First let’s get a few things out of the way, more than likely you are thinking about ‘Musicality’ when we invoke the clearer and much more direct implication: Musical Interpretation. Yes ? If so, then understand that what you’re actually saying when you invoke this term is that you want to ‘be’ music. Which is entirely impossible. You can dance to the music, you can write the music, you can listen to the music, but ‘be’ the music ? Not unless you’ve become a sheet of musical notation of late. No. You can not ‘be’ the music. Sorry. This reality of specificity is exceptionally important when teaching Musical Interpretation.
Secondly, Tango Topics does have a Tango Music Section, it has a library of over 1000+ pieces that are updated with some frequency. It also has a collection of tango music educational videos that were part of the Tango Intensive and are now available to paying subscribers. This Tango Music Archive and Educational Tool is constantly being expanded with new quizzes and video resources to help you to hear what is probably one of the most underused and misunderstood aspects about Tango music: The Musical Pause. One student asked me once, “how do you hear something that isn’t there ?”. Answer ? By learning that there are tell tale signs, markers really, that are indicative to every type of Musical Pause. There are 13 of Musical Pause types in Argentine Tango, with 5 common ones. It’s the 5 common ones that we study at first, and then practice hearing, and once you begin to hear them, you will start to do things dance-wise that you never thought of before.
Thirdly, there are a number of Tango teachers out there that teach the idea of the 8 count beat. There’s just one tiny little problem with this idea. Fully 60% of tango music does not contain an 8 count beat in a specific measure, nor is it consistent! That number includes Tango-Valses, Tango-Milongas, Milonga, Vals, and the Tango-Foxtrots which are erroneously played as Milongas which aren’t Milongas at all. Again, this stuff is in the music library and the educational tools.
Lastly, in the last few years there has been an outgrowth of books on Tango music, these are more about the histories of these musicians and their life stories more than anything else. Do not confuse these with learning or studying the music. At the same time, don’t mishear this last statement as bashing or disparaging these valuable resources. Learning the histories of the orchestral leads, and what their music was all about is a vital and insanely important part of educating yourself about Tango Music. Once you understand the man and his musical tastes, you have a bare hint of the musical tapestry that you’re dancing to, combine this with knowing where the musical pauses are at and you’re onto something! Something that can quite literally change your dancing life. Mind you, again, this is all included in the Tango Music Section of Tango Topics, it’s part of Tango Del Dia – 30 days, Tango Del Dia – 15 Days, and Tango Del Dia – Advanced. Each Tango Del Dia has a section that requires you to go out and find the requisite information (which is available on the web in multiple places) and educate yourself about the composers and orchestral leads.
If all of this sounds like an Ad for Tango Topics in one respect you’d be right, and in another you’d be wrong. How’s that ? The right part is that it is informing you that said musical resource on Tango Topics is already there and growing by the day. The wrong part is that the I’m laying the groundwork for the statements below:
The Real Challenge
1.) Learning the Pauses. First let’s dispense with the fact that you ‘Yes you must know where the beat is at’! That’s a given. Tango Topics does an adequate job of giving you the tools to hear the beat, not to mention describes what the on or down beat is, also what the off beat is and how to hear it, as well as the tempo of the music, and the frequent error that happens in relation to ‘tempo’ for a lot of people when hearing and then dancing to the music. Learning the Pauses is only one method of learning the music. The other major method is to memorize, note for note every tango song. Good luck with that. Learning the Pauses method (or the Tango Topics method), is all about hearing the markers that are there. They’re present in EVERY piece of tango music. Every. Single. One. In 10+ years of study and practice, since I came up with this idea, I’ve listened to over 10,000 pieces, and each and every one of them contains these markers. Learn the markers, and cool things start to happen to your dancing, and not just from a Leading perspective but also from a Following perspective.
Frequently, all too frequently for my taste, you have tango teachers that speak ONLY to the Leads in the room, and the Followers are there as instrumentations to the Lead’s execution. This extends to hearing and executing the music as well. As a side note: I detest this way of talking about the dance. I absolutely abhor it. There is another way of discussing the roles of the dance and it’s music that does not degenderize or disassemble the dancers in this way. The role of the Active Follower, which in my opinion should be the evolutionary goal of every Follower to aspire towards being an active Follower, winds through the right of passage through the role of the Passive Follower first. But as such the role of the Follower is to not only hear the beat, and to execute it, but is also to engage with the musical pauses as well. As there are LOADS of things the Follower can engage in as those pauses occur that can not only decorate, but quite literally change the course of dance for the better. Simply by engaging the musical pauses.
At the same time, once you hear the pauses, that’s great, but it’s not enough. You must practice this idea, constantly for weeks, if not months on end to the point where it becomes second nature in you. There are 3 reasons why we want to engage the musical pauses. 1.) To reset the embrace and to reset the couple. 2.) It is a logical place to change our vocabulary choices. and 3.) It is the beginning of what will become the structure of the dance or ‘phrasing’.
