A Quick Note On Training Bands To Play For Dancers
Recently asked: Wouldn’t it be great to do an article on how to train modern Jazz bands to play better for dancers?
Indeed. I think such an article, if done right, would require me interviewing quite a few musicians and dancers and researching the thoughts of the original big band musicians and jazz philosophers. Until I can do so, I had a few quick notes on the subject.
First off, I’ve asked this question in some way to every band leader I’ve interviewed. Check out their responses below.
In addition to what those guys say, a few tips I think help a group get started:
1.
Short songs, around three minutes or under. Even the greatest swing bands in the world would tire a dance floor out with five minute songs where every band member gets a few solo choruses per song. (Concerning local bands beginning to play for dancers, this is usually the biggest problem that is easiest to fix that for some reason hardly ever gets fixed.)
2.
A range of tempos appropriate for the primary dance being done. This is trickier, because it requires some homework on behalf of the band. They should know that a dance floor of beginner Lindy Hoppers is going to have vastly different appropriate tempos and range of tempos than a dance floor of advanced Lindy Hoppers, which will be different than a Shag/Balboa event. A band will have to learn how to read the
floor. (A good rule of thumb is that beginners are usually there at the beginning of the night, the advanced dancers later.)
3.
Flow of tempos. The tempos should vary but flow from one into the other without too far of a jump. So, no constantly having bipolar tempos changes. It’s rough dancing to a band that plays 120 followed by 230 followed by 115 followed by 270. To a listening audience, the jump is no big deal. To a dancer, it has a subtly powerful effect on the night’s dancing.
4.
Rhythm section has to know their jazz rhythms and be solid at all their tempos. The rhythm section can’t be the weakest part of the band.
This is a weird analogy, but I think it’s a fitting one: A boat pulls a water skier over the water so that the water skier can use the momentum to surf and freestyle in the wake. If the dancer is the water skier, then the boat is the rhythm section. Imagine water-skiing behind a boat that surges with drops or increases in speed or bumps along the ripple of the water, rather than one that glides across the water with smooth momentum.
(See Jonathan Stout’s interview link below for more opinions on this point.)
5.
If the soloists can improvise in a *somewhat* predictable manner, it’s fantastic. By predictable I mean that they use clear phrasing, they reinforce the theme of the main melody, they use repetition and allusions and musical “alliteration,” and they attempt to create a narrative with their solo that a dancer can follow along to. A person who solos in a more modern style, with unpredictable tangents and rhythms, or a stream-of-consciousness style, can be very sophisticated and fulfilling for a listener — but if the dancer can’t in some sense follow it along, the dancer won’t be able to “process it” and dance with it. (Check out Illinois Jacquet’s famous sax solo on 1942′s “Flying Home” to get an idea of the use of narrative, repetition, and theme that a dancer can follow along with. Of course, we’re not expecting every solo to be this incredible. Enjoy this NPR documentary on Illinois and the solo here.)
That’s the difference between dancers and listeners: a listener follows the music with their ears, a dancer follows it with their feet. It’s much easier to follow along to something with your ear than with your feet. Musicians wanting to really play for dancers need to know this.
It might be surprising to musicians that expressing your music for dancers to express themselves to is intrinsically different than what most of them have been used to their entire lives; expressing themselves simply for listeners to listen to.
So, a good swing musician for dancers will look for the response to their music in how the dancers are dancing to it.
This is not saying a soloist can’t switch it up and throw down a challenge. But they can still keep the dancers in mind when they do so. For instance, if a soloist throws out a wild and tricky rhythm, we dancers love it if they repeat that rhythm a few more times in the course of their solo to give the dancers a chance to look for it and express it in their dancing.
6.
A small tip for Gypsy-swing manouche style bands: It’s best if they have at least one instrument — like a clarinet or a violin — that can resonate notes longer than a pluck, so that dancers don’t have a long night of interpreting the short plinks of picking guitars. Beautiful, but melodically repetitive (in my opinion) for three sets of dancing. Otherwise, having a good and appropriate range of tempos is a good rule for these groups to follow. Gypsy swing was one of the first forms of swing music that was primarily meant to be listened to; its home is often in break-neck rhythms or slow, minor-note ballads. So, these bands might need to pay special attention to tempos and song length if they are not used to playing for dancers.
