Music Theory for Dancers - Part 1 (Beat and Tempo)

Weeeeednesday! Blog day!

Today I'm finally going to bring a little Tap Dance into the Tap Dancing Engineer's blog. This will be part 1 of a multi-part series. I will do a new part every few weeks and depending on how much I like them, will then maybe compile them on a separate webpage or something. We're going to discuss very basic music theory for dancers. I'm writing with the assumption that my audience knows zip zilch zero about music and knows at least a little bit about dance. This is for all dancers, not just tap dancers. However, tap dancers will probably benefit more than other dancers as we are playing audible rhythms along with our music (or sometimes AS the music.)

First of all, I did a quick Google search for "music theory for dancers." There are some resources out there, but I still feel its useful to discuss it here. If you're interested in learning more about this topic, you should consider getting the DVD "Music Theory for Tap Dancers" with Rusty Frank and Steve Zee here. I've not actually watched this DVD, but Rusty and Steve are solid tap dancers and have great personalities so I'm assuming the DVD is equally solid and fun.

Then there is this online course. It seems to be more for ballroom dancers and the little bit I went through jumped immediately into things that aren't actually necessary for dancers to know, at least not when first learning about music. It's also not the most user-friendly site. A navigation side bar would do a lot of good there. However, the content seems to be solid so if you want to dig into this more, it's worth checking out.

Now, where to start? Lets start with something you already know. The beat!

One of the first things dancers learn is to dance to the beat of the music. Well, I mean, after you've gotten past the phase of dance where it's just about being able to pay attention to something for an hour and mimic your instructor. Once you're old enough to actually start learning dance, you learn to dance to the beat. The funny (and sad) thing is that most dance instructors don't actually teach you this. Instead, dancers pick it up along the way. So, lets go back and pick up some details you may have missed.

What is the beat? Can you actually define it. I bet a lot of dancers would struggle to put it into words. In fact, I'm even struggling with the best way to define it for you. The "beat" refers to the downbeats of the music. The downbeats are the numerical counts that your teacher yells out (2, 3, 4! or 5, 6, 7, 8!) We'll go into downbeats in much more detail in a later post. The beat is a hard thing to define because it's mostly something you feel. If I put on a catchy song, you might start tapping your toe to the beat of the music. It is the underlying meter of the song. The pulse. The beat defines and is defined by the tempo of the song.

I know you're all imagining the heartbeat scene in Dirty Dancing... or you SHOULD be. Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

Wait, what's tempo? That's a crazy music term and we don't know anything about music!

The tempo is essentially the speed of the song. It is defined in beats per minute. The pulse that you feel in a song that makes you tap your toe is the beat. The tempo is how many times you tap your toe in a minute. You can find the tempo of a song by counting toe taps in a minute (or in 10 seconds and then multiply by 6, or a happy medium of counting beats in 30 seconds and multiplying by 2.) In live music settings, someone will count in the song before everyone starts playing. They count in the downbeats (the beat of the music) to set the tempo of the song so that everyone starts playing at the same time and at the same speed. The same song can be played faster or slower by changing the tempo of the song. This will also make the beat faster or slower. The beat and the tempo are intertwined.

Think of driving down the road at a constant speed. Those white (or yellow) dashed lane markers fly past you at a steady rate. They are spaced equally apart from each other so that if your speed is constant they come past in a predictable way. The white dashes on the road are the beat. The speed of  your car is the tempo. When your car goes faster the white dashes go faster. The beat is there, equally spaced in time just like the white dashes are equally spaced on the road. The faster your tempo the faster the beat.

Photo via Flickr: Julie Tauson http://flic.kr/p/2boMsY

The reflectors are &s! More on that later.

In music the tempo is defined by beats per minute. Imagine if instead of the speed of your car being defined in miles per hour it was instead defined as "lane marker dashes per minute." We could even work out the conversion factor between mph and car tempo in dashes per minute (dpm) because the lane markers have a standard length and spacing. Hey, lets do it!

First of all, this wikianswer explains that there are 176 lane marker dashes in 1 mile. Next we just convert from miles per hour to dashes per minute as shown below:

Now we know that 1 mph = 2.93 dpm. So, if you're going 45 mph that would be 132 dpm and 65 mph would be 191 dpm. Now the analogy really works! The dashes are the beat and speed of the car in dpm is the tempo. Huzah!

Note: Apparently the TDE is incapable of writing a post without including some sort of geektastic math/science. 

Better yet, think about driving through a construction zone. Sometimes you get pushed onto the shoulder and have to drive over the rumble strips. These are also equally spaced. In this situation you can actually hear and feel my analogy. The rumble strip sections are the beat. The faster you go the more often you hit a rumbly patch of pavement. If you're going at a steady speed, the frequency of the rumble noises will be predictable. You could even tap your toe to it!

So, that basically sums up beat and tempo. Next time we'll go into time signatures and relate that to how your teacher counts you in (6, 7, 8!) Eventually we'll discuss topics such as upbeats/offbeats and syncopation, different types of notes (1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, triplets, 1/16 notes, etc.) and song structure/form. There will probably be some other topics that come up as I do this. And, in between we'll have fun with random math and science and whatever else I feel like sharing.