Hearing But Not Listening: Part 3

This is part three of a two part series. Confused? I didn’t intend to write this article, but I’m being pulled back toward my roots, and I think you’ll find it interesting. See the bottom of the article for links to the first two articles in the series.

Certain tunes mark chapters of my life. It's probably the same for you. Even if you don’t share my passion for music, you still have your favorites that bring back specific memories from your journey. You hear a song and it takes you back to high school, or a special person, or it ignites a whole set of feelings stirring inside of you. A specific tune transports you back to that early salsa class, your first great dance with someone, or a summer trip across the country.

When I was writing the original articles for this listening series, I remembered one song in the back of my mind that started me listening to vocals decades ago. I knew it was a Kenny Loggins tune but couldn’t recall the song title, or the specific album. I could still hear the feel of the tune in my head, although I couldn’t remember the specifics.

After publishing the articles, it kept bugging me, so I did a Google search and found the tune that started my vocal listening years ago.

Kenny Logins: Enter My Dream


In the 20th Century, when I was a young adult, music was on vinyl disks called records or albums, and I purchased hundreds of them before I was twenty. When I was 17 or so, Steve Gadd and Harvey Mason were among my favorite drummers, and they were the session players on Kenny Loggins' first solo album titled “Celebrate Me Home.” I originally purchased the album for the drummers (and because Bob James was playing piano and producing).

The groove on “Enter My Dream” fascinated me, and it still does today. It has a reggae influence and I was studying Latin music variations at the time. I was also learning how difficult it was to play slow, controlled, and dynamic, while creating a feel without rushing the time. This tune is an amazing example of laying back and creating a great groove, without rushing or getting in the way. The song breaths and feels effortless, like a work of art. In the process of listening to the drum track a few hundred times, I was drawn into figuring out the vocals in the last part of the tune.

From around the 3:45 time mark until the final fade, the voices ebb and flow, adding layers on a set of interesting overlapping lines. The voices sound like a dream, with rich harmonies creating a floating feel. I couldn’t figure out what they were saying at first, other than maybe the top layer. It was all a big mess of sounds, but I knew they were saying something related to the dream, and I couldn’t figure out any of the words.

Over many hours, I starting being able to selectively listen to the different voices, figuring out the words and enjoying the textures created as they overlapped each other. My ability to separate musical layers in my mental ear began when I spent so much time breaking down this song, and it started me on a quest that I still enjoy today.

Most people won’t enjoy this tune like I do, because being able to hear some of the lower layers took me so many hours of listening. But the drum track still impresses me today, especially since I know the difficulty in playing such a great feel at that tempo. (I also love the “Lucky Lady” track on that album; what a great rhythm section!)

I hope you enjoy my starting point in my musical journey, but finding your own is more important. Find something that intrigues you and that you enjoy and listen to it hundreds of times. Check out one of my early articles titled “Listening to Music: 100 Times or More” for more insights.

Let me know the tunes you enjoy that help you fine-tune your listening. I'm sure you have some that bookmark your life as well.

This is part three of a two part series. I never intended to write this article but I decided it made sense to outline my personal starting point, hoping it inspires you to find something you love and can enjoy as you grow.

Here are links to the previous articles in this series:
Hearing But Not Listening: Part 1
Hearing But Not Listening: Part 2

The difference between genious and stupidity is that
genius has its limits.
--Sam Carbin

Hearing But Not Listening: Part 2

This is Part 2 of the “Hearing But Not Listening” articles. If you missed Part 1, click here to read the first article in the series.

In Part 1, I outlined the lyrics as an excellent starting point for tuning your ears and becoming a stronger listener. After 30 years of serious listening, I still work on getting the correct lyrics on tunes I enjoy. Some songs are a serious challenge and some are pretty easy, but it’s always a fun thing to do.

You’ll find interesting parts in a wide variety of music, and while I love salsa music, a wide variety of music is great for growing your ability to listen selectively. Voices are easier than most instruments, but some songs have very complex vocal parts, and they are excellent for ear training and focused listening.

The more advanced level of listening to voices includes picking out the words from fast moving sequences and/or background parts. Many tunes have subtle background voices, with 3 or more people singing phrases in harmony. Some tunes have layers of voices, singing different words and creating great depth in the vocals, similar to the instrumentalists playing different parts.

