Comparison of Swing and Salsa

Hello Friends,
I recently started swing dancing. I was surprised to see that I could figure out Swing music in just 2 days. While dancing Swing I don't count but just feel the downbeat in the music. Compared to this I still have to specifically listen to the 2nd and 4th beats(being an on2 dancer) while dancing Salsa. In spite of listening to Salsa music for almost 2 years, I still don't feel Salsa music as much as I do Swing. If I could feel Salsa like the way I feel Swing, it would make my dancing so much better. I am wondering if this is because I started Salsa first before going to Swing, or Swing is much easier music than Salsa(just like Bachata) or it is just that psychologically, I am still trying to hard in Salsa to count or hear the beats rather than just feeling it?

Another New Yorker? Not that I am, but every time I see a Salsa question the asker is learning NY style.
Anyway, Swing is rhythmically pretty simple. Salsa is complex. It's to be expected that it takes longer to 'get' the salsa rhythms. You say you've been listening to Salsa for two years. How much Salsa? To the exclusion of other music?
The reason I ask is that it takes a while to really absorb a new style of music. Case in point: one summer when I was young, I really got into reggae and ska. Listened to it maybe 40-50 hours per week. My freestyle dancing improved over the summer without doing any dancing, just from listening to music, based on feedback I got when I returned to school and dancing at parties.

It was precisely that rhythmic complexity in Salsa that had me puzzled on how to dance it freestyle, and that got me into Salsa dance classes.

I wonder if it isn't the fact that you are an on2 dancer.
I only took 3 months of salsa lessons, but when we tried on2 for about 15 minutes, it just never felt right to me.
I thought "on1" was as obvious at the beat in a good song for nite club 2 step.

You say you do "swing dancing". What kind of swing? Many people are troubled by the that fact that many "patterns" are "6 count" so that you often miss the downbeat at the beginning of the measure.

Even for on1, I had to do a lot of salsa music listening before I could feel the beat. I mean, you need to know where "1" is to figure out where "2" is, anyway.

To take a stab at answering the question, salsa music is more difficult to find the beat, because it is polyrhythmic. That is, salsa contains several different rhythms at the same time, and you have to identify which one you need to dance your steps to. And the songs don't always use the same instrument to accent the downbeat. In some songs, I find that the horns play the downbeat, in others, the singers emphasize it, etc.

Swing dance music, on the other hand, usually has a pretty steady and clearly identifiable beat played on the drums, and (unless it's very jazzy) doesn't have any obvious polyrhythms.

As other posters have noted, salsa is generally -- unless we're talking about Ellington, or something -- more polyrhythmic and more complex.

Don Baarns, the "Unlikely Salsero", who also posts here, has a lot of posts and suggestions in his blog on how to "hear" the music better.

http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/

You may want to check the "music" and "musicality" topics in his sidebar.

A few people have responded to your question by saying that salsa music has more complex rhythms than swing music, so it is harder to hear the rhythm in salsa than in swing. That is true, but there is another big difference that they didn't mention: salsa dancing should be phrased with the music, while swing dancing does not have to be phrased with the music. That is why you can do swing dancing by just "feeling" the downbeat, but you can't get away with that in salsa dancing. In salsa dancing you need to hear the 8-count mini phrases in the music and coordinate the salsa dance pattern to match the music phrase -- you can't get away with just dancing on any downbeat.

I will explain this further. Swing music, like salsa music, is composed of 8-count mini phrases, but swing dancing, unlike salsa dancing, has a lot of 6-count dance patterns. A 6-count dance pattern does not phrase with an 8-count music pattern, so in swing dancing it is not absolutely necessary to listen to the 8-beat mini phrases, and you can dance it at an acceptable social level by just listening for the downbeats (the odd-numbered beats) and ignoring the phrasing of the music. But the basic salsa dance pattern has 8 beats (consisting of 6 steps and 2 pauses or taps), so salsa dancing can and should be phrased with the 8-beat mini phrases of the music. So in salsa dancing you need to be able to hear the 8-beat mini phrases in the music, not just the downbeat.

