Castellano Català

HOW TO IMPROVE ACCENT-BASED MUSICALITY?

The suggestion we make to improve your accent-based musicality, in swing dancing, is to work on three levels:

1-Work on the perception and anticipation of accents

Ear training, both from the point of view of memorising songs and, above all, learning to understand the behaviour of a melody is an essential exercise to improve the interpretation of music and musicality, also when we want to improve the perception and the identification of accents.

We have selected a few songs where there are different types of accents so you can work on this training.

We suggest that you listen to them one by one; try to predict where the accents will be, try to understand if they follow a specific pattern, a certain repetitive sequence. If, when listening to them, you recognize the patterns, move on to the next step. If this is not the case, we advise you to listen them again, as many times as necessary, until it is easy enough to predict the accents.

Accents can often be predicted from what we call predictable musical patterns (you can find more information about these patterns in the section we have created on this topic). Listen to Hoy-Hoy-Cab Calloway on the Spotify "accents" list. This song follows a very common pattern for the distribution of accents. You will see that there are accents at the end of the first, second and fourth eight and that, while the type of accent of the first and second eight are quite similar, the fourth one (as the phrase must be resolved) is already quite different. The pattern he makes, although it changes a little throughout the song, is like this:

At Let Me Off Uptown-The Delta Rhythm Boys the distribution is the same, although the accents are different. Remembering and learning how to recognise this type of distribution of the answers can be quite useful when interpreting music and musicality.

2- Improve your creativity based on what the accent suggests

Watch and listen to these videos, one by one, without looking at how they dance. Identify the accents that you think are most relevant. If you do not know the songs, it could be useful to analyse where the accents are. Note whether they are responses to the melody, if they always repeat at certain moments of the phrase, if they appear in A or B... When it is possible to predict accents with some ease, imagine what your reaction would be if you were dancing for each accent you want to emphasise. Try to be creative; try to use your body to express what music suggests to you.

Listen to it again and try to create new options for each accent. Finally, you can watch the video and see what the dancers have done and analyse whether it is a kind of response that would fit into the way you dance and how you react to accents.

3- Make the process as natural and spontaneous as possible

Now you must continue practising. Listen to music that has accents (you can use the same songs we suggested earlier) and try to highlight accents in your own way. You can do it alone or work with your partner. Remember that the dance floor is not always the best place to work on these things. Do it at home, calmly, focusing on what you are doing, trying to understand and correct any mistakes. This is a much better option rather than doing it on the dance floor where the main idea is simply to have fun.