One of the jazz instructors at Millennium uses the Jennifer Lopez tune below during the conditioning phase of his class, and I heard it 20 times before I purchased a copy. The background vocals and layers of words create a very interesting effect, and it takes some effort to figure out the words for all the background parts. I still have a couple words I can’t get, but I’m darned close.

Jennifer Lopez – Gotta Be There


Most people will NOT hear all the details, there are simply too many. They hear the overall mix and the feel, but this version requires hearing the tune over and over to sort through all the parts. For the few that want to challenge their ears and can already hear background parts, check out this tune. (Side note: the YouTube video is for reference. The quality of YouTube videos is all over the place, mostly “just okay” or poor quality. Download this song and play it on something with quality speakers or ear buds to hear all the parts.)

Check out the fast moving phrases around the 49 second mark (“I really didn’t mean it…”) , and I love the layered vocals at around 1:07. Notice there are background vocals interwoven with the primary vocals in the “If you’re in Houston…” section. See if you can get all the words on top, and within all the layers. I love this arrangement.

Again, the depth of these parts is just not obvious via the low quality YouTube example. I can hear most of the parts because my speakers are good AND I’ve heard the tune on an excellent quality system. Spend the buck and get a good copy if you are serious about learning.

For those with more advanced ears who are focused on the instruments, download the Anita Baker song (Rhythm of Love, from Part 1 of this article), and play it on a great sound system. Notice the bass player doesn’t even start until the intro ends (the keyboard/marimba player does play some lower notes, but no bass player).

After the bass player starts, the piano player doubles the bass groove in many parts of the tune, providing an interesting feel that is unique. For the non-musicians, it’s unusual for the piano player to double so much of the bass line, and unless you have both good speakers and experienced ears, it’s tough to hear both instruments are playing the same notes. It creates a unique sound, so it’s obvious to people with more experienced ears, but it’s not something the casual listener will notice.

For us percussion fans with more advanced ears, check out the bongo player. He smokes the intro, drops out for a while, then makes himself known again around 3:27, and builds from there until the end, playing some really tasty stuff. I love his groove, and he’s easy to hear in the final outtro (the fadeout toward the end), he is also playing some interesting parts while the tune is cooking. That’s outside the scope of this article, but if you have the ears already, you’ll enjoy the rhythm section on this tune. Go back to Part 1 of this article to get the YouTube version, but if you are serious about tuning your ears, I’ll repeat myself and say get quality downloads of the songs.

The more you practice without dancing, the easier it is on the dance floor, where there are a hundred distractions, including flashing lights, energetic people, inconsistent sound systems and a partner who is loving your moves. If you can’t hear the parts yet in a controlled environment, the dance floor has too much happening to learn there.

Let me know what you think of these examples.

Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered
an old idea and thinks it is his own.
--Sidney J. Harris

Finding "One" Over the Wires: Doug's Update

This is part of a series on assisting someone to hear the time in the music; check out the links at the bottom of this article to see the previous articles in the series.

This is a quick and dirty update. Doug Fox (http://www.greatdance.com/) has posted an article about our "Over the Wires" experience.

If you're following our progress, I suspect you'll find it interesting to hear about it from his perspective. I posted an article a few days ago with my point of view, so check out both for a more complete picture.

Check out his article at: The Exhilaration of Nailing the Rhythms of Dance Music

In case you are new to this blog, Doug Fox (of "Dancing Into the Future" fame) and I are working on a project where I'm helping him to find "one" in the music, without ever meeting face-to-face. For details on how this got started, check out the previous articles:
Finding "One" over the Wires
Nov 2nd Update
Feb 10 update
Feb 14 update
Mar 15 update

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with
people, of getting things done.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hearing But Not Listening: Part 1

OK... I'll take one for the team:

Men often hear but we don't always listen. I think it may be an inborn skill, but my Y chromosome keeps me from being totally objective.