If this sounds like a lot of work. It’s not. It’s actually a lot of fun, while at the same time being very challenging. The reality is that you don’t need to know every song note for note, just learning the markers is enough! Tango Topics has a number of free resources that if you just go register (it costs nothing), you can access the free musical resources, there’s about 10 standard quizzes that touches on this stuff. https://tangotopics.com/techniquelib… Mind you, only a registered user can see this resource. So if you go, and you get an error, it’s because you’re not logged in as a registered user!
2.) Learning Phrasing. Once you hear the pauses, and are able to execute them, this is only the first part of the process. The next part is what you do with them! And this is NOT open to interpretation yet. There are some rules that we have to learn first that can help us to dance in a much more elegant way. However before we get there we have to first engage this idea of the Musical Phrases. Put simply the musical phrases are what happens between the pauses. So once you hear the pauses, you can infer where the musical phrases are at! Capice ? This topic should not be confused with ‘Phrasing’. Learning the Phrases is only a component of Phrasing which is the activity of what you DO with those Musical Phrases.
And this where most people turn off. And yet it’s the place where they want to turn on. The thing that most people have in their heads about musical phrases is that they believe or think (as I did, especially the way they are explained) is that you must know note for note these specific ‘phrases’ in order to do X to them. That’s not true. It’s a complete fallacy. The reality is that this is a long process of unlearning what you have learned and then applying an idea to that musical phrase. First you must hear the pause, and what’s in between the pauses IS the phrase, now comes the hard part: What you do with it IS the Phrasing Part!
There are several methods to creating awareness about this stuff. One of them is what’s called the Simple Musical Assignment Method which was detailed in Tango Truisms Volume 3 – Truism 1112 . Which is, as simple as it sounds, a simple replacement method. How’s that ? When you hear X in the music, you do/execute Y in your dance. Really simple. There are some obvious flaws to this idea. However, it is only a stepping stone to a much larger idea, and that’s the next method in this stepping stone approach, the Complex Musical Assignment Method. This method expands on the idea of Simple Replacement and instead of waiting until the next pause to do something you instead insert a singular complementary idea in between the pauses, there are rules to these ideas.
Example: Assuming you hear a type 2 pause, what should come next is either one of the 6 ways of walking, or the 8 kinds of ochos, or the 10 types of turns. Pick one. However, doing so, you can choose a preselected type of complementary walk, ocho, or turn that will easily lead into the next pause! This method has some benefits that allows for greater flexibility in one’s dance, and there’s a seemingly endless variety of things to do. But there is a built-in flaw to this method. The flaw is that there is structure to a piece of tango music. And that structure must be adhered to, and this is where the last method comes into the play.
3.) Learning Mapping. The very last method of learning to create a successful interpretation is what Tango Topics refers to in its Intensive Sessions, as “Mapping”. This is 3 step process, that generates shall we say ‘clarity’ over what you want to do as a Lead or as Follower. It does not matter. Mapping asks the student to learn a very simple code which represents all of that stuff above, and then to map out the first 40 seconds of a song, and what they’d do it. The next part is to dance that map. What the student learns is that their idea was overly ambitious to begin with, and they realize that they have to pair it down. And this is where the real education begins. But this is only the first part of the process, because now we have to respect the musical structure that the composer intended. And now we’re thinking about planning a dance with that structure in mind (again from a leading perspective as well as from a following perspective). The very last part is dancing that structure on a regular basis! Easier said, than done.
The End Result ? The entire goal of this process is what Tango Topics refers to as Social Dance Musical Interpretation. The goal is not to perform for the 15th row, but to make your dance fun, engaging, exciting, and a pleasant and pleasing experience. However, getting there is a long process, which can take upwards of a year of your life, which almost no one wants to do for what is essentially a ‘hobby’. And therein lay the problem of teaching Musical Interpretation!
Do we teach you little repeatable steps and patterns that can easily get repetitive, and highly annoying ? And in the end you end up needing more and more patterns and figures in order to make things continually exciting to your partners ? You’ll spend ooodles of money on that method. And this method is exactly the same method that every teacher wants you to invest in. I don’t. I want to be rid of you as soon as is humanly possible. Why ? Because, like you, I want to go out social dancing with nice partners!
There is another way, and that’s the Tango Topics Method:
1.) Learn your tango foundation (about 3 to 4 months)
1.5.) Learning the pauses. (about 60 days ish near the end of step 1)
2.) Then executing both roles. (about 6 to 9 months)
3.) Add in the Simple Replacement Method. (2 to 3 weeks)
4.) The Complex Replacement Method. (2 to 3 weeks)
and finally….
5.) Mapping ( 1 to 2 months).