IDENTIFYING AND FOLLOWING THE BEAT
What is the pulse?
The beat of a song is the pulse that sets the pace.
The beat is the unit for measuring music, just like the pound is the unit for weight and the yard for length. It is the music pacemaker. Beats are musical marks which are periodically and regularly repeated throughout a piece of music.
This beat must be perceived by dancers as well as the musicians playing the music.
The beat allows musicians to know how long notes and silences should be. It also allows them to synchronise with their peers. The beat lets us dancers harmonise our movements with the music being played, either the steps we do with our feet or any other body movement. It also allows us to understand the music we are dancing to and, therefore, follow and understand it better. When dancing (or playing music) we need to perceive the beat spontaneously, without having to pay any attention at all to it; if we are always concerned about identifying the pulse, it will be difficult to think about other important aspects of music and dance.
If we want to juggle three clubs while riding a unicycle, we need to make at least one of the two activities fully automatic and perform it without thinking at all. Otherwise, when we focus on the unicycle the clubs will fall or when our attention is on the clubs, we will fall off the unicycle. If we do not have automatic recognition of the beat, when we want to keep pace we will not be able to keep an eye on our dance partner, or will lose the pulse whenever we try to think about what move we want to do next.
What is the beat of a song and how is it marked?
Generally, the pulse of the music is determined explicitly by the rhythm section. This is almost always the drums, but it is also often the bass or rhythm guitar playing a regular accompaniment pattern.
In more complex music or in certain parts of some pieces, the beat is only implicitly present. It is a kind of common denominator for the lengths of the notes, which generally have a duration that is a multiple or a exact subdivision of the beat (a quarter has the same duration as a keystroke, a white the double and one eighth the half). Therefore when musicians are learning and practicing they often use a metronome, a device that ticks on a regular basis and marks the beat or pulse.Of course, there is no metronome ticking away when music is being performed.The number of beats per minute is what determines whether a piece of music is fast or slow. This is what we call the tempo of the song. In swing, a piece played at 60 beats per minute (BPM) is a very slow song while one played at 220 BPM will almost certainly tire us out.
Remember that the drums do not always mark the beat or, if they do, it will not necessarily always be clear. This means it would also be a good idea to be able to recognize the beat of the song without listening specifically to the drums. Put in another way: you need to be able to hear the beat, not the drums. The drums produce sounds (just like other instruments or voices) that may or may not coincide with the beat. In fact it is essential to understand that the beat is a feeling generated by the music, not a specific sound of or in the music. If the beat matches the sound of the drums, great, if not, it shouldn't be any problem at all. We have to feel the pulse, not hear a sound in the music that matches the beat.
If you are able to feel the beat without any effort when you are dancing then you don't need to keep reading this page. If not, we hope to be able to help you improve and achieve spontaneous recognition of the beat.
The process of analysis and work that we propose below is based on the combination of knowledge in the field of learning and in the field of lindy hop. There must surely be many other ways to do this, but we can say that several dancers who had serious problems understanding and implementing the interpretative aspects of music applied to dance have managed to solve their problems with beat by following these suggestions. They have managed to recognize the beat automatically and this allows them to focus on other important aspects of dance.
These results are what have encouraged us to publish the suggestions and ideas on this website. We hope that the results will also encourage you to work on understanding the beat.
These proposals can be really successful but, however, will not cause any significant changes in your social dancing if you do not work on them consistently and allow the necessary resources (time, organization, constancy, patience, motivation...). These things always require an effort, but the result is certainly worth it.
Come on, let's work on it together. This is the first step.