For the record, women are often guilty too, but men are the gold medal winners in the "in one ear, out the other" competitions. Most men have an uncanny ability to ignore female voices during ball games, video games, and sometimes across the dinner table. It's not all men's fault, we were born that way, and we trained long and hard to miss statements from women like "Pick up your socks," "How about we go shopping together," "Did you notice the grass is taller than the dogs?” or "Do I look fat in this?"

Most guys hear that something was said, but the blank look on our faces says we never picked up the details, especially if there are any video screens within viewing distance. If you ask the guys later, they will swear, "You never said that!"

It can wreak havoc in relationships, and in dancing, we want to move beyond simply hearing the music, toward actively listening to the music. This means being able to block out certain instruments and focus on others. While men occasionally have a head start in this type of listening, both men and women benefit from training their ears to pick out select sounds in music. Everybody can improve their listening skills, so where do you start?

Over the years of working with dancers to hear the music, I’ve found that decoding the lyrics (words) of tunes is an excellent starting point for ear training. Our ultimate goal is to go back and forth from listening to the complete mix of sounds, to focusing like a laser on a single instrument from the beginning to the end of the tune. Singers voices are among the easiest "instruments" to pick out, especially for non-musicians, as we are already familiar with that sound and the language.

Sure, you could simply Google a song and get the lyrics quickly. But it's tough to Google while dancing and it does nothing for your ears. The effort of actively listening to the tune, figuring out the words and writing them down gives you skills that pay off when you're dancing.

Look up lyrics on-line only after you master the skill of hearing them with your ears. The more tunes you work through yourself, the sharper your listening skills become and that provides raw materials to shape your dances.

Be sure to start simple; pick out some of your favorite commercial music that has a singer and write out the words to the song. Salsa is fine, but not required.

For most people, it’s tougher than it sounds. Getting the chorus (AKA “the hook”) is generally easy, but getting every word is often more challenging. While our goal is ultimately to hear all the instruments, figuring out the words to a tune requires the same skills as listening to the instrumentalists. However, it’s also much easier than hearing the individual instruments because we already know the language. Check out the introduction of this old Anita Baker tune and try the following exercises:

• Figure out the exact words she uses until the she says “and love…” at around the 41 second mark. It’s a fairly clear rap and most people can figure out the words with a few listens.


• WRITE THEM DOWN (How hard can that be; it’s less than 41 seconds, and she speaks slowly!)


• Try to say it EXACTLY like she does. (This is the interesting/fun part.) She pushes some words, breaks up the syllables and stretches other words.


• Play the introduction repeatedly and say it out loud until you are totally in sync with her phrasing and emphasis (I love how she says, “... stop! and find your own…”).

Anita Baker: 1992 – Rhythm of Love

Don’t be surprised if you have to listen and replay the intro 50 times or more to get it right. I spent hours getting it nearly perfect on that tune, and I still don't get it right all the time. The process is very valuable in terms of forcing yourself to really listen to both what she says and how she says it, but the real payoff comes later as it gives you the ability to selectively focus and actively listen to different sounds. Moving to the dance floor, your active listening skills pay off big-time as you advance, and you’ll never get too good at it. Remember that when a female voice says something we don't want to hear, just use the blank look you rehearsed for so long.

In part 2 of this article, I’ll provide some interesting ideas for people with more advanced ears. The Rhythm of Love is an interesting study for both novice ears and expert listeners.

I also like the Sting tune called “Fragile” as a learning tool. Someone has done a salsa cover of this tune, but so far I haven’t found it on YouTube so I'm including a couple of his versions (they are excellent).

See if you can get every word and you’ll find some sections require listening many times to verify you’re right. Again, the process of listening over and over is part of the ear training so don’t panic if you listen to one part 25 times. It goes that way sometimes.

If you can hear, understand and write out the words in most tunes consistently, you are ready for working on the instruments, and you’ll have a huge jump start over people who start with other sounds. Many people do succeed starting with other instruments, but I strongly believe in the “walk before you run” concept, and lyrics are a better starting point for most people.

Sting - Fragile


Another tip: Sometimes an alternate version of a tune can help you hear some things that were difficult in your first version. Many tunes have remixes available and/or the artists have a live version and a studio version. I’ve sometimes figured out lyrics from one version that were close to impossible on the other. If you get stuck on a word, try another version before cheating and using Google. Finding the lyrics on line does little to help your ear training, although it’s a great verification tool once you believe you have as many words as possible.

