[Tango-L] tango and rhythm

[larrynla@juno.com]

So how fast is a Quick and a Slow? It depends on the orchestra leader, who sets the 
TEMPO by which his orchestra plays each measure. Early tangos were usually quite 
fast, about a half-second per measure. Tango music evolved from that tempo, partly 
because conservatory-trained musicians from Europe began playing with their 
sophisticated toolkit of techniques. Then a measure might take about a second or, 
if di Sarli was the leader, a second and a half.

So in a second/measure tempo a Slow would be a half second, and a Quick a quarter 
of a second. A dancer would typically step on the 1 and the 3 quarter notes of a 
piece of music written with a 4/4 signature.

You likely noticed the qualifiers in the previous: "about" and "typically" and so 
on. That's because orchestra leaders in the 30s began to vary the tempo with which 
they had their musicians play individual pieces - and the tempo WITHIN a piece.

D'Arienzo was one of the first to do this. He also began to vary the force by which 
his musicians played different parts of a piece: very loud here and very soft 
there. So soft that sometimes dancers had to infer the tempo and the beats of music 
- as here starting at about 1:10 minutes into "La Cumparsita."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y7Cnw99GKQ

As the 1940s passed and dancers became more numerous and more musically 
sophisticated orchestra leaders had to come up with more sophisticated techniques 
to capture and keep dancers and other listeners. One such technique was swapping 
the bass and melody lines. So the beat would be kept by a violin, and the melody by 
the bass viol or the left (bass) hand on the piano.

OK. That decides it. I will send "The Alfar's Husband" to the magazine first, THEN 
"Lady Death." Ciao!

Larry de Los Angeles
http://ShapechangerTales.com



____________________________________________________________
Grow your small business with email marketing. Click Now.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2131/fc/BLSrjnsChw3H6odOtftXTNSIutw331B6MvQpjMtmlWuI7VN2JBO4ZLWPfwc/