What's The Use Of Diving?

He Goes:

What is it that makes a song swing? There are technical details of the musical style, of course, and in theory a little adjustment can make any song swing, but on the dance floor personal taste in music doesn't generally revolve around the distance between notes but the whole package - the lyrics, the strength of the beat, the breaks and pauses.

There's a delicate balance in all the variables of a song. My wife (who is more of a ballroom dancer than a swing dancer) likes dancing swing to ballroom jive music because the more regular beat and structure of the music doesn't tempt me to improvise as much. I like songs to be a bit less regular for exactly the opposite reason - where there are interesting features in the music there's room for fun improvisations. But there's a tipping point beyond which songs get basically undanceable - where the jazz noodling obscures the beat, or makes the time signature next-door to pointless.

I can't complain too much about music like this. After all, I've been saying that experimentation and mistakes in dance are one of the sources of creativity, I can hardly deny musicians the same privileges. But there are jazz songs that are on the swing/stride end of the scale and ones that are on the free jazz end of the scale, and somewhere along that line there's a point where only the most experienced dancers have any chance of dancing to the music. The rest of us just have to sit down and wait it out.

So first and foremost, I like a regular beat with some variation rather than a mechanical beat or an unpredictable one. The second most important thing for me in a song is how the story in the lyrics ties to the music.

Sometimes, where there are strong lyrics in a song and an understandable theme, it only takes having danced to it perhaps once or twice for a lead to pick out those features in the lyrics that suggest moves. In a more complicated song it might happen, but for me the ideal is that if a move relates to the lyric in some way it should be obvious to the follow - even if she hasn't heard the song before - that what we just did matched the lyrics. In "Hallelujah I love her so", for instance, stopping to mime knocking on the door during the "if I call her on the telephone" chorus gives almost perfect comic timing - stopping on the break at "I hear her" is the confusing set up where the follow wonders what you're doing. Then there's a split second before the knocking punchline, which resolves the break and is immediately understandable.

I like "Straighten up and Fly Right" for a similar reason, and "So High", but probably my favourite for simple lyrics that make for a fun dance has to be "Watch the Birdie" (this clip, along with the famous scene of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, makes up the scant handful of watchable sections of the - in my opinion - otherwise terrible film "Hellzapoppin'"), which is so full of danceable features and breaks that there's barely a couple of bars in between each opportunity for improvisation.

Finally, it's nice when a song has a relatively predictable ending - a countable crescendo. I understand that it's part of the convention of western music that a tune generally doesn't end with a complete bar, but songs can still have predictability built into its end. A song can be brilliant right up until the last moment and then stop suddenly, prompting confused looks from the dance floor as everyone stops in the middle of a move. Or - more common - a song will have a series of Brucknerian endings that makes it seem less like a dance tune and more like the movie version of "Return of the King". The classic Glenn Miller version of "In the Mood" is like this, for instance - it ends two or three times, and I'm rarely sure whether it's two or three or four when I'm concentrating on dancing. Other than that it's a lovely piece of music to dance to - mellow and spiky in equal measure - but having a memory test at the end does make me curse it sometimes.

If you type 'love swing' into google you will not come up with this sort of image....!

She Goes:

 You know, for someone who listens to and bangs on (and on) about music, how much I love it and  how I can't live without it... I don't often tend to think of it in more detailed terms. I love all music, and if I can swing to it, even better. It doesn't have to be clearly defined as swing, either. (Doing the Tranky Doo to Belle and Sebastian? Check!)

If I like it, I like it. And if I love it, even better.

I came to dancing through my love of music, and it's one of the things that keeps me coming back for more. Dancing (lindy or otherwise) to a tune I adore is one of the best things in life, as far as I'm concerned. I have very eclectic tastes in music, and I'm not just saying that. Put my itunes on shuffle and it could string together some Deftones, Saravah Soul, Cinematic Orchestra, Roni Size, Slim Gaillard...

...But what I listen to most is that good, solid, swinging sound. I'm tapping my feet to it at bus stops, doing 'the vulture' as i bop down the road, making up choreography to song sections on escalators. LOVE!

In terms of my dancing, if I'm standing and I think I can make it to the end of the song, I'll dance it. Even if I have to do it half time or we give in and do balboa steps after the first chorus! Faster and slower songs are an enjoyable challenge, and the reason why I'm thinking of having a dabble in blues and balboa to expand my move reperoire.

In terms of my general enjoyment levels, I do like a nice moderate/moderate-upbeat paced song, and if there's breaks in it, even better! I like being able to have enough space to style it out and actually interact with my lead. I want to have the time to watch what they're doing and respond to it, and to give them the chance to do the same. It's great when we both know the song (or can read it the same way) as it really feels like a collaberation then. Faster songs are fun but it can be more about keeping up with the beat (and each other!) which is also fun, just in a different way.

She Links:

Wrap your lovely ears around THIS. I've been nursing this for a few weeks now, I'm almost sad to stop compiling it!

And in case you missed it, here's a playlist I made for you a couple of weeks ago.

Do me a favour? If you see me without a partner at the beginning of any of these songs, please come and grab me!