Tricky Time Signatures
By Aaron Wulff
One of the most frequent questions I get as a dance instructor is, “what kind of dance can I do to this song?” When someone asks this question they’re looking for an answer like foxtrot, waltz, swing, or salsa.
If you’ve got a first dance song you want to use for your wedding, your dance instructor is going to listen to it and prescribe one of these (or perhaps another) basic step.
I’ve been paid to do this for years, and I’m relatively good at it.
Along the way, however, I would get into disputes with other instructors about certain songs. Specifically, there were three of them:
“At Last” by Etta James,
“Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers,
“Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley.
And it always goes something like this:
“This is 4 counts. Use a Rumba box,” one person proclaimed.
“That’s a waltz. No question,” my colleague would reply.
“That’s a canter box,” shouted another instructor on the other side of the studio.
Meanwhile the wedding couple is standing in the middle of the room while the professionals argue about their song, wondering which one of us they’re supposed to believe.
“Don’t listen to them,” I would tell the couple reassuringly.
So who’s right in this instance?
The dirty secret is all of them. These songs are built on a rhythm that contains two dances at once. How can that be? David Bawiec unravels this mystery with the perfect analogy. Inception. “What I love about 12/8 is that it’s a little bit like a musical version of Inception. It’s 4/4 time with a 3/4 hidden inside of each beat.”
Obviously I’m not a musicologist and this isn’t a music theory lesson, but if you want to read up on what the numbers mean you can check out this article on time signatures.
Ok, so what? Here’s why any of this matters to you.
If you bring a song like this to your instructor and they lock onto the three beat, they’ll tell you it’s a Viennese waltz. If they lock onto the four beat, they’ll recommend a rumba or perhaps a canter rumba. They’re not disagreeing about the song. They’re just hearing different layers of it.
In theory, you’ve got a choice. In practice, the options aren’t equal. A rumba is easier than a Viennese waltz, full stop. It’s more forgiving, it gives you room to breathe, and you won’t spend your first dance counting beats in your head. The waltz version is beautiful when it works, but it’s a harder dance, especially if you’re starting from zero.
Knowing the difference going in will help you, because you might get a very different style of dance from your instructor if you’re not careful, especially if you simply take the instructor’s word for it and they steer you toward something more challenging than necessary.
And if an instructor insists there’s only one correct answer for your song, that’s useful information too. About the instructor.
