Yearly Archives: 2015

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Wedding Music Part I: Can we dance the Foxtrot to our song?

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Update (May 2023): There is a much more recent post that covers the material below. Please see – We’d like to dance a “real” partner dance as the first dance at our wedding (Part I: We already chose our song)

When did you first learn to dance?

For many people it was so that they could dance at their wedding.  Most especially so that they could enjoy the first dance but also perhaps for the Father/Daughter or Mother/Son dance.  If you’re just starting to learn to partner dance it can be pretty intimidating to both learn to dance and try to figure out what the possible dances are for your favorite song(s) and to dig through lists of suggested wedding songs to find the ‘right’ one for the dance style that you’re learning.

How can music4dance.net help?

Let’s assume for a moment that your special song is “Fever” by Ray Charles.  Here’s what you do:
song-menu-annotated

  1. Go to the music4dance web site (https://www.music4dance.net).
  2. Choose Music->Songs from the menu at the top of the site by first clicking on Music (A) then on Songs (B).
  3. Type “Fever” (without the quotes) into the search box (C).
  4. Click on the search button (D).
  5. The Ray Charles and Natalie Cole version of “Fever” should show up near the top of the list (E), if not try sorting by Artist by clicking on the Artist column header (F).
  6. The row already shows you some suggested dance styles in the dance column (G) including Foxtrot and Swing.  And you can see that others have tagged (H) this as a good Wedding and First Dance song.
  7. The play button (I)  will give you a list of music streaming and purchase options, which at minimum will let you listen to 30 seconds for free to make sure this is the song you were thinking of at if you’re subscribed to one of the services like Spotify or Groove, you can listen to the entire song.
  8. You can click on the title link (J) to get even more details including albums that contain this song.

fever-annotated
Hope that helps.  If you can’t find your song in our catalog, let me know what it is by commenting on this thread and I’ll see if I can add it.

Next time I’ll walk you through the other direction – starting with a dance that you know and finding music that others have identified as good First Dance songs for that style of dance.

Archive

Documentation for the song list

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I have resisted writing any real documentation for the music4dance website as it is evolving quickly enough that keeping up with the changes will be difficult.  But I did some user testing on several of the key features of the site and they just aren’t self documenting yet.   So while I will continue to work on the features to make them as intuitive as I can and reduce the need for documentation, for now documentation seems to be an essential feature.

The first thing that I’ve documented is the use of the songs list.  Please take a look and let me know what you think.

Music and Dance

The “Dancing with the Stars” solution

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Update (January 2024): Unfortunately, Spotify deprecated the feature that allowed me to create arbitrary playlists at the bottom of each search page some time ago. The rest of this post is still accurate, but the Spotify tip will no longer work. If you are specifically interested in DWTS playlists, please send feedback and I will consider writing a feature to generate them.

I learned to dance in part because Dirty Dancing made me want to be Johnny Castle.  Or at least dance like him. And my first dance partner was similarly moved by Strictly Ballroom.  These days So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars are both inspirations for aspiring dancers.

Since one of my goals with the music4dance project is to build a catalog of music that inspires you to dance, it seems appropriate to make sure I’m folding in the songs that the choreographers from these shows have found inspiring.  I’ve started by adding in the songs from (season 20) of Dancing with the Stars since that is currently airing.

All of the Dancing with the Stars songs that I’ve cataloged can be found at this link.  You can refine your search to a particular episode by clicking on the episode number and choosing to include that episode.

One fun side effect of this is that you can click play on the Spotify Player at the bottom of the page and play all of the songs from an episode (or you can follow the individual links to iTunes or Amazon to purchase the songs). Here’s an example of the spotify player for DWTS Season 20, Episode 1:

What other movies and shows have inspired you to dance?  Did they include specific songs that really make you want to get up and move?

Before you go, I’m continuing to gather data on how people group dance styles and would appreciate your input.  More information about that is available in this post.  Or just go directly to the survey.

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Help: How would you group this dance style?

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Update (September 2015): Unfortunately, the site I used to build this survey (http://conceptcodify.com) folded before I could get enough results to show patterns.  If you find this interesting, please send feedback, and I’ll consider trying again with a different service.

One of the fun things about learning more about different dance styles is that you start to see patterns in how one style evolves into another and how a dance style will move from one tradition to another, be transformed and possibly take on another name (or not). I have all kinds of crazy ideas about how to represent that information as you browse through songs searching for something that inspires you to dance or choreograph or to just throw into a practice play-list.

But not all of those ideas are feasible and even the feasible ideas will take some time to implement. So in the meantime I’d like to take a small slice of one of those ideas and get your input on how you categorize dances. I’ve set up a small survey that allows you to sort names of dance styles into groups. I’ve named some groups to start you off, but you’re welcome to change things up in any way that makes sense to you.

There is no right way to do this. It’s essential to get input from people with all different kinds of dance knowledge, all the way from those with professional training to those whose main exposure to dance is through television and movies. The tool I’m using only allows you to put any given dance into one group, so just choose the group that you most associate with the dance. I’ve intentionally started with group titles that include both names that some dancers may be familiar with and pop culture references. Use and extend whichever system makes sense to you by creating new groups or use a combination of both if that is what works for you. Remember, I’m just looking for patterns in how people think about grouping dances, so don’t spend too much time on this, just throw things where they make the most sense to you.

Thanks in advance for taking a few minutes to try this exercise. Here is the link: https://conceptcodify.com/studies/II5fJIxuQOzjSEB3fMLCCA7b/via/98u3CehK9xmYMwaWE2K7OYCp/
This is an open survey, so please pass this link along to your friends.