Today’s Tango Topic is about Musical Interpretation using the 5 Pause Types. (https://tangotopics.com/musical-interpretation/)
Over the years I have done a number of PUBLC interpretations with this stuff. However, here’s a really simple breakdown of where all the pauses are at in particular song like Di Sarli’s “El Recordo” without all the hyperbole.
8 Count Beat Methodology vs. The 5 Pause Types Methodology.
Before I go down this road a bit, I need to be crystal clear about what I’m about to say. Why ? Because it can easily be misconstrued as I’m bashing other people’s hard work. NO! I AM NOT! I am showing you that there’s an easier way. This methodology is working smarter, not harder.
We have to do a little math > IF a DJ is playing 4 song tandas, with 3 song Milonga/Valses. Then they’re playing 22 songs in hour, or 88 songs for a 4 hour milonga. Those 88 songs are part of a small subset of the most frequent songs you hear at a Milonga, which is just under 1000 songs of the Common Tango Playbook.
When you go to a Class on ‘Musicality’ (I detest the use of this word. please see the posts on this subject below this one), typically you’re taught 3 or 6 songs that the teacher has meticulously prepared on a.) the pecularities of the desired songs. b.) how to deconstruct that song by that orchestra at that point in their development. c.) the structure of the song, it’s phrases, and the overall latticework of the song. And finally d.) some pieces of tango vocabulary (the moves: walk, ocho, turn, cross…etc) that match or enhance what you’re hearing in the music. Some teachers go to great lengths with charts and graphics to show you where in the music X, Y, and Z happens which is very helpful when you’re listening to the music. They point out where the accent notes and inflections happen so that you can thereby ‘interpret’ the music. Now here’s the part that you should pay attention to. Item d above is THEIR INTERPRETATION of what you should do at those inflection points.
You spend hours and hours learning these ideas, then more time practicing these ideas, and then most of that weekend dancing those ideas (supposedly) that typically only apply to THAT song. Which as a result forces you to memorize the peculiarities of that particular song, and the tango vocabulary that go with that song. You do this with enough songs, and you build up a repertoire of vocabulary and choices that are already pre-made for you. Barring the fact that most people never do this, let’s assume for the moment that they’re in earnest and actually go to all the trouble of actually putting to use what they ‘learned’.
That means that given the shear volume of songs that are played in a night, a Lead (mostly), and Follower to a lesser extent, will need to have memorized 88 songs, and the given ‘musicality’ (cough, cough). And if we expand that out to the fullest extent that means that you’re really memorizing about 1000 songs worth of vocabulary and musicality. To be fair, some teachers drop in memorized snippets of choreography to make this process a little easier. So you’re not having to memorize whole swaths of songs. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and call it about 100 pieces of choreography that when you hear X you do Y. Simple ?
That’s a ton of work for what essentially amounts to throwing it all out because of what happens in the moment and on a dance floor. Which is to say the moment you hit the floor, everything goes out the window. Everything. However, again, giving people the benefit of the doubt here > All that choreo is akin to a musical playlist where you can mix and match given changing conditions, moods, and circumstances. So you have to make changes based on the conditions on the floor. This is part of Floorcraft.
ENTER THE 5 PAUSE TYPES
What if you NEVER had to sit through YET ANOTHER MUSICALITY CLASS as long as you lived! Never again would you need to hear someone drone on and on and on about this inflection or that movement in the music. The only thing you really want to do is just dance. You want to access your creativity and explore options and ideas! Right ?
There is a way to do that. And that’s through the 5 Pause Types. Once you practice hearing them, you’ll never have to memorize another song and choreo again. Ever.
How ? The 5 Pause Types literally tells you that when you hear X, you do Y. The Y part is making a choice from the 5 Social Figures of Argentine Tango. But the X part is really simple:
- Type 1 – A ‘Stop’ or Cessation. It’s really a breath. But we’re calling it a STOP.
- Type 2 – An Instrumental Flourish. This is sometimes a Piano Trill, or Bandoneon Fill. But there’s a flourish of notes.
- Type 3 – A Diminished Note. This is where a note trails off into silence and then the music picks up again.
- Type 4 – The Musical Paragraph. This is really two ideas in one. First it’s a pause in of itself marked by a ‘BUM-BUM’ in the music. Secondly it’s the end of one musical idea, and the beginning of the next which is clearly heard in the melody of the music. It’s sharp shift in tonal direction of the music.
- Type 5 – The Singer’s Breath. Put simply when the singer is singing, they have to breathe! When they breathe, that’s a pause which just happens to co-inside NICELY with the Musical Pauses that already exist in the music. Usually the singer is singing refrain from an earlier section of the music, usually the 2nd musical paragraph.
It takes a little time and some practice to hear this stuff, but once you do, really the only thing that you have to learn is the vocabulary to go with it. And here’s the crazy part. You already know that vocabulary: WALK, OCHO, TURN, CROSS, CORTADO. How hard is that ?
While there are some rules to what goes where, you can throw those out and do whatever you ‘feel’ is right for you in the moment, on the floor, that fits with the conditions on the floor.
This is where the FIVE PAUSE TYPES really EXCELS! The rules are there to help you to create clean, clear structure. But sometimes things get challenging on the floor, and well… you just have to make things work with shall we say less than desirable opportunities.