Also, I think you may have some confusion about the count of the salsa dance pattern, because you said that you need to listen to the 2nd and 4th beats of the music for on-2 salsa, but I think you really mean the 2nd and 6th beats, because those are the beats when you do the break steps in on-2 salsa.

salilsurendran said:

Hello Friends,
I recently started swing dancing. I was surprised to see that I could figure out Swing music in just 2 days. While dancing Swing I don't count but just feel the downbeat in the music. Compared to this I still have to specifically listen to the 2nd and 4th beats(being an on2 dancer) while dancing Salsa. In spite of listening to Salsa music for almost 2 years, I still don't feel Salsa music as much as I do Swing. If I could feel Salsa like the way I feel Swing, it would make my dancing so much better. I am wondering if this is because I started Salsa first before going to Swing, or Swing is much easier music than Salsa(just like Bachata) or it is just that psychologically, I am still trying to hard in Salsa to count or hear the beats rather than just feeling it?

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darkoff said:

A few people have responded to your question by saying that salsa music has more complex rhythms than swing music, so it is harder to hear the rhythm in salsa than in swing. That is true, but there is another big difference that they didn't mention: salsa dancing should be phrased with the music, while swing dancing does not have to be phrased with the music. That is why you can do swing dancing by just "feeling" the downbeat, but you can't get away with that in salsa dancing. In salsa dancing you need to hear the 8-count mini phrases in the music and coordinate the salsa dance pattern to match the music phrase -- you can't get away with just dancing on any downbeat.

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Yes, absolutely true. As for which one is easier, it depends on whether you have previous musical training. Salsa timing I found way easier, because with my musical training I was already hearing the 8 count phrases even before I danced. So, learning an 8 count step made perfect musical sense to me. On the other hand, I struggled with swing dance timing because the steps don't fit the 8 count music. But someone who doesn't already hear the 8 count would have no trouble with that.

I don't think its actually true that one should be unconcerned with phrasing swing dancing - it just happens to be a goal not very stressed in the first few years of 6-count-based ballroom type swing.

As someone with a music background, I can readily hear the chord changes behind swing music and predict when they will reach a cadence. That's information I can start to use in the moment in a dance where I have real fluency like foxtrot, but in something like swing where I have only beginner experience, I merely notice it without being able to respond.

jennyisdancing said:

. As for which one is easier, it depends on whether you have previous musical training.

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Ive taught world class musicians who could not keep time to music ( in simpler dances ).. what musicians "hear" and what we dance to, very often, to them. makes little sense...

darkoff said:

I will explain this further. Swing music, like salsa music, is composed of 8-count mini phrases, but swing dancing, unlike salsa dancing, has a lot of 6-count dance patterns. A 6-count dance pattern does not phrase with an 8-count music pattern, so in swing dancing it is not absolutely necessary to listen to the 8-beat mini phrases, and you can dance it at an acceptable social level by just listening for the downbeats (the odd-numbered beats) and ignoring the phrasing of the music. But the basic salsa dance pattern has 8 beats (consisting of 6 steps and 2 pauses or taps), so salsa dancing can and should be phrased with the 8-beat mini phrases of the music. So in salsa dancing you need to be able to hear the 8-beat mini phrases in the music, not just the downbeat.

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I have to disagree with you here. Because swing dance have 6-count patterns, it is even more imperative that you are aware of the musical phrasing. Typicall it's 3 8-count phrase and the 4th 8-count phrase has a break of some sort. So let's see 4 8-counts = 32 beats. If you dance 5 6-counts, that's only 30 beats (2 beats short). If you dance 6 6-counts then that's 36 beats (4 beats over). So you have two options: first is to do 4 6-counts + 1 8-count or 4 8-counts. IMO swing is harder, because you have to be doing the math while you're dancing unless you have a lot of experience already, then it comes easier. Also, I think swing dancers listen more to the even beats than the odd beats.

tangotime said:

Ive taught world class musicians who could not keep time to music ( in simpler dances ).. what musicians "hear" and what we dance to, very often, to them. makes little sense...

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Not sure what you mean by that...if I were to explain the basic on1 salsa step to a musician, I'd start out by saying that the step takes 8 counts, that you move on beats 1, 2, 3, pause (don't step) for one beat on count 4, move on 5, 6, 7, pause on count 8. A trained musician should understand that timing instantly. Getting the physical coordination and muscle memory is another matter - but they would understand mentally what they need to do. Whereas I've noticed that for many people with no musical training, their biggest challenge with salsa timing is to understand there are pauses on counts 4 and 8.

