How to improve musicality
- Thread starter JTh
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Naddrin Kentlar
Active Member
There are limitations to both approaches. On your example ... It doesn't matter if you have the most beautiful story in mind if when putting it on paper half of the letters are unintelligible.
Or playing all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order. (1971 Eric Morecambe's answer to the complaints of conductor 'Andrew Preview' (André Previn). But maybe you have to be British to appreciate that.)
opendoor
Forum Master
But the naming actually is the other way round, the alignment and preparation of the pelvis is called projección.
That's the domain of technical exercises to improve how we step or pivot though in the same way that we don't talk by trying to spell each letter out individually.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Maybe, but that's the genius of written language--infinite possibilities from limited resources. But sometimes knowing that each element of those more complex patterns consists of basic things can be very helpful for improvising. I'm thinking that, at some point along tango's evolution "steps with names" were created because some dancer got stuck or was bored and tried something different. He could step and then pivot, or pivot and then step, or do something weird and then step. So, sure, there's more than just stepping and pivoting, but that's mostly what we do with a bunch of body mechanics thrown in for good measure.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Pelvis?
itwillhappen
Forum Master
I think "musically" is often a paraphrase for "dancing well", like "unmusically" is a paraphrase for "dancing badly". So the relationship with flexible technology don't surprise me, until you get this freedom, it won't do anything with the expression of musicality anyway. And then you dance at (traditional) milongas for a few years until it works, or you try to shorten it with workshops.
The routine avowal of how great tango music is does not mean that you really want to hear this old, squeaky music on your HiFi system at home. And there I see the next limiting factor. Well, I've only recently been able to overcome this pain threshold since I occasionally get positive feedback as a DJ and therefore carefully prelisten the tracks.
The routine avowal of how great tango music is does not mean that you really want to hear this old, squeaky music on your HiFi system at home. And there I see the next limiting factor. Well, I've only recently been able to overcome this pain threshold since I occasionally get positive feedback as a DJ and therefore carefully prelisten the tracks.
TTanguero
Forum Master
That's interesting. In my case, my then-girlfriend danced tango, and when she had privates at home I did indeed find it old, squeaky music with zero listening appeal. When I first took up tango myself, I exclusively practiced to non-tango music, and my favourite milonga played a lot of the same.
But once tango clicked, then suddenly the music made sense. I started listening to it at home, and three or four years in (depending on how you count lockdown), I rarely listen to anything else.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
My experience is almost identical. My ex played tango both for privates at home and in general, and I found it old and squeaky. Then I started to dance. Now I can listen to it all day, and I find new things to appreciate in it. (Of course, it helps that after close to 10 years of listening to the music, I've learned which recordings and which orquestas sound less old and squeaky!)
opendoor
Forum Master
But isn't that a technical aspect? I think worn and hissy records say nothing about the quality of the tune and the arrangement of the production. It rather says that people liked these pieces and made heavy use of the records!
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JournalInTime
Forum Master
This might be a "lost in translation" thing.
To me, "squeaky" does not mean poor recording quality. It means a preponderance of violins played in the tango style, and of course bandoneons – both of which have a lot of treble (the right/treble hand of the bandoneon ranges through three octaves vs. two for the bass/left hand, and at least according to my friend who plays, is usually dominant). These instruments are the most numerous in the orquesta (typically, there's just one piano and one double bass). If your ears are used to styles of music with lots of bass and/or drums, tango sounds extremely squeaky or "squeedly."
Even live tango – which cannot blame the recording – has these properties. It's pitched unusually high and has a sort of jangly quality in all but the most lyric compositions. I was at a live performance just a few weeks ago, at a big studio that usually hosts events for other dance styles. Regulars who decided to come learn "What is tango?" weren't liking the music; tanguer@s loved it.
I think that as tango fans, we tend to forget how bizarre bandoneons sound, how far tango violins are from symphonic ones (at least in playing style . . . I cannot address the tuning), and how unbalanced an orquesta típica really is relative to most sorts of bands and orchestras, partly for having more treble than bass and partly for its lack of percussion.
Don't forget that the vast majority of people listen to popular music – that's why it's popular music. That's full of bass and drums, either real or emulated via electronic instruments, and electronic instruments played in their own right are often used to add bass. Indeed, the vibrating, teeth-shaking bass is celebrated. More highbrow types like their classical music played by a very balanced symphony with its bassoons, double basses (ours has an octobass!), tubas, violas as well as violins, and big, deep kettle drums. These are the standards of comparison.
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itwillhappen
Forum Master
As far as the sound quality is concerned, everyone is free to give their ears what they want, and it also depends on what kind of motivation drives you.
Personally, I usually listen through a preliminary playlist with an idea of how to dance on it, with the intention of improving or replacing interfering tandas. I don't want to torture myself while listening (or later on the dancers) and if the sound quality drops abruptly then that's hopefully a "vintage tanda" (before around 1935) that I want to have with it.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
One reason why I prefer later tango – late D'Arienzo and Pugliese, Salamanca, Varela, et al. – is that it started to drift toward a symphonic sound that carried better over radio and TV broadcasts, and that appealed to enough listeners to get broadcast in the first place. It's less squeaky for reasons that have little to do with recording quality. By comparison, even the best recordings of La Guardia Vieja are my "go change my shirt" music. I like most tango music, but I prefer the less-squeaky kind that makes the windows vibrate a little.
opendoor
Forum Master
Ok, now I understand a bit what you meant!
Tango also was pop music. Even non-musical people were enthusiastic about the hard rhythm of the marcato and the powerful bass. And the bass is louder than you think. When I play my shellacs with a piezoelectric pickup on a vintage tube amp, the walls will shake. I still suspect that your technical reservations are covering up the musical ones. Most electronic transfers of shellacs are based on wrong equilibration curves (in combination with heavy filtering and corrections).