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Social Dance Mastery
364 members • $47/month
3 contributions to Social Dance Mastery
3d •
Building a confidence progression for musicality
Hi @Musa Starseed , You have a lot of stuff curated re: the history of salsa and different aspects of musicality. I'm working through the 30 day transformation right now. As I go through it, one thing lingers in the back of my mind. I know individual instruments that focus on the down beat pretty well. When I play them individually or even 2-3 at a time, I can catch the rhythm pretty fast. However, listening to a real salsa song, there is just an insane amount of variety and different instruments and patterns. My mind just panics and sort of gives up. I'm talking about the problem of finding the one and dancing to the pulse. I feel like without this ability all other patterns and stuff I learn in group and private sessions are just not that useful. Is that the right approach - focus deeply on rhythm and musicality first? People say if you listen to a lot of salsa, your mind kind of internalizes it. I'm just not so sure if it works like that for me. Asking the people in my life for help is like asking fish how to swim - they don't consciously think about swimming, they just do it if you put them in water. I feel like I'm a colour blind person and everyone is describing how to see colours easily, and it's just not clicking for me. Do you have a progression of easy to hard salsa songs that I can work through and build some confidence like a step-by-step ladder so I can train my brain out of this negative feedback loop it's kind of stuck in?
5d •
Musicality question about the Bass
Hi @Musa Starseed , my salsa teacher, who's an amazing dancer worked through some rhythm and finding 1 exercises with me. She says to block out all instruments except the BASS, which she relies on for finding the 1. She says there is a tension and relaxation cycle between the 1 and the 8. But when researching online, I found the bass is very frequently "syncopated", so I'm not sure if that's a good strategy now. She is right that my problem is I'm listening to too many sources of information, and I need to strip it down to something simple. I'm not sure what that looks though. Thanks for any guidance!
0 likes • 5d
> we have found more success helping people find the 1 by starting with non-syncopated rhythmic tumbaos … such as the cow bell… the maracas… then we move to the syncopated rhythms such as the conga and the piano montunos @Musa Starseed Her point that the bass is much more common and reliably found, which is true. I showed you in the tapping exercise in my other question. Once non-syncopated instruments are clearly identifiable, I can get the pulse. But when the reliable instruments fade out and 6 other instruments jump in my brain just panics. > The bass can be played non-syncopated but the bass really helps For people wanting to get their on2 timing because of the natural energy lead the bass gives in it’s syncopation I'm confused enough with on1 currently. ;)
9d •
Day 4 counting bars
The music clip at at 26:45 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcif91msZcs , is supposed to be 16 bars. I counted 5 times and could only get 14 bars, or 12 bars a few times. Can you confirm it is 16? It would help to annotate the music with on screen with counts? I'm really confused about this.
0 likes • 6d
@Musa Starseed Yes, I understand point that adding too many crutches can sometimes hinder learning. It's not stopping me, as I had my 12 year old show me how to count to 16 bars for this segment. He doesn't care much about music or dance or salsa, but rhythimcally just "gets it". It's actually very annoying. I've attached my tapping pattern below - the bottom are my taps the the top is the "ideal". The problem is I'm tapping according to the piano's played notes at the beginning and it is not the pulse of the song. Does that make sense? Do you have any resources for this?
0 likes • 5d
> Where did you get the tapping transcription from? @Musa Starseed I made a program just to analyze this segment, split it up into equalized bands, show idealized bars, and record taps on my keyboard to visualize exactly where I'm getting thrown off. > your Listening to the pianos melody and its sort of getting you off track of the rhythmic meter? That's exactly right. I find this happens a lot when I lose track of the "1". In my tapped pattern by bar 4 the maracas come in and I tapped very close to the ideal 130 bpm. > I know some amazing ways to get this integrated… if you are interested! Show me the way! Please!
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