So, there are a few thoughts. Below are the thoughts of band leaders I’ve interviewed here.
Paul Cosentino
Boilermaker Jazz Band
“Mainly just making sure that the tunes were not too long. Each solo generally should just be one chorus instead of as many as you want. You don’t want to kill anyone out there. Other than that, it is not too much different from playing a concert- change up the tempos so that it doesn’t get boring, pass the vocals around. It’s not too complicated if you just give it a little thought.”
In an interview I did with Jonathan Stout the bulk of the article was centered around this question, mostly focusing on the rhythm. A video interview I did with Josh Collazo, his drummer, explained a few things even more.
Glenn Crytzer
“Well, there’s no one single thing, it depends on the crowd and the night, but it definitely makes it easier to know what dancers are feeling when you know how to dance. Overall I think that the most important things are probably to have a good mix of tempos, to play arrangements, and to have the right style.
A lot of bands really don’t play anything that’s mid tempo because it’s, IMHO, the hardest music to swing on. I try to pick a lot of charts in the 130-180bpm range for our sets. Of course someone’s always going to complain about any band and say that there’s not enough mid tempo music because everyone has a different idea of what they consider to be mid tempo. I think live music generally feels faster to dancers as well because it has 10x the energy of a recording and so it’s more demanding of dancer’s energy at any speed. I usually try to keep a BPM counter and a metronome on the bandstand with me to make sure we’re hitting lots of tunes in the range.
Arrangements are another important thing when it comes to playing for dancers. Even if they’re simple arrangements it really makes a difference; I find it boring as a dancer to hear a band play head tunes all night. It’s a dance, not a jam session – a good band leader respects that. Honestly, it’s a giant pain in the ass to write arrangements and actually find people who can both play them and who also understand the style, but it’s essential and pays off so it’s worth it in the end.
The style is a tricky thing. About 90% of jazz musicians think they get it, about 10% actually get it. I try to only play with ones who do. Of course there are other more subtle details to this as well but I suppose those are my trade secrets. :)”
Glenn says : “About 90% of jazz musicians think they get it, about 10% actually get it.”
I think this is a huge point and applies to everything in this article. Almost everyone who’s EVER played for dancers, including some who have made careers out of it, think they have all this stuff nailed. Usually not so much. Every single item listed here is something even experienced dance bandleaders should check back in with regularly to see if they’re REALLY doing it, or just kind of tipping their hat to these ideas and moving on. Recording your own concerts can really help with self-honesty.
Finally, on an unrelated note – It’s my personal opinion that there’s no “charleston rhythm”, and that the difference between 1920′s bands and 1940′s bands is a long stretchy continuum with a lot of side-roads, detours, and interesting exceptions. A lot of the most exciting music is from the early thirties, and there is no doubt that they have found THE SWING ;) and yet the rhythm section will still regularly use various 20′s patterns and schtick. Side-note to my side-note: I also frown a bit when people talk about “balboa music” as if that made any kind of historical sense. I think both of these terms may be a dancer’s instinct to simplify a complex set of phenomena, and express the stripped-down versions in dancer terminology. Not that it’s not a good starting point… just that the truth is, as usual, a lot more nuanced.
-a guy who DJ’s a lot of 40′s music and doesn’t think it’s weird to play in a dixieland band
Hey Michael,
(1) Regarding “swing” — In light of your comments I realize the word is perhaps not suitable to getting the point across without confusion. Have updated it.
Once Read:
Rhythm section has to know how to swing. Really swing, and be solid at their tempos. (Assuming it’s a swing band and not a more Charleston-rhythm band we’re talking about.) The rhythm section can’t be the weakest part of the band.
Now Reads:
Rhythm section has to know their jazz rhythms and be solid at all their tempos. The rhythm section can’t be the weakest part of the band.
(2) Regarding “Balboa” music — if you were referring to the mention of “Shag/Balboa” in the article above… I intended it only to relate to the *range of tempos* appropriate for Balboa dancers and is not meant to imply there is a “type” of Balboa music different from “Lindy Hop music.” I do however, feel there is a different range of tempos for a comfortable night of Balboa swing dancing than a comfortable night of Lindy Hopping.
