Resource for dance teachers/students - contemporary technique class music arranged by count & tempo.

[ContDanceMusic]

Hello,

I am an accompanist working in London and I'm in the process of building a library of music for contemporary technique class.

There's currently 155 tracks online covering counts of 'three' to 'ten' and everything is arranged by the count and tempo.

You can hear a sampler from 'Volume 1' here;


All the songs are available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google etc

There's also further information and more details on each release at contemporarydancemusic.com

As a promo to forum members I'll be happy to send a couple tracks for free by email - if you PM the tracks titles you want and your address I'll send them over.

Also any feedback or suggestions will be welcomed and if there are any requests for odd timings not already covered I'll try to incorporate them into future releases.

Hope you enjoy the music,

Oliver

 

[ContDanceMusic]

Here's some of the music from Spotify that you can sample as well.

 

[opendoor]

Is bpm beats or bars per second, ContDanceMusic ?

 

[ContDanceMusic]

It's beats per minute, the track titles states the 'count', then 'tempo' and a description if suitable.

Volumes 1-3 use orchestral instruments and percussion, Volumes 4-5 are piano only, Volumes 6-7 are percussion only and Volumes 8 (and soon to be 9) are drums and piano.

Examples below;

'Eights 120'
'Fives 55 Drums and Piano'
'Sevens 60 Just Percussion'
'Fours 50 Just Piano'

There's BPM calculators online if that helps, Google 'BPM Counter' as I can't post links here yet!

 

[ContDanceMusic]

Since we are a ballroom site, your notations don't really translate to us. Fives 55 ... haven't got a clue what that is.

Here is a list of our dances, and the tempi for different styles and proficiencies that we use for competition, and mostly for social as well.

Thank's for replying.

I only accompany for contemporary classes (occasionally ballet) and didn't realise this was solely a ballroom forum (nice rhyme!).

With regards to how the current music would relate, the measure is similar to the count I think and then the BPMs would be the same but as this music wasn't written for ballroom dancing I'm not sure how suitable it would be.

I might do a ballroom dance album though now I've got this info!

Enjoy your dancing and thanks for the heads up

Oliver

 

[ContDanceMusic]

But you'd probably find you could dance a tango to an 'Eights 120' - as long as the BPM is in the right ball park and the count is divisible by the measure it could technically work but might not be very fun!

 

[ContDanceMusic]

I don't (and doubt anyone else does either) know what "eights 120" means.

Tango music is 4/4 and occasionally 2/4, and around 30 measures a minute.

'Eights 120' would mean the track has groupings of 8 beats (counts) and there are 120 beats per minute.

If a Tango is in 4/4 or 2/4 (each bar has four or two counts/beats) then as that divides evenly into 8 it should fit with regards to timing, also the tempo (BPM) matches.

You can try it out if you like, here's 'Eights 120' - let me know if you can Tango to it!

 

[ContDanceMusic]

Ha! Maybe this one is better,


Thing is the music was written for contemporary technique class as there's not a great array of available accompaniment - I'm sure there's a million better tracks to Tango to!

 

[opendoor]

'Eights 120' would mean the track has groupings of 8 beats...

What is grouping of 8 beats? Do you mean the phrase by chance?

 

[ContDanceMusic]

Maybe! I'm not sure what you mean by phrase.

The tempo dictates what counts as a beat - if it's 120 BPM (in the case of 'Eights 120') a beat would be every half second and the 'Eights' means there are 8 of these before it repeats.

With contemporary technique class the dancers are usually counting in their heads and quite often it's not in groupings/cycles/phrases of 8 (which would correlate to most music which is in 4/4) - they might be doing an exercise in 5 / 7 / 9 or in horrible cases they want a 5, 7 then 9 or worse! That's why I started to make these tracks as it's gives them an opportunity to practice without a live musician.

 

[ContDanceMusic]

With all of the ballroom dances there seems to be specific rhythms at the designated tempos and I'm not sure anything I've written would coincide, technically you could dance to some of the tracks but there's much more suitable music available.

It's been informative for me though and congrats on a nice forum

 

[opendoor]

Maybe! I'm not sure what you mean by phrase..

I've added a link, see above. The phase is the fundamental element in dance music. The steps and figures fit the phrase. The measure is for musicians, dancers move according to the phrase.

..With contemporary technique class the dancers are usually counting in their heads and quite often... it'

But then you start levelling down dancing to something computers usually do. Do you play an acoustic instrument ContDanceMusic ?

 

[ContDanceMusic]

Thanks for the link.

I read through the wiki but I'm still not sure on what the phrase would be with regards to dance music - is it the number of bars/measures before the chord sequence or the groove/rhythm repeats?

And yes, I play a few instruments which all can be played acoustically.

 

[raindance]

Maybe listen to some actual ballroom tracks and count the music in your head. You may notice that though the music is written in 4/4 (for a tango or foxtrot or rumba for instance), it can also be counted in groups of eight beats (two measures). Starting an eight beat series of movements (e.g. a simple step pattern) looks and feels a bit better if you start dancing on the 1 instead of on the "5" (which is really just another 1 from the next measure).

You can try watching some ballroom videos, too (try youtube), but it may be hard to see this sort of musicality easily on a video if you don't know what you're looking for.

Hope that helps - we all think about and use music in different ways. Musicians vs composers vs ballroom dancers vs contemporary or ballet dancers vs people listening to enjoy it.

 

[raindance]

Here is one example of a tango demonstration. With this piece of tango music, I hear the 8 beat groupings easily. Do you?