1167  Leaving the brain at home

Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 15:56:47 EDT
From: Charles Roques <Crrtango@AOL.COM>
Subject: Leaving the brain at home

Frank wrote:

<<When YOU hear your favorite tangos, where does the music hit you? Where in
your body do you notice it or feel it? Does it depend on the particular
music and musicians? If you want to interpret the music, don't you have to
take it in and process it somewhere? I think you do! So, where do you
*really* feel it?>>

Frank, that is all well and good and the comments by others are also
interesting but I think the original thread was about the difficulty that
beginners have with dance and the ensuing discouragement. Many of the
thoughts expressed are valid and I even agree with many of them but the
problem is that beginning students can't grasp these concepts and translate
them into dance steps. It is too sophisticated and often confuses them. The
fundamental notion that is easiest to grasp at the beginning is learning to
hear the beat. From that point on one advances to the other concepts.

As I have said here many times, learning to dance involves a motor skill, not
intellect and interpretative listening. You could be a bricklayer or a
classics professor or even a concert pianist but you still have to put your
feet in a certain place on the floor and move in a pattern. Even if one is
highly educated, it still comes back to a basic set of mechanical movements
at first. All this talk of musical phrasing and hemiolas, syncopation, or
whatever, is pointless to someone who is stumbling around not hearing the
music. Tango is danced, or better yet walked, on the beat. I think that once
that is grasped, then one advances to the other issues.

Cheers,
Charles

Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 16:52:00 -0600
From: Tom Stermitz <Stermitz@RAGTIME.ORG>
Subject: Re: Leaving the brain at home

>As I have said here many times, learning to dance involves a motor skill, not
>intellect and interpretative listening. You could be a bricklayer or a
>classics professor or even a concert pianist but you still have to put your
>feet in a certain place on the floor and move in a pattern. Even if one is
>highly educated, it still comes back to a basic set of mechanical movements
>at first. All this talk of musical phrasing and hemiolas, syncopation, or
>whatever, is pointless to someone who is stumbling around not hearing the
>music. Tango is danced, or better yet walked, on the beat. I think that once
>that is grasped, then one advances to the other issues.
>
>Cheers,
>Charles

We've sort of moved full circle.

Carlos started the discussion under the heading "Why students stop dancing".

I agree with Charles that the beat comes first, but I disagree with
his and Carlos's implication that simplifying tango down to a walk on
the slow-beat makes it easier to retain newcomers.

On the contrary. I expressed the opinion that too much slow walking
puts the men in an analytical mind-set, which takes them away from
feeling the music.

That was when we got into a conversation about music and more complex elements.


I specifically brought in the concepts of beat, half-beat and
phrasing based on my observation that when people (guys?) feel and
achieve a basic musicality they learn faster and move with more
confidence. In my view, it is better to use milonga, D'Arienzo,
Waltz, and (yes) Di Sarli, as a mixture to make learning more
intuitive...at the beginning level.

These elements, the beat, half-beat and phrasing are actually easy to teach.

I've seen 80 people learn these things (with perhaps 90% success?) in
a single 1.25 hour class, plus learn to lead the cross.

Sure, some are slower than others and need multiple classes, but most
only need to practice it a second or third time to actually retain
and embody it. Then they can move on to adding more elements one at a
time.


--

Tom Stermitz
https://www.tango.org/
stermitz@tango.org
303-388-2560

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:20:59 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Leaving the brain at home

When I want to analyse what I am doing or, more likely, what someone else is
doing, and it is not simple, I use musical notation. This immediately
pre-supposes a principle, and that is that one dances in relation to the
rhythmic framework of the piece, which must be shared more or less strictly
by all the parts (instruments), or it will be a cacophony. (Even "Three
Places in New England" has got, in the last analysis, a SINGLE rhythmic
matrix. It is in the nature of things.)

The dancers are just another staff in the score, "playing" against the same
metric background, the same rhythmic matrix. They may play "with" or
"against" the orchestra, in sync with the pulse, in counterpoint to the
dominant lines, antiphonally with them, anticipating or retarding to the
pulse, rubatoing fluidly ... the possibilities are infinite. I think the idea
of dancing to this instrument or that, or to the melody, are poor expressions
of whatever is being done, however great. One responds to the music as a
whole, in the context of the overall rhythmic structure. This is in my view
what tanguedad demands ... well, most of the time. (In tango exception is of
the essence.)

