[Tango-L] Sycopation problem ?

[TangoDC.com]

Please see my comments below...

Melroy wrote:
> Hey Jake, I don't really have a problem with syncopation. 
> Its just more fun to do it than to write (or read) about.
Hey Melroy: I agree. But I also enjoy analysis, and insightful thoughts 
about technique and the medium. Shame on multi-faceted me, I suppose.
> And none of us are going to transcribe, accurately, some little book of traspie variations that others can use for study and practice.      Are we? (ooh that's a thought).
>   
Uh... why the hell not? Whatever happened to curiosity? Exploring these 
things in detail can lead to wonderful discovery. I'm largely an 
intuitive thinker, and I find that formal systems such as these get me 
Inside the stuff, like a kid who starts seeing his blanket as a rolling 
arrangement of dunes...

But at any rate, Mauricio Castro is probably already writing that book.
> Anyway  .......   Syncopation is the stressing of normally un-stressed beats in a bar.
>   
That's yet another way of putting it, yes. And usually when people are 
confused, they're just waiting for the explanation that makes it click 
for them, so I'm glad to see it phrased thus.
> If you tap just ever so slightly before of after the beat this is also syncopation (harder to annotate). If you tap along on the stressed beats and all of a sudden don't tap one, just catch your foot in the air for that one, and then continue, that's also
> syncopation.
>   
Indeed. You're talking about some of my favorite toys too. "Grace notes" 
and such... But I don't confine myself to tapping or adornments, not 
remotely... Since the "beat" in tango music is often coming not from a 
drum-kit, but from a bowed string bass or a vamped bellows, I think 
that's a crucial aspect to creative musicality as well. The beat is 
large-- larger than our dots on paper, anyway. There are so many ways to 
step on it, with it, through it-- it's a constant area of interest. 
Stage choreography that doesn't take this into account is, I find, 
rather grating on the eye. And unwittingly reductive-- grating on the mind.
> Oh and Jake, 'superimposed patterns' sounds more like polyrhythm, playing (or dancing), for example, a measure of say three even beats over a bar of four even beats. Or 7 over 3. Or 11 over 17 if you're Frank Zappa.
>   
Yes, I mentioned polyrhythms. Which are another mode of syncopation. But 
all syncopation is one pattern (the variation) applied to another 
pattern (the base beat, or whatever it's called). It's all figure & 
ground, which should be a familiar concept to anyone who's studied 
visual arts, or read _Godel, Escher, Bach_, or any of perhaps a hundred 
other stimulating things, or ever stared at a yin-yang without getting 
drowsy. This is why I also mentioned rests, which themselves can be 
syncopated, and which I tend to Feel more palpably (as "hang-time" 
perhaps) when I'm dancing polyrhythmically. And all of these modes can 
be combined with each other. I love it. (So, apparently, did Biagi, in 
whose music you can hear the stuff quite clearly presented. Not that he 
is unique in this... I just find it has more aggressive, more 
hard-outline styling...)
> Sometimes Tango (dance etc) teachers use musical terms that are not really accurate for what they are trying to explain. However we usually know what they mean don't we? Especially if they show us.
> I can read music, but I prefer not to think about dancing in terms of
> crotchets and semi-quavers etc.
>   
When I'm dancing, I prefer not to think at all. My body does it for me. 
But I'm not dancing right now. I'm sitting here writing. And I'm going 
to write about dance. I hope that's allowed here.

As for musical terms and their use in class... I don't normally use 
them, because I find sound-effects far more effective. Or, say, playing 
a song for listening purposes. But if someone else wants to... well, big 
deal. Some people understand those terms; some people understand other 
terms. Which is why I, for my part, try to explain things from multiple 
angles, with frequent metaphors. Familiarity with poetic technique comes 
in very handy here too. I'll try fishing for something in the Kamasutra 
about syncopation, but I don't know that I'll find anything I couldn't 
already describe in much funnier terms.

At any rate, I've always seen students work together, and ask each other 
for explanations when they come up conceptually short. I encourage the 
practice. I did it when I was that student. The free exchange of ideas, 
between students, and between teachers, would really be a nice Permanent 
addition to the tango learning process. If only we could all stop 
clinging to Definition 1 of words, if only we could ask more honest 
questions, if only we could stop being so goddamn jaded about things, 
and realize there's a body of knowledge here worth examining from every 
possible angle, with every possible tool, at every possible zoom... and 
that no one person owns Any of it...

But hell, I'm no utopian. I'm just a normal guy for whom synonyms are 
Different meanings.

Why, by the way, do I keep seeing attempts, by some of the 30 or so 
people who post here, to shut down detailed discourse on this dance-- or 
at least to encourage others to develop a bad taste for it? I mean, 
there are 1,000 or so readers here, no? You think they read because they 
find this shit boring? You think they're hungry to Not read about this 
dance?

Or maybe I'm just misreading tone in certain messages. Or maybe others 
are mis-writing it-- these things could always go either way.

Jake Spatz
Washington, DC