This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Music and CountingThe first part of this series introduced the difference between straight and rolling counts in west coast swing. In this post, we will introduce the third kind of count common in WCS music: the swung count. As we saw earlier, the rolling count… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: timing
Finding the Beat
The essence of dancing is movement to music, so being able to find the beat in a song is extremely important. Being able to move on the beat for any kind of dance requires skill, and this is particularly true for west coast swing because WCS music tends to feature breaks, syncopations, and other unique… Continue Reading
Rolling Count: Dancing Rolling Triples
One of the biggest keys to dancing rolling triples is using the rolling count. In a rolling triple, the middle step (what we normally call the &) is closer to the upbeat than the downbeat. In order to push the middle step later in the beat, we divide the beat into 3 parts rather than… Continue Reading
Rhythm Units
Almost all dances can be broken into 2-beat units of a downbeat and an upbeat. Each unit of the dance, in turn, can have a different number of weight changes and can have those weight changes occur at different times. To keep track of the “how many” and “when” of weight changes, we use rhythm… Continue Reading
Straight and Rolling Counts
This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Music and CountingIn west coast swing, there are three common ways to count music: straight count, rolling count, and swung count. This post will discuss straight count and rolling count; a follow-up post will take up the differences between rolling and swung counts. At a… Continue Reading