Update (July 2024): This underlying search mechanism described in this series of posts is still in place and functions as described here, but the user interface has changed. Please see theSimple Search and Advanced Search documentation for how the current user interface works.
One of the things that I’ve had a lot of fun with is building a sophisticated search engine where I (and you) can do things like find songs that someone has tagged as Waltz and someone else has tagged as Foxtrot. Or find all swing songs that are in a particular tempo range. There are lots of neat things that you can do with the Advanced Search system if you’ve got some knowledge of dance and music and want to dig deep into these corners of the music4dance catalog.
But what if you just want to search through the catalog the same way you would on Google or Bing? For instance, what if you’re looking for a song that has been tagged as Wedding and has the words “Love” and “Time” in it? With simple search you can just type Wedding Love Time into the search box and you’ll get some useful results. You can further refine the search by using some of the standard search modifiers like + and – and putting quotes (“) around phrases to be more precise about your searches (for instance try “First Dance” +Foxtrot +Rock). But if you’re the type that doesn’t bother with that on Google you should be fine not worrying about it here as well.
I know for me there are a few songs that I spent way too much time listening to while learning choreography or cutting medleys. I never want to hear them again, much less dance to them. And as much as I love music, there are some songs that I just don’t like right off the bat. So I don’t want either of these showing up time after time because other people find them to be particularly good Rumba or Foxtrot music.
Up to now that’s been a bit of a problem with the music4dance site since there wasn’t a way to explicitly like or not like a song, Everything was based on collective voting to match a song with a dance. But today I’ve added a feature where you can like and dislike a song. Then by default when you’re signed into the site, you won’t see those songs in your searches.
While I was at it, I added a few additional ways to filter searches based on how you’ve tagged and liked songs. Check them out on the Advanced Search page (remember you have to be signed into your account and have tagged or liked some songs for this to be useful).
And while you’re thinking about this, I have a question. What is a reasonable opposite of ‘like’ in this case? I’ve been using ‘not like’, but hate seems like it might be more accurate. Unlike and dislike were other options. But none of these seem quite right. If you’ve got any ideas, please comment on this post and let me know.
The quick answer is to just click this link where you will find a list of over a thousand songs that have been labeled as Foxtrot.
But that’s definitely not the full answer. In that list you will find songs that are too fast or too slow for you to dance to because the Foxtrot is not just one dance style but a family of dances each of which can be danced to a different range of tempos.
When I first started dancing my teachers were from a background that was influenced by American Smooth style of Ballroom dance. So there was a very specific dance that I first learned as “The Foxtrot”. This is what is more precisely known as American Style Foxtrot and the was danced in the range of 30 measures per minute plus or minus a bit depending on competition rules.
In order to answer the more precise question of what kind of music will work for the dance that you are learning, it helps to get a bit of a historical perspective. The Foxtrot follows a pretty common pattern in how partner dances evolve. A style is first danced socially and pulls in moves from multiple traditions. Often something resembling the social dance is performed on stage by exhibition dancers as well. As the style becomes established, teachers take it and formalize it and possibly simplify it for their students. Then social dancers start pulling in things from different traditions and the dance evolves. Sometimes it gets renamed, and sometimes the dance with the same name is just danced differently depending on where and when a dancer learned the style. And never forget the influence of the music that is evolving alongside the dances, perhaps speeding up or slowing down or changing in character in a way that influences how dancers dance to it.
In the case of the Foxtrot, two of the early influences were Peabody and the Tango. The Peabody was a very fast “one step” dance, and the Tango was imported from Argentina via Paris. Harry Fox is the exhibition dancer who lent the Foxtrot his name. Vernon and Irene Castle are the teachers who first formalized the Foxtrot as well as using it in their performances.
Arthur Murray standardized the particular version of the Foxtrot that I learned. He also revived the Peabody as a competition dance to occupy the fast end of the Foxtrot style dances, as he felt that it was more reasonable for students to learn than the slightly slower but more complicated Quickstep.
At some point Charleston influences crept in as a style dance-able to faster music developed, called appropriately, the Quickstep.
To round out this family of dance styles I’ve adopted the name Castle Foxtrot to represent the slowest variations. Much of the music that I’ve cataloged as Castle Foxtrot has been labeled by others as Slow Dance, especially when it relates to Wedding Dances. Many of the moves that are used in Foxtrot can be slowed down and made to stay in place (or on spot) to create something that is much more elegant than the side to side swaying that I first “learned” as a slow dance.
Here is a snapshot of the Foxtrot filter of the music4dance Tempi Tool, as a jumping off point to help you find music in an appropriate tempo for your style of Foxtrot. Just click on any of the tempo ranges to get Foxtrot music in that range.
With the full tool on the music4dance site you can dig further into the relationship between dances and tempos.
Foxtrot was further complicated by the fact that it co-evolved very closely with swing and was often danced to the same music, or at least music played by the same bands. I’ll take at look at what I’ve been categorizing as the Swing family of dances next.
Does this categorization help you at all in how you think about dancing and how it relates to music. Is there a different way that you would slice and dice these dances?
One thing that I completely over-simplified in my description was the influence of regional traditions. Would anyone from around the world care to shed some light on your regional influences to the Foxtrot?
There are a bunch of different reasons that you might want to build lists of songs that are more sophisticated than just the songs that can be danced to a specific style. For instance you may be choreographing a piece that you want to switch between Cha Cha and East Coast Swing. Or you might want to get a more comprehensive list of songs that are in the Bolero/Rumba range so you want everything that’s tagged with either of those dance styles. Or, you’re like me and just want to see what dances people have tagged as both Waltz and Foxtrot (two apparently contradictory labels – more on that in a future post).
I’ve just added a feature that enables all of those scenarios. The documentation is here, but let me break a couple of the scenarios down into specifics.
First, let’s say you’re looking for a song to choreograph a mixed East Coast Swing/Cha Cha routine to. Here’s what you do:
Go to the song list page by clicking on Music -> Songs in the menu at the top of the music4dance.net website.
Click on the “more” button near the top of the page
Click on the “any” button that appears and choose “all”
Click in the text box that says “Choose some dance styles…” and start typing “East Coast Swing”, after the first letter or two you should be able to choose from a list. Do the same with Cha Cha
Click on the search (magnifier) button and you should see a list of songs all of which are tagged with both East Coast Swing and Cha Cha
Next, let’s take a look at finding a mixed list of songs. For example, if we want to find all songs that are labeled as either Rumba or Bolero, here’s what you do:
Go to the song list page by clicking on Music -> Songs in the menu at the top of the music4dance.net website.
Click on the “more” button near the top of the page
Make sure that the “any” button that next to the “Dance to” label reads “any.” If it reads “all” then click to choose “any.”
Click in the text box that says “Choose some dance styles…” and start typing “Bolero”, after the first letter or two you should be able to choose from a list. Do the same with Rumba
Click on the search (magnifier) button and you should see a list of songs all of which are tagged with both East Coast Swing and Cha Cha
I hope this is useful to you. If there are combinations of dances that you find particularly useful, please let me know by commenting. Similarly, if there are combinations that you can’t manage with the current implementation please comment and I’ll look at extending this capability even more.
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