This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Musicality 101West coast swing has a reputation for being an incredibly musical dance. While other dances are danced to music, WCS provides the opportunity for both partners to interpret the music to a far greater degree than other dance styles. This series will introduce you [...]

This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Musicality 101When you learned WCS, you learned to distinguish downbeats and upbeats. In musical terms, the downbeat and upbeat are quarter note rhythms: they take up a quarter of a measure, which is the division used in musical scores. A single measure of music for [...]

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series Musicality 101WCS patterns don’t neatly fit into musical phrases. We dance six and eight count patterns, yet our songs have accents on the first beat of each eight beat phrase. Being able to acknowledge those accents when they occur in the middle of a pattern [...]

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Musicality 101At this point, you know that (WCS) music is written in eight beat phrases and you know how to point on the 1 of each phrase. Now it’s time to talk about why we point on the 1. This will require some music theory, [...]

This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series Musicality 101In an earlier post, we talked about chord progressions in pop music. The standard pop chord progression relies on I, IV, and V chords to create tension and resolve. In this post, we’re going to compare pop chord progressions to blues chord progressions. The [...]

This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Musicality 101The last post in this series compared the chord progressions in blues music with pop music in order to explain why some songs are built with 32-beat paragraphs, or major phrases, and other songs have 48-beat phrases. The next step is to practice listening [...]

This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series Musicality 101If you’ve followed this series so far, you have spent a lot of time listening to music and counting out musical phrases. However, counting to 32 or 48 is not realistic when you’re actually dancing, and counting to 8 can even be difficult during [...]