In the first post in this series, I talked about the 12/8 meter. And how, at certain tempos, that allows dancers to legitimately hear a very slow Foxtrot rhythm while someone else (or the same person tuning their ear a little bit differently) can hear and dance to a fast Viennese Waltz. This is one of my favorites, but it is pretty rare.

This time I’d like to touch on the much more common cases of half- and double-time rhythms. Musically, this can be when one person is counting quarter notes, and someone else is counting eighth notes; the second is double-time (or double the tempo) of the first. Or one person hears quarter notes, and the other hears half notes, that being half-time (or half the tempo) of the first.

Bam Bam:

One example of this is Bam Bam by Camila Cabello – One can dance a fast Salsa to that song at 190 beats per minute, or a slow Cha Cha at 95 beats per minute. If you take a look at the sheet music, the official meter is 4/4 with a tempo of a quarter note = 96 beats per minute. But you can also see that most of the melody line is sixteenth notes, and the bass line is dominated by eighth notes, so you can see a potential double-time rhythm.

But more importantly, if you listen to the recording (Spotify or Apple Music), there is a snare drum that’s consistently hitting eighth notes (exposing a 190 bpm tempo), and the actual bass guitar is predominantly playing quarter notes (exposing a 95 bpm tempo).

You Can’t Hurry Love:

In Phil Collins’s You Can’t Hurry Love, the sheet music is listed at 96 bpm. But the bass guitar is playing fairly strong and consistent eighth notes, so the majority of the music4dance community has heard this at double the listed tempo (196 bpm) and voted to dance Quickstep, Single Swing, or Jive to it.

But there is a very strong tambourine on beats two and four that brings out the quarter-note tempo and allows one to hear the 98 bpm natural tempo and dance a Slow Dance or Slow Foxtrot to the same song.

An aside – small discrepancies in tempos:

If you were following along closely, you’ll notice that the listed sheet music tempos are slightly different than the “listening” tempos that are on Music4Dance, even allowing for double-time/half-time considerations. e.g., Bam Bam is listed at 96 bpm in the sheet music, but I (and the algorithm) are actually hearing 95 bpm (or 180 bpm). I’m assuming this is because musicians don’t always follow the exact tempo on the sheet music. Or that whoever transposed to the piano sheet music I’m looking at was listening to a slightly different recording. But it may be because I’m counting slightly off. In any case, it wouldn’t materially change what one would dance to it, so I’m going to leave this little nitpick at that.

And the list goes on:

When You’re Smiling by Michael Buble – A very Slow Foxtrot at 76 BPM or a Quickstep at 151 BPM.

Old Black Magic (the Oscar Peterson version) – A Slow Foxtrot at 104 BPM or a fast Quickstep at 209 BPM.

Why should you care?

As a DJ, these songs are great because dancers who may be comfortable with different dances can dance to the same song, and you’ve got a better chance of filling the dance floor. As a dancer, I’ve always found it fun to dance a fast swing in the middle of the floor while most of the room is dancing a Slow Foxtrot around the perimeter – but that may just be because I’m more comfortable with Swing than Foxtrot.

In addition, spending some time listening to these kinds of nuances is one way (certainly not the only way) to improve your musicality as a dancer.

Finally, I like picking at the edges of these kinds of things, and it is helping me focus a bit on cleaning up the catalog, since there is a strong overlap between these fun rhythms and the places where the algorithmic tempos don’t line up with the dance. So if that is the only real reason for this series, please bear with me, and feel free to skip them – hopefully the end result is a more accurate set of tempo/dance alignments than we had before.

Step of the Month

The “Step of the Month” for August:  This is a small variation on the July Step. Please share an unusual rhythm song (or songs) that you enjoy dancing to. I’m specifically looking for interesting variations that I haven’t mentioned yet in this series. I’ve got one more up my sleeve, but I’d like to continue on this path for more than three posts. But I need some help to do that. Post it in the comment thread here or send feedback.