1164  Beats me

Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 03:52:59 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Beats me

Tom Stermitz:

> Most tangos and most tango-waltz PHRASES are made of 4+4=8 COUNTS (each

count is a walking step, which might be a measure, half measure or 1/4
measure depending on the actual time signature. <

Quite the contrary: no matter how the music is written, the tango slow-slow
"walking" pulse is a half measure. (The exception to this in regular tango
music would be one in a thousand, I guess; most probably 0 in a thousand).

The pulse can be one beat (in binary signatures, 2/4 or the quite logical for
tango, but rare, 2/2 "cut time"), or two beats (in quaternary signatures, the
golden era most common 4/4, or the rare 4/8). As far as I know, these are all
the actual possibilities.

This is why I prefer to call the slow-slow "ticking" the PULSE, rather than
the beat.

In valses, the pulse is almost invariably a measure of three beats (in the
almost universal ternary signature 3/4, and perhaps in 3/8, though I do not
know that the latter has been actually used). In a compound signature like
binary 6/8, the pulse is a major beat (a half measure again); but I do not
remember seeing 6/8 used, or hearing about it, either.

> (Dancers are a bit sloppy with musical notation...drives musicians crazy!)

<

Perhaps.

Cheers,