For fun, here is another version of the Sting tune.

Sting – Fragile (Alternate version)

Let me know how these exercises go; I suspect you’ll be amazed how much your ears improve with these concepts. In Part 2 of this article, I'll highlight some things more advanced listeners will find interesting.

Formula for success: under-promise and over-deliver.
-- Tom Peters

Finding "One" Over the Wires: March 15 Update

This is part of a series on assisting someone to hear the time in the music; check out the links at the bottom of this article to see the previous articles in the series.

Doug Fox and I continue to talk about once a week and he continues to make significant progress. Doug is a huge Argentine Tango (AT) fan and student, so one of our goals is to make sure he hears the time in all types of music, not just Salsa tunes.

This is consistent with my approach, since I see hearing the time as a skill unrelated to any specific musical style. We continue to work with simplified commercial music, where the time is much more defined and regular. Many commercial tunes beat the time into your head like a jackhammer, but that also helps us clarify some of the structural elements. Some of our newer tunes are less obvious, and have elements requiring growth.

Because of our earlier discussions, he understands the structure of the music. On the few occasions where he gets off the time, he has anchor points and he’s self-correcting. That's music to my ears because my primary goal is his hearing the time, and hearing when he’s off so he can adjust when appropriate, without my input.

We added a couple new tunes this week, including an old Whitney Houston tune and a new Norah Jones song (“I've got to see you again”), which Doug says they frequently use in the tango classes. It’s considered a “neo-tango” or a “slow 3/3/2 milonga”. In other words, it’s a modern tune which happens to work well in a tango context. (We added a couple songs last week that I haven't documented, and I'll sneek those in when I can.)

The Whitney Houston tune is the first time we worked on a tune that is NOT created as a dance tune. It’s used in the 1992 movie “The Bodyguard” and is a mood piece rather than a dance number. Overall, the time is consistent--like salsa music for most of the tune--but at the end of certain phrases, it slows down for half a measure, and then returns to the time established earlier. This is quite dramatic and the song breathes nicely. While it’s harder on dancers, it makes great sense in the context of the movie and the lyrics of the song. (The introduction is also not in strict time, and that is a little more common.)

Whitney Houston – Run to You


In musical terms, this “slow down” concept is written over the music as ritardando or more commonly abbreviated as either "rit." or "ritard" meaning "to slow down consistently". You can think of this like the way a train slows down just before it stops. It's chugging along consistently, then they apply the breaks and the train starts getting slower every second.

This concept of a steady tempo with occasional slowing is inconsistent with most social dance music, including salsa. Changes in tempo require the dancers to adjust their dancing in the middle of the tune, frustrating most dancers because it’s not the norm.

As a rule, salsa starts at one tempo and stays the same until the end of the song. There are exceptions to this, but I’d estimate over 98% of all salsa music is one tempo from beginning to end.

By listening to “Run to You”, you start hearing the contrast between consistent time and the slowing down (ritardando), improving your sense of time dramatically. For most people, it’s easier to hear the time changes later in the tune, after the drums have kicked in (they are silent in the beginning). Experienced listeners hear the time breathing in the intro, and hear the ritardandos as they happen.

When this tune was recorded, there was a conductor directing the musicians and coordinating the tempos among the musicians. You can’t see the conductor, but you can hear his influence as you listen.

Check out the tempo around the 2:21 mark and the 3:27 or so. Around both of these points, you’ll hear the band slowing down, along with her singing, before the next phrase restarts at the earlier established tempo. (It also happens around the 58 second mark, but the drums are just entering, so it’s tougher to hear the tempo changes.) You’ll need to start before those timings to hear the standard time, and you’ll also notice it shows down for half a measure, then returns to the “normal”, consistent time until the next slow down, at the end of the next phrase.

Note that I’m leaving out quite a few details here; this “ritardano” concept happens more than just three times, so see if you can hear it as it’s happening. I’m planning on cutting a video for this tune to discuss it in context. Typing all the details makes it painfully obvious to me that I’m summarizing and skipping plenty of details.