This is why I say that learning the FIVE PAUSE TYPES far exceeds anything else out there. It’s less memory intensive. Less work (and who doesn’t like that). And is far more creative, and variational based on the conditions on the floor! And on top of all of that, it’s just easier to learn. Way easier.
By example…I’ve had students go thru the first month of their intensive training and by the end of that first month, they’ve already understood the 5 Pause Types. By month 2 they’re practicing it daily. By month 3 and the completion of the course they’re speaking in shorthand and already making creative choices with over 1000 songs that I randomly throw at them! They’ve never had to memorize a song. They’ve never had to memorize vocabulary that they’ve never seen before. And here’s the funny part, they look and feel like they’re being creative, and that’s because they are! They’re making those choices. Not me. I’m not telling them to do a damned thing. They and their dance partners are having more fun and spending less time pouring over charts and graphs and instead dancing freer than they ever thought possible.
In short, the 8 Count Beat Methodology is working HARDER, NOT SMARTER! The 5 Pause Types IS working SMARTER, NOT HARDER!
An Example Idea.
In short everything you need to know is on-screen. There are a few things that are missing which are below like the definitions of the terms I’m using.
The Notation!
00:009 – Accent Note
00:01 – Type 1 – Stop
00:02 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
00:04 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
00:06 – Type 1 – Stop
00:10 – Type 1 – Stop
00:14 – Type 1 – Stop
00:18 – Type 1 – Stop
00:21 – Type 1 – Stop
00:23 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
00:25 – Type 1 – Stop
00:29 – Type 1 – Stop
00:33 – Type 1 – Stop
00:37 – Type 4 – Musical Paragraph
00:41 – Type 1 – Stop – This is NOT notated in the video, let’s see who’s paying attention.
00:44 – Type 1 – Stop
00:47 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
00:49 – Type 1 – Stop
00:53 – Type 4 – Musical Paragraph
00:57 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
01:01 – Type 1 – Stop
01:03 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
01:05 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
01:08 – Type 4 – Musical Paragraph
01:09 – ACCENT NOTE
01:11 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
01:13 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
01:15 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
01:18 – Type 1 – Stop
01:22 – Type 1 – Stop
01:26 – Type 1 – Stop
01:30 – Type 1 – Stop
01:32 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent Note
01:34 – Type 1 – Stop
01:37 – Type 1 – Stop
01:41 – Type 1 – Stop
01:46 – Type 4 – Musical Paragraph
01:50 – Type 2 – Instrumental Flourish
01:54 – Type 1 – Stop
01:57 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
02:00 – Type 3 – Diminishing Note
02:02 – Type 2 – Instrumental Flourish
02:05 – Type 1 – Stop / Accent NoteS
02:09 – Type 1 – Stop
02:13 – Type 1 – Stop
02:16 – Type 4 – Musical Paragraph
A Few Notes
1.) Typically in a TYPE 1 Pause or a ‘Stop’ as it’s called. Is an actual STOP most of the time. However, in this instance, that STOP is more like a hesitation.
2.) There are a few places where the ACCENT NOTE and the PAUSE overlap each other. This is NOT uncommon, it’s just a peculiar-ness.
3.) There are 2 spots where the is no pause but an accent note is present.
4.) In this version of the song, there are two musical paragraph markers (the 2nd and 3rd – these are Type 4 Pauses) where you’ll be a little confused because it’s not the typical ‘bum-bum’ that you hear so often. In this instance the two successive notes that are there serve as the ‘bum-bum’. And they are actually in a tonal depreciation sequence, which you’ll hear it if you listen closely.
5.) This is one of 900 about songs out of the 6000 songs that I have surveyed where there is a TYPE 3 Pause or what’s called ‘A Diminished Note’ that is actively used and obvious. In this instance that Type 3 Pause is used with more frequency. It’s unusual but not uncommon. The Type 3 pause is actually a representation of class of pauses that happen with some infrequency. There are actually 11 that I’ve catalogued. However, I have had to revise that number over the years to account for a few new discoveries.
Moving on, it’s all too easy to think of this stuff as Musical Phrases when in fact they’re not. The pauses serve as the markers for those phrases in some cases. Usually a phrase is a typical 8 count. But the Pauses don’t correspond to an 8 count, mostly. They occur in odd places where if you were counting there’s a breath there that doesn’t make sense mathwise but does if you’re breathing it. So don’t make the mistake of thinking this is an 8 count beat methodology, when it’s not. As I said, there are places where there is overlap but a good 80% of the time, they’re their own separate things. This is why the 8 count beat methodology will make you believe that you’re achieving some level of musical interpretation when which is an illusion. When the real toy of you what you want to do is employ pauses to generate a pathway to creativity! Lots and lots of creativity.
Some people will ask, “Ok Miles, so now that I hear the damned pauses, what the hell do I do with them ?”. And the answer is a resounding > THE 5 SOCIAL FIGURES of ARGENTINE TANGO! These two things work together quite well. In short, when you hear a pause, you change your vocabulary choice. It helps to know the music a bit, because that will help you to pick the right piece of vocabulary to fit what comes after the pause! However, there is the simplest option of all. A Type 1 Walk with a Type 2 Ocho.
Lastly, there are 3 Pause Tutorials on Tango Topics that you can go walk thru. I highly recommend them.
https://tangotopics.com/menu-pages/tango-music/