Whether there is a “Balboa type” of music or not is indeed a subject for a different article.
(3) thanks, as always, for your valuable insight and taking the time to share it.
Oh, I wasn’t referring to what you said at all! Just seemed like a related topic, so I decided to do some good old-fashioned shakin’-the-fist-in-the-air. Keep up the good work!
I got into a debate with my alto sax player over the use of the word swing, which has a broader meaning in the jazz world than the one we attribute to it. We argued for almost a half hour before Lucian pointed out that he was using swing as a verb and I was using it as an adjective. Something can swing, but not be swing. Someone more qualified than me should probably elaborate, but I thought the distinction important, given your point #4.
@Laura – Yeah, any sax player who didn’t, on their own, discover and fall in love with 1930′s-’40′s jazz is going to have a very different idea of “swing” and may generally be very difficult to communicate with. If they also play clarinet, you may be in luck LOL. I’ve had so much better luck with trumpet players, for some reason.
I’ve been lurking reading your blog for a little while now. But feel prompted to post. I play folk music (not tried jazz before), but music for dancing is a particular interest for me. I’ve always been told when playing for ceilidh/barndance (a) always play to the feet of the best dancers in the room (b) you can’t play dance music really well till you’ve at least tried to learn to dance (I think the person who said that was expecting me to take up ceilidh or morris dancing rather than lindy hop. lol!). I’ve been fascinated by how to play to make dancers respond to the music in a mutually beneficial way since I went to a workshop on ‘playing for dance’ and got told how the way you play, the ‘cues’ you put in give a signal to the dancers as to how to dance. e.g. to leap higher or travel further across the floor.
And just to add to the ‘swing’ discussion in folk you can have a swung (dotted) or straight hornpipe.
Another great article by Mr. White. We are lucky to have someone who takes the time to explore swing dancing in such detail. Its history, style, music, social dynamics, and later resurgence, are all part of why we love doing what we do. Learning more about these aspects gives depth to our experience on and off the dance floor. Thank you for sharing your thoughts—and those of other figures in the scene–with the rest of us mere mortals.
I think Glenn is definitely on the right track. I was actually a professional musician for 8 years after going to university for jazz and now I teach lindy-hop and balboa more than I play. I started writing a manifesto for musicians on this exact topic and if I could nail down one of the biggest points it’s the idea of arrangements and respect for the material of the time. So many younger bands just grab a fakebook and do what they always do and it always comes out as terribly bland music to dance to (and in my opinion, to listen to as well). Head, solo, solo, solo, solo, head out, count basie ending. Admittedly I’ve called this on a gig myself, but if you want to play for dancers (I think, one of the best gigs you can get) you have to get a lot deeper in source material and really play what was hot in that era. Arrangements with breaks, shots, solis (where horns play a feature melodic line together that’s not the melody), and solos that have some form and function to them other than showing everyone your awesome altered side-stepping. One day when I finish the manifesto I’ll send it this way and see if it can add anything to the discussion. As it it, great article!
One thing, with regard to the above, that I’ve been reflecting on lately is the difference between “making great music for dancing the lindy hop” and “making music great music for the modern lindy hop dances scene.”
This dichotomy has always been present in our modern scene – 10 years ago we thought Gene Harris was great lindy hop music 5 years before that we thought Elvis was “danceable” (I put that word in quotes because I hate it). Over the last 10 years our musical tastes have grown closer and closer to the music that our dance was created to, but we still have very different taste in what we’d like to hear at a dance from what people 75 years ago would have expected and wanted to hear.
My assumption is that we’ll continue to move in the “old timey” direction as we have been. If that happens then it’d be my guess that many of the things that we consider to be the most important aspects of a “good dance band” will change. Our focus will be more on authentic sound and style: real pianos, vintage instrumental tone, minimal amplification, large kick drums, thin cymbals, stylistic playing, good arranging, original music, and other factors that would make a band sound like a good dance band from 75 years ago, while our focus will be less on song lengths, tempos, and the variety of styles a single band can play – all important to us because of our growth out of a DJ culture but not so important during the swing era as those elements varied greatly.