I’ll outline the Norah Jones tune and some interesting aspects of it in a future article.

Overall, Doug Fox is moving from someone who questioned whether he could ever hear the time when we started, to someone who regularly gets it right, in increasingly complex music. When he’s wrong, he hears it and is self-correcting most of the time. He's still practicing, as this skill isn’t something most people learn in one or two lessons, but his foundation is strong and growing on a daily basis. In the near term, Salsa and Tango will both be easy for him, in terms of hearing the time and knowing he knows how it all fits together.

Doug told me he is writing something for his blog shortly, and I’ll post a link when his point of view is available.

In case you are new to this blog, Doug Fox (of "Dancing Into the Future" fame) and I are working on a project where I'm helping him to find "one" in the music, without ever meeting face-to-face. For details on how this got started, check out the previous articles:

Finding "One" over the Wires
Nov 2nd Update
Feb 10 update
Feb 14 update

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

Air Guitar, Air Drums: A One Man Band

Do you play any air instruments? You know, pretending you’re the singer in the hot band, or sitting in with the band on air guitar, drums, congas or maybe just cowbell?

Every dancer should! It’s a great exercise and not always easy to do, especially if you really try to get everything right. To play air instruments well, you have to really listen to the music. It’s hard to play things you don’t hear, so start packing your gig bags now.

Anybody who's around me in my car, or in one of my musicality classes knows I'm one of the best air musicians on the planet. (What an egotistical thing to say! But I'll take the Texas defense on this one that says, "It ain't bragging if you've done it.")

I can play air drums, guitar, bass, piano, bongos, timbales, and more. I’ll bet 80% of the people who don’t play those instruments will think I do. Being a drummer, air drums is no big deal, nobody should be impressed. But my air piano is pretty strong for some tunes, and most would be surprised how well I fake “playing” some of the other instruments. I don’t do this in public much, but I always do it in my car and when few are watching.

I also try to sing song lyrics, and phrase them EXACTLY like the artist. (You don’t want to hear my Whitney Houston, Faith Evans or MJB, unless you have excellent ear plugs or need some windows broken.)

The point is not to be a great singer, but to try and sing the words and phrases just like the singer. I sometimes have to play a part of a tune 25 times or more to get the phrasing close. I also try and sing some sax and piano solos. That isn't always easy, but what a great exercise for your ears. I have one sax solo that took me a few weeks to get close, and I still have some things I can refine, after doing it over and over for hours. On the other hand, I'm amazingly close and it forced me to really, really listen to what he's playing.

Last night in took a basic hip-hop class (yea… I didn’t blend) and the instructor was playing air drums at one point, punching out the bass drum with his fist. It cracked me up but I realized “Darn… he really knows this tune! That was not an easy or obvious part…” It was obvious he enjoyed the music (and he loved it) and his dance reflected that he knew the music extremely well.

When listening to music, can you pick out the individual instruments and pretend you are playing them? If not, start with the lyrics, those are the easiest. Take a song you really, really like with a vocalist, and figure out the words. Try to lip-sync them or sing them out loud until you can get close. Continue to refine it over time until you could close your eyes and become that singer for a few minutes.

Quality isn’t the thing here, it’s getting the phrasing and timing like the singer. See if you can get EVERY word just like the recording, even if the dog starts howling along with you.

Do it in your car, do it while exercising, do it anyplace you can where you’re not bothering others. We’ll go over more details later, but the more air instruments you play, and the better you sing words (even if the pitch is wrong), the better off you’ll be as a dancer.

I promise you it will pay off later if you continue to refine your air instruments. You can’t pretend to play without learning to hear the instrument throughout the tune. I have some good exercises for that and I’ll expose those later, but for now just know, the more you sing and pretend you are playing, the better you’ll be as we work on musicality issues.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
-Igor Stravinsky

Finding One - Bossa Nova feel

For those following the "Finding One Over the Wires" series, one of the tunes I use is the Robin Thicke tune named "Lost Without U". I don't use it because it's salsa music, I use it because it's simple and an excellent starting point for people to hear the time.

