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Most of us hear at least a song or two every day - and many of us hear far FAR more than that. Yet, almost none of us stop to consider how a song is built, that there is a conscious reasoning behind the music we hear that makes the difference between harmony and cacophony. This is a huge opportunity that most dancers never take advantage of.
See, by understanding how the different pieces of music fit together, we can anticipate what comes next. If we can anticipate, we can plan. And that plan will allow us to stay on beat, hit important accents, and generally match the overall energy of the music.
Still confused? Let me explain:
Transcript:
I firmly believe that the better we understand the music that we're dancing to, the easier it is to dance to it. Now that we have a basic idea of the beats of the music, and the different segments of music in which that beat is playing, we can delve a little deeper into those segments, so we can know how to recognize them and that will help us find the "1" in the music, every time.
Hi guys! My name is Ian Crewe. I'm an instructor at the Joy of Dance Center in Toronto, Ontario, and the creator of Social Ballroom Dance: Where you can learn your dance, on your place, on your schedule.
Let me start by talking about the structure of a typical song, and then we're going to get deeper into each element of the structure with a specific musical example.
Here is a basic structure for a song: We would start off with an intro, that's followed by a verse or two, then you would start to hear the energy build up, which is literally called the build or the pre-chorus, followed by the chorus itself, which is sort of the crescendo of energy.
Usually we'll go through this cycle of verse, build, chorus two or three times before the song ends but sometimes this repeating pattern is broken up with a slightly altered verse that we call the bridge. And finally we get to the outro, which is the song's way of signaling that it is about to end. We'll get into how it does that in just a few minutes.
By the way, I should mention that there are a lot of exceptions to the basic song structure I just gave you, but the elements of that structure will stay generally the same.
Now let's look at a specific musical example and how we can recognize each segment using that example. In this case we're going with the popular cha cha song "I Need to Know" by Marc Anthony so let's start with the intro.
The intro is generally where the energy is relatively low - there's few instruments, and we're introduced to the basic repeating pattern or riff of the song. Which can be very helpful for us as dancers, because the minimal instrumentation makes it easier for us to recognize when that riff is repeating - in other words, when the "1" is about to come.
The intro lasts until either new instruments are added, or even more tellingly, when new vocals are introduced. Let's give a listen to the intro for "I Need to Know":
Now the next section that we get into is the verse. We can distinguish the verses through a specific combination of notes, and I'll explain what I mean by that in just a second. But for now know that there are usually two different combinations of notes - we'll call that version A and version B.
Usually when we're listening to verses they will follow a specific format: either ABAB format, or an AABB format. In this case we're going to alternate between A and B for "I Need to Know". Let's listen to the first couple of verses:
Now we're moving on to the build. We can see the build as the intermediary between the relatively lower energy of the verse, and the higher energy of the chorus.
One little pro tip about this: Usually at the end of the build, there will be something extra exciting - in this case for "I Need to Know", you'll hear a few extra drum beats, sort of to announce the arrival of the chorus. We should also noice that the energy level is on its way up
The chorus is usually the highest energy point of a song. It's the main idea of the song - in fact if you know the name of the song, it often helps because usually the name is used in the vocals.
The vocals and the instruments are usually the exact same or with minor alterations from one chorus to the next, which is one reason why it's relatively easy to recognize. So let's listen now to the chorus for "I Need to Know":
At the end, we move back into the verse and repeat that verse, build, chorus one more time. before moving into the outro.
The outro is the song's way of signaling to us that the song is about to end. Usually an outro does not introduce any new melodies, so this makes it a little bit easier for us - usually it's just repeating a riff that we have been hearing throughout the music.
There's a few different ways that it might do this: By gradually fading out a repeating chorus, having the vocals removed and just letting the instruments play through the riff one more time, or removing the instruments and letting the vocals sing out one last time.
In this case we're going to hear the vocals for "I need to know":
So now I have a question for you: Is there a particular part of the music that is difficult for you to follow? Let us know in the comments below.
And if you had any other questions or comments, by all means please email me, either through my facebook fan page, Ballroom Dancers Anonymous, or via ian@socialballroom.dance. And if you like these videos and you want to see more of them, subscribe to my youtube channel or come visit my website -there's a lot more where this came from.
I will see you next week,and until then, happy dancing!