[Tango-L] Your milonga secrets

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- On Sun, 12/21/08, Jack Dylan <jackdylan007 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Since you obviously think it''s important, could
> you provide us with an explanation, preferably with examples, of what you
> mean by a 'syncopated rhythm' in milonga?
> 

WARNING, if you don't like to think a lot about the music, delete this post.


I found Korey's explanation in the link that Norman sent a bit unclear if one is not already familiar with syncopa.  So here's the explanation I use that I borrow from Alex Krebs.

Let's start with a base of 4 counts in tango in slow time.  In other words, every time you walk on the main beat in tango, you'll count "1234".  Each "1" is a step on the strong beat.  If you took 2 steps, you'd be counting "12341".  Your weight has the entire time for counts "234" to arrive at where you place your foot at "1".  Get off of the computer and try this first to see what I mean.

For quick time, say for a rock step, you'll end up dancing "1 3 1".  Here, the spaces for beats 2 and 4 are left blank.  I suggest still mentally counting 1234 in your head or out loud, and you'll see that "1 3 1" marks the desired weight positions for a rock step.

A syncopa is either the addition of a beat or a taking away of a beat in an unexpected place.  For example, a rock step that is "12  1".  Here, the spaces for beats 3 and 4 are blank.  The result is something that feel very fast at first, but then hangs like a pause.  Common syncopa variations for tango include:

12  1
1  41
123 1
1 341

I suppose you could skip the "1" but that's never made sense to me.  The feeling of a syncopa is similar in feeling to dancing the "12 1" or "1 31" in vals (which has a normal rhythm of 1231), but that's not considered syncopa because it's not unexpected.

Concerning it's application to milonga, I usually don't think of milonga as having a syncopated rhythm because it happens fairly rarely compared to the other rhythms.  One can also dance syncopated even if the music is not syncopated.  For example, the piano is clearly playing the same milonga rhythm over and over again throughout the piece, but at 39 seconds, the other instruments suddenly stop playing while the piano continues with &341.  The absence of the other instruments is a syncopa, but the piano is not playing syncopa.  So a someone can either dance the syncopa (which is what Gustavo or Giselle do) or dance the milonga rhythm.

Trini de Pittsburgh




Hope this helps.

Trini de Pittsburgh