Robin Thicke: Modern Bossa Nova Feel


Birgit Marita posted a great comment with a link to another bossa nova and I realized I should post the bossa nova that is probably the most famous in the world named "The Girl From Ipanema." Almost everybody has heard this over the years, but many people think of it as elevator music, since it's a laid back, "less is more" concept from the mid 1960's.

In most arts, including dance and music, it's smart to get a feel for the history of the art and see how it's evolved over the years. Most people will find it easier to hear the time in the Robin Thicke tune, because the drums are very clear.

In the original version, the drums don't play in the beginning, and when they play they are in the background, providing a feel but nothing like modern tunes. Once you hear the time in the Robin Thicke tune, it's a very small jump to this classic version.

The Girl From Ipanema by Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto (1964)


And finally, below is a live jazz version of the same tune, so you can see how it's performed by one of the original artists in a live setting. The Girl from Ipanema starts around the 3:10 mark in the clip (assuming you are counting up). I really like the piano solo around the six-minute mark. Remember that this music and these artists are very mature and are excellent examples of the "less is more" music concepts.

Stan Getz Quartet - Desafinado and Girl from Ipanema


All these people have the technical ability to play 10 times more, but in this context they choose to play fewer notes overall. That is an artistic choice, and to do this well often takes musicians 5 to 10 years or more just to get into the ballpark. It sounds so simple, but it's not.

As dancers, we have similar choices, where we learn to perform complex moves with grace, and we pick and choose which is appropriate for the music and our partner.

Let me know your thoughts!

Men aren't attracted to me by my mind.
They're attracted by what I don't mind.
-Gypsy Rose Lee

Finding "One" Over the Wires: Feb 14 Update

This is part of a series on assisting someone to hear the time in the music, check out the links at the bottom of this article to see the previous articles in the series.

Doug and I had a great session today.

One week after we had a phone conversation where we worked through a set of simple exercises, he is consistently getting the 1 & 5 right in simple music, and now we are now expanding into a couple different tunes and he's still getting it right! Our new tunes included "Heard It Though the Grapevine", the Michael McDonald remake version, and the Motown Remix version, with Gladys Knight and the Pips.)

Michael McDonald: "Heard It Though the Grapevine"


I know some of the my salsa guru friends are shaking their heads right now, because I take a totally different approach to teaching the music and timing. Rather than start with clave, and the other Latin percussion instruments, we start with simple music and build a foundation that applies to all dance music, salsa or otherwise. (We do focus on instruments in the rhythm section, including clave, but that is later in my system.)

My approach starts with a simple concept of understanding the right music structures, and the goal is to get people to realize how easy it is to hear the time. This assumes they have the right foundation and we build it from the ground up. It isn't based on hearing one instrument, but it all starts with my first rule in the "Baarns Musicality Principles" (BMP)

BMP Rule Number 1:
Music Has Structure! (and the corollary: Music Ain't Random!)

I have an article in draft form behind the scenes which expands on the principles and the first rule above. I expect to have it live within a week. It revolves around the concept that if you can get a handle on the basic structures (8 counts, phrases, sections), and can hear the structures in simple music, you can build on that to hear the time in nearly all dance tunes.

At this point Doug is making great progress and hopefully he'll write about it in his blog. I'm extremely proud of the quick progress we are making. He paid me the ultimate instructor compliment today when he said something like, "Gee, this all seems pretty easy..." I doubt he was saying or thinking that in the past. I suspect it all seemed like a big cloud or bowl of soup to him. Now he's almost bored with how easy it is and he naturally wants to move on.

I cautioned him that it's critical to get the first steps right, and practice it more than you might enjoy, because once you add a partner you need to already have these concepts running on autopilot.

I wish I had recorded his original stab at counting the time in simple tunes, because he's doing it so convincingly today few will believe he struggled with it previously. We were both having a great time because he's having those "ah-ha" moments where it's all starting to fit together for him.

Once the foundation is in place, combined with regular practice, anybody can hear the time in the music.

Doug and I are continuing our building block approach and in the next couple weeks will will start moving into more complex commercial music, then start our transition into simple salsa tunes.