Oh, they will understand it, they just might not do it. Hearing music to participate in its creation and hearing it to dance to it are skills with some overlap, but not entirely identical.

jennyisdancing said:

Not sure what you mean by that...if I were to explain the basic on1 salsa step to a musician, I'd start out by saying that the step takes 8 counts, that you move on beats 1, 2, 3, pause (don't step) for one beat on count 4, move on 5, 6, 7, pause on count 8. A trained musician should understand that timing instantly. Getting the physical coordination and muscle memory is another matter - but they would understand mentally what they need to do. Whereas I've noticed that for many people with no musical training, their biggest challenge with salsa timing is to understand there are pauses on counts 4 and 8.

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Yea, you got it right. That's a problem many musicians coming to dance experience - they can spot all the nuances of the music, but as they don't have the physical part nailed down yet, they can't express it and this difference between the mental part and the physical part can actually discourage them when they start....

jennyisdancing said:

.if I were to explain the basic on1 salsa step to a musician, I'd start out by saying that the step takes 8 counts,

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What you should say, is the variations are of a 2 bar duration ( step is " singular " ) and go on to say, that each bar is counted in QQS rhythm with an ascending bar on the 1st and a slight descension on the 2nd bar .

Musicians each have different roles to play ( particularly in a Salsa band ) with clave driving the rhythm, its important for a musician NOT in the genre,to know that the clave is "struck " on the 2nd beat of each bar.. which is not a " downbeat " rhythm.. this is what is unusual about this style of music.. foreign to most musicians, but they will quickly understand the concept...

Now, to get them to dance to a specific rhythm,is a different matter entirely, as it does not always correspond to their role in an orchestra / band, hence the confusion.

Heres an e.g. from a "1st chair" that I taught.. I happened to say 1,2,3,4 and 1.. he said the " and " is what they called a pickup note...

tangotime said:

What you should say, is the variations are of a 2 bar duration ( step is " singular " ) and go on to say, that each bar is counted in QQS rhythm with an ascending bar on the 1st and a slight descension on the 2nd bar .

Musicians each have different roles to play ( particularly in a Salsa band ) with clave driving the rhythm, its important for a musician NOT in the genre,to know that the clave is "struck " on the 2nd beat of each bar.. which is not a " downbeat " rhythm.. this is what is unusual about this style of music.. foreign to most musicians, but they will quickly understand the concept...

Now, to get them to dance to a specific rhythm,is a different matter entirely, as it does not always correspond to their role in an orchestra / band, hence the confusion.

Heres an e.g. from a "1st chair" that I taught.. I happened to say 1,2,3,4 and 1.. he said the " and " is what they called a pickup note...

Click to expand...

I was a musician before I was a dancer, and I have several comments about your post:

1. You are correct that you would have to explain to the musicians that dancers listen to 2-bar phrases of the music, and I would add that dancers should count them as 12345678. If you talk about "quicks" and "slows", you would have to explain that a quick is one beat (the duration of one quarter note) and a slow is 2 beats.

2. What do you mean when you say that the 1st bar is "ascending" and that there is a "descension" on the 2nd bar? The only general distinction that I know about between the 1st and 2nd bars is that the 1st bar has a stronger accent on beat 1 than the 2nd bar.

3. You said that the clave is struck on the 2nd beat of the bar (in salsa music), but that is not correct. There are 2 different basic clave rhythms, and in each of those rhythms, the clave is struck on the 2nd beat of one bar but it is NOT struck on the 2nd beat of the following bar. I will show the 2 basic clave rhythms by using numbers in parentheses to represent the beats of the music with pauses, and by using numbers not in parentheses to represent beats of the music with clave hits, and I will use the "|" symbol to represent the division between the 1st and 2nd bars of the pattern:
One basic clave rhythm is (1)23(4)|5(6)&(7)8
The other basic clave rhythm is 1(2)&(3)4|(5)67(8 ), which just switches the 2 bars of the 1st basic clave rhythm.
You can see that in the 1st pattern, the clave is struck on the 2nd beat of the 1st bar (beat 2 of the 8-beat mini phrase of music), but it is NOT struck on the 2nd beat of the 2nd bar (which is beat 6 of the 8-beat mini phrase). Similarly, in the 2nd pattern, the clave is NOT struck on the 2nd beat of the 1st bar, but it is struck on the 2nd beat of the of the 2nd bar (beat 6 of the 8-beat mini phrase).
Each pattern has 5 hits of the clave, with 2 of them on the downbeat, 2 on the upbeat, and 1 on an & beat.

4. Dancers shouldn't count the music beats as "12341234" -- the beats should be counted as "12345678". And I don't know why you would say the "and" in "1234 and 1" or even in "1234 and 5" unless there is a step on the "and".