Since writing musical notation to the Tango-L is not something I know how to
do reliably, I just invented a little system that musicians and non-musicians
alike can readily understand. Assume 4/4. The starting strong beat of the
piece is 0.0. If the piece does not start on a strong beat, 0.0 is the last
"dry" strong beat. We do not bother with bar lines. The next "slow" pulse
will be 1.0, and so on. We do not need to start at the beginning, in fact
generally we do not want to. So 0.0 could be any other starting point on a
"slow" pulse, anywhere in the piece. If you do not like the start at 0.0,
start at 1.0, or whatever you like.

Now we want to consider quarter-pulses (musical half beats, or eighth notes).
This is as much resolution as I have ever needed (well, almost). We will use,
for instance, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 to denote the quarter-pulse points between 5.0
and 6.0. The notation 5.3, for instance, is short for 5+(3/4) pulse. The 5.1
point is "just after the pulse", 5.2 is at the half-point (musical weak
beat), 5.3 is "just before the pulse". A common "quick-quick-slow, slow"
might be 5.0 5.2 6.0 7.0, perhaps shortened to 5.02 6.0 7.0. If I want to get
fancier, I might want to do a third pulse traspie', denoted something like
5.0 5.1/3 5.2/3 6.0, or 5.012/3 6.0 for short. If you do not understand this
one right away, it does not matter.

Nobody can dance musically who is not able to do something like
2.0 3.0 4.0 pause 6.02 7.0 8.0
in STRICT tempo. (We can shorten this further to: 2 3 4 pause 6.02 7 8. The
6.02 can be read "6 and".)

Furthermore, this is the kind of thing that most good dancers will do
socially most of the time, if not exclusively. They (the man and/or the lady)
may THINK that they are doing something more complicated, more subtle, more
undefinable, something having to do with the various instruments in
isolation, a response to the "complexity" of D'Arienzo :) ;) :), something
with more or less "feeling"; and, yes, they may be right to one extent or
another, but that is WHAT they will be doing, if they want to dance tango as
it should be danced. I can think of nothing worse than a social dancer
stepping systematically ahead of the pulse, or behind it, rushing or
dragging, etc., for no discernible reason.

This is what a new dancer needs to know how to do first of all, and for a
while no one can expect the pauses and half-pulses to even reflect a musical
"feeling". That takes a while. What about the subtleties of dancing "around
the pulse", when the music sort of "demands" it? This is a much taller order,
and the most important thing is to realize that there is A WORLD OF
DIFFERENCE between this more refined mode of expression, and just moving
around "expressively", "dancing to the melody", but in fact moving at random,
independently of the music. Uhhg!

What about the idea of exploring stepping "around the pulse" in first-year
classes? I would be impressed to find out that it produced superlative
dancers, but I would not even want to hear about this being done with dancers
who do not reliably step RIGHT ON THE PULSE. There is a disquieting
proportion of people out there who CANNOT, or will not.

How different can things get from go go mm tic-tac-toe tic-tac-toe? Very.
But, first, it is already pretty much impossible to "explain" how to make the
simple approaches really musical. In the end I only believe in example and
emulation as a method to help others. Mechanical phrasing rules, counting,
metaphors ... I do not think any of them really works.

As to the more advanced expression, which I tried to learn primarily from
Pupi Castello, I can only give an example (again). Late last month I was
"working" with someone exactly on "Mariposa" in Pugliese's interpretation. We
were embracing and settling into a bridge during the short introduction, then
a short and very slow rubato cross-walk staying in bridge. At that point I
still had "left the brain home". Sometimes it felt just right, but it was not
consistent, so later I decided to figure out what I was leading when it felt
right. Starting from 0.0 at the beginning, it was:
6.2 9.1 12 14.3 16 17.012 18 19.023 20 21 23.2 etc.
(lady crossing against the two traspie's, pass forward at 23.2).

Interestingly, the first time we stepped right on the pulse the lead
bandoneon is holding a syncope, so we are still "against" the music. I have
no idea why this "feels right". Maybe we are the only ones to whom it feels
right. If not, I will accept explanations.

Cheers,

PS - My "time signature" for the above might be written
0.0/4)
For waltz
0.0/3)
suffices.