One thing that is important for you. The process we are taking reflects our starting point, factoring in Doug's previous experience. Everybody has different ears and I used to be surprised how different people are. Some people will take twice the time Doug took to get where he is, some may take less. That really doesn't matter, because once you get it, you own it for life. So what if it takes you an extra few weeks? Some guys have spent years dancing off the time, and they don't even know it.

It's an amazing individual process because I can't "show" someone what to hear. In a dance class, you can show me a move, and we get instant feedback via the mirror and/or video camera. Where I'm missing something, it's easy for you to point it out and show me what it should look like. That same approach doesn't work with music, because it's all in our heads.

I'll provide more details on my "Baarns Musicality Principles", and I'll get you additional updates on Doug's progress as we go.

Comments and feedback are always welcomed.

In case you are new to this blog, Doug Fox (of "Dancing Into the Future" fame) and I are working on a project where I'm helping him to find "one" in the music, without ever meeting face-to-face. For details on how this got started, check out the following articles:
Finding "One" over the Wires
Nov 2nd Update
Feb 10 update

Modesty: The gentle art of enhanceing your charm by pretending
not to be aware of it.
-Oliver Herford

Finding "One" Over the Wires: Feb 10 Update

In case you are new to this blog, Doug Fox (of "Dancing into the Future" fame) and I are working on a project where I'm helping him to find "one" in the music, without ever meeting face-to-face. For details on how this got started, check out my Finding "One" over the Wires article and the Nov 2nd Update.

Doug and I had a great phone session a few days ago. I had almost given up on him, as we were both very busy near the holidays and progress was painfully slow since our kick-off e-mails.

One thing that is very clear to me, you can’t do some of this without some interactive sessions, either over the phone or in person. Doug is a very smart guy, but via e-mails I couldn’t tell if he was hearing the one in the right places. I suspect he thought he was right, I wasn't sure, and now we know it wasn’t right at points. I’m not clear if he knew he was wrong some of the time, but I know he was frustrated.

In five minutes over the phone, I realized he was being confused by the guitar groove in our example tune (“Lost Without U” by Robin Thicke, see the video below). The tune is a simple, slow bossa-nova feel, with a bass drum on the 1 and 5 count. That said, everybody hears with different ears, and initially the bass drum wasn’t clear to him. Within a few minutes of him listening to my count, and our discussions of the different sounds, he had an “ah-ha” moment and said something like “Oh… that is very clear now, I don’t know how I missed it.”

"Lost Without U" example tune by Robin Thicke


The reality is that is extremely normal. Just because you hear one aspect of a tune, it's amazing what others are not hearing or hearing differently. My focus can be totally different than yours. Even something very "obvious" to you is often unheard by someone else, especially at the beginning of the process. (If someone has any musical background, they are often miles ahead of the game.)

One of my challenges as an instructor is figuring out what you are hearing or not, because until you hear some of the instruments, combined with learning some "selective focus" techniques, it's not always easy. (I'll expand on "selective focus" in another article.)

After going over some counting fundamentals, we worked on getting the 1 and 5 aligned with the music and practiced counting out loud. We also practiced finding the count by stopping and restarting the tune in the middle, working toward being able to hear it no matter where we are in the song.

Our process includes learning the count to a slower, simpler tune before we start tackling salsa music. If someone can’t hear the time perfectly in simple music, and keep it consistently from beginning to end, they have little chance of getting it right with the complexities of most salsa music. Via e-mail we discussed clave and some other musical concepts, but at this point we are walking before running.

He is also learning Tango, and he asked if these concepts applied to that music. I'm clear that once he gets it with a few tunes, a whole new world will open up across a wide set of dance music.
Our next task is to outline the structure of the music, and fit his counting within the structure of the tunes. This will provide the framework for finding the time across all dance music, and I expect we'll start crossing that bridge in a few weeks or so.

Doug is also documenting our progress and I expect to see something in his blogs soon. I'll cross-post a link here when he goes public with his progress. I can say this process is easy for me in person, but the long distance aspects provide me with plenty to think about.

You'll see additional details later about our exact sessions, and we've made excellent progress so far. I’m now even more confident he’ll be great with the time in the near term. We still have lots of practice and exercises left, and I’ll provide more details as we progress.

When a habit begins to cost money, it's called a hobby.
-Jewish Saying