Yes yes, completely. I think a few DJ’s are “there”, meaning they’ve arrived at “music that was created for lindy hop/swing dancing”, and they reinforce that sound wherever they go. Now, at large events at least, the bands should feel ready to bring it; the age of novelty “danceable” sub-genres and side-genres is done, and we’re arriving at a historically-minded consensus. All that’s left is to embrace it with no backwards glances.
Reblogged this on Generation: Swing and commented:
This is a wonderful post about something I’m quickly learning to deal with.
As musician, as dancer, we share a language. The Jazz language. African Characteristics as the steady pulse or beat, the chase ( Jam, Battle ), building a circle of clapping, shouting support ( Riff section ) featuring a solo ( to foster the common spirit ), the collective expressing community ( Line dance ). As musicians, as dancers lets keep this concept in mind among musicians and towards dancers and vice versa. I don ‘t think Tempo and lenght are not of such importance as long as we are “in touch”. So yes, it all has a spiritual aspect. We all know those moments when the drive is in the air. It is hot, steamy, crazy. Time becomes irrelevant. Rare moments, but once you were part of this big interaction, you know: that ‘s it ! That is why we love this music, this dance.
Thanks for your great blog, Bobby!
I think a big bonus for dancers is a band with good arrangements, as opposed to a group which relies on soloists or jamming. Arrangements with repeated phrases, breaks, bridges to add interest, or quotes from other tunes are all elements that the dancers can all pick up on and react to … making the tunes differentiated from each other.
Of course not playing 8 minutes of crazy fast solos at a time and killing all those left on the dancefloor helps too… (i think the main reason this happens is a lot of bands are used to padding out their sets with long solos … which many non-dancing audiences will appreciate)
…also a drummer who can actually play swing (rarer than you would think)… its much better to have a tight swinging rhythm section without a drummer than a bad drummer …
anyway always good to share thoughts …. many a decent band are not great to dance to…
I actually send out a “Notes to Bandleaders” to all new bands that play at my club. Here’s what it says:
Rusty’s Notes to Bandleaders
First of all, I want to thank you and your musicians for playing at Rusty’s
Rhythm Club! I can’t tell you how much joy it brings me to be able to
support live swing music. I have been working hard to create a dance
community that values live music and supports it with the almighty buck. I
have successfully been running a weekly swing dance with live music since
1998!
I have observed that the following suggestions will make for a fabulous
evening for you and the dancers:
- Song Length:
Suggested length 3 to 3 1/2 minutes. Dancers may get winded and run out of
ideas if the songs are too long. Lindy Hop is like sprinting, it’s easy to
go fast for a short amount of time. Also, dancers enjoy dancing with many
different people, and if the songs are too long, they’ll have fewer dances.
If a dancer gets “stuck” with a bad, dangerous, stinky, etc. partner,
dancing for a long song is a living hell.
- Pacing:
Keep it moving (no long breaks between tunes).
Dancers love songs one after another. If there is a long pause
between songs, dancers will stand around waiting for the next song. This
brings down the energy of the evening.
- Tempos
Bringing the tempos up and down on a curve is best. Don’t go from a
fast song to a slow song (people are sweating like crazy
from the fast one, and then dripping all over their partner on the slow
one!)
- Set Lists
The evening works best when the band leaders use a set list. It is helpful
for our DJs to prepare their tunes for set breaks (this makes sure they
don’t play something you are going to play!)
The bottom line: You know you’re doing it right if the floor is packed!
Use your own observation to feel if the energy in the room is high. Adjusting is easy to do.
If you have any concerns or questions, feel free to ask me. I’ll be wandering around near the bandstand throughout the evening.
Your performance is the most important element of the club! I thank you
personally, and on behalf of the all the dancers who enjoy your music.
I also offer FREE swing dance lessons to band leaders. Three have taken me up on it, including Bill Elliott, and they each said it really made them understand what I was talking about … especially the 3 minute song suggestion.
Hmmmmmm. This is all very interesting and amusing to me. Please carry on.
What has become the WEB page “How To Play For Dancing”
was posted on line in 1992.