often occur at the end of each set of 8. More obvious resolutions occur at the end of major phrases (like a 32-beat phrase). After you do a dip or dramatic pause, step again on the count 1 at the beginning of the next set of 8. This means you have to start moving and come out of the pause before that next set of 8, which will set you up (weight on your right foot) to make the weight change (with your left foot) on the next count 1 to start a new move. Shadow dancing is great for working out that timing. Watching great dancers is a good way to see what you like in the way of styling and creating nice lines; and it should help to visually prep your subconscious. You know you’re hooked on dancing when you spend more time watching the guys—to steal moves—than watching the ladies :-)
Another month has passed and I would like to add a few more comments to the three threads above.
1. Had a chance to explain the beats and related issues to a local DC teacher who I’d taken lessons from before and who teaches widely in the area. She explained that she grew up with music – her family was very musical. She did not have a way to teach what you have emphasized in your book. What you emphasized in the book has proven to be square one for me. I’m thankful for finally having my feet on square one.
Wrt dance styles, I appreciate your advice and have being trying a few styles and their music to judge what I’d prefer. The pop music you have in your videos has turned out to be ones that I really like – in many ways more than the regular ballroom numbers. Is there a genre or other way to search out more like them? Also, what dance venues would you imagine would play these kind of songs?
2. The Skippy Blair DVD has some good material, but I’d say what you’ve posted is at the level I can deal with and benefit from at this point. I took her video a few minutes a night and tried to work with it – but only minor success – probably will come back to it later. I am pursuing some other angles to augment what you’ve provided on your website and in the book, but results are TBD.
3. The down and upbeats have definitely gotten easier with time using practice techniques you described in the book. After verifying a past teacher doesn’t even mention the entire matter (too second nature for her), I feel a bit better about my lost dance years. Hey, it took a while for people to figure out Earth rotates around the Sun, too.
Eric, glad to hear you’re making an effort to find good dance music. It’s hard to dance to crappy music; when you’re a beginner, there are many things that detract from a good performance so you don’t realize the negative impact of poor music. Dancing with the Stars should take note: some of their music is weak, which hurts performances and gives an advantage to couples who get great music.
“Musical genre” is a tough subject; it’s difficult to put into words and, in part, it’s subjective. I would not have identified the music in my instructional videos as “pop.” Sure, it’s popular music and it could all play on a pop radio station, but I think each song fits into a more descriptive genre (for example, as far as dance music genres go, “Game of Love” is a cha cha). As a broad and loose category, I think it would be better to describe all of the music as “rock.” Give this a try: go to pandora.com, a website that specializes in musical genres, and plug in each song title (song credits are at the end of each of my instructional videos). Pandora will play songs that are in that genre.
As far as a venue, you have to find deejays (or bands) who play the kind of music you want. Working off of a “rock” theme, a rock ‘n roll club or disco or “top 40” joint might work, particularly if you stick to dancing to songs with slower tempos (good for swing, cha cha, rumba and improvising, like blues dancing.) But these are not partner dance venues. People would be dancing free-style rock ‘n roll and, if you didn’t bring a partner, you’d have to ease someone into the closed ballroom position, which would have unpredictable results. I would also check West Coast swing venues as WCS is the dance that best fits rock ‘n roll music and, generally, WCS deejays play a mix of contemporary rock and blues. If you’re attracted to slower tempos, I’d look for blues dancing. In both cases—in all cases—it’s still going to be on a deejay-by-deejay basis so shop for someone you like (search them online and you might get lucky and find their playlists posted). For example, I’ve listened to many WCS deejays and my opinion of them ranges from brilliant to awful.
Thanks for the update on your progress and the anecdotal info about your teacher. I think your experience will be instructional for others. Please continue to keep me posted.
Sir,
Your insights are most excellent. They would have saved me many sadly wasted dance classes and dance floor embarrassments. Now I have the book and am part way through.
Using your videos and the book, I am actually starting to enjoy simple step-touch dancing. Connecting to the music via dance is what I’ve been needing to do, but lacked your insight to know it or how to learn.
Three questions:
1. Which dance style would you pick to learn first. Looks like my initial extensive lessons in Viennese Waltz many years ago got me off on the wrong foot for any other dance or even that one – the beats and rhythm were too complex.
2. If you had more of the beat, rhythms, and the looking-down-at-the-feet perspective, I’d buy it. I need the feedback. Maybe a recording where music is on one track and counting on the other, so then I can use the balance control to test myself without the counting and see how well I maintain it. Is there any particular product of Skippy Blair you would recommend?
3. In your “counting sets of 8″ short video, the first song had its strongest beat on the 2 count while the others had it on the 1 count (or so it seemed to me). Per p.64, the downbeat is count 1, yet from the “thum TAA” p.39, I got the impression the upbeat is usually the stronger.
With Appreciation,
Eric
Eric, thanks for the nice words, glad my book helps. I’ll take a stab at your questions:
1) With regards to what dance to learn first, it depends. First, make sure that you love the genre of music as you’ll probably find it harder to learn to dance if you don’t like the music or if the music bores you. Next, consider the venue where you want to dance. Eg, if you want to go to clubs, consider salsa, swing or tango, which have easy-to-find club scenes; if you want to dance at weddings, maybe dances like rumba, foxtrot and East Coast swing would be good. Next, consider an easy dance. Eg, any dance that uses triple rhythm (3 weight changes in 2 beats of music — 1&2), like East Coast swing, West Coast swing and samba, will be harder than a dance that uses just single rhythm and double rhythm (eg, rumba, salsa, foxtrot use just singles and doubles; I like rumba because the tempo of the music is slower than salsa, it uses the versatile rhythm pattern, double–single–double–single, and, unlike foxtrot, it doesn’t travel and the basic pattern is 8 beats so it’s naturally phrased to the sets of 8 in the music). Finally, pick a good teacher. I find much of the teaching today to be poor and inadequate and that will stunt your growth as a dancer. A good place to start would be to find a teacher who is certified by Skippy Blair’s organization, The Golden State Dance Teachers Association (email Skippy directly at skippy@skippyblair.com).
2) Thanks for the video suggestion. I need to get more videos up but they take time and I’ve got a list of more important things to do first (eg, I need to do an ebook version of the book). As far as a Skippy Blair DVD to buy, the only one she has that covers the material I think you’re looking for is called, Timing & Phrasing, which is available here http://www.swingworld.com/products.htm
3) As I was learning to dance I got confused with accents as they vary from song to song and, when I asked questions, musicians often gave different answers than dancers. The accent you want to listen for is on count 1 of a set of 8. Count 5, the first beat of the second 4-beat measure, will have an accent but it will be less accented than count 1 (although that can be hard to distinguish). The upbeats, counts 2, 4, 6 and 8, may or may not have accents. Yes, sometimes a heavily accented upbeat will hit your ear as more accented than count 1, but an upbeat does not need to be accented as they are upbeats due to their location, not their emphasis. A lot of the music I chose for my videos have accented upbeats because it’s easier to hear the beat of music when you can hear a strong upbeat.