CHAPTER 4
Counting Music: Finding the Sets of 8
As I see it, I need to maneuver my partner around the dance floor, taking care not to bump into anyone or anything, dancing to the music, spontaneously choreographing a changing and pleasing series of moves, all the while maintaining light conversation.... My, this is difficult, isn't it.
Mr. Data (an android), Star Trek: The Next Generation
I was always suspicious of the counting I heard in dance classes. I like numbers, and I’m a good counter, so it was odd. Dang-it-all, counting confused me! Fear not, I’ve expended endless calories, tortured and maimed untold brain cells and burned through thousands of dollars in dance lessons to make sense of this simple subject.
I believe part of the problem in counting revolves around what is being counted. Although related, there’s a difference between counting music and counting step patterns. This chapter explores counting music and Chapter 9 looks at counting step patterns. For most people, especially men or anyone who believes he or she is rhythmically challenged, I believe learning to count, both the music and step patterns, is the gateway to intermediate-level dancing and above.
For me as a beginner, counting music was hard to pin down because—well, because nobody ever told me how to do it. Not only is it rarely taught in a class, except for one situation (when a teacher counts you in to start a dance, discussed at the end of this chapter), it’s rarely heard in class. Also, I experienced teachers who used musician-lingo whenever they referenced the musical count and that always threw me for a loop. Loops I didn’t need.
Counting music is counting the underlying beats of the music with regards to how the song is structured; it pertains only to the structure of the music—not the pattern being danced—and virtually all dance music is counted the same. Did you hear that? All dance music is counted the same. Okay, one exception, waltz, which is covered in Chapter 18. In this book when I make a reference to “virtually all dance music,” it means all dance music except the waltz.
So, forget all the highfalutin’-hieroglyphic-4/4-time-signature-sheet- music-mumbo-jumbo you’ve been bulldozed with in the past and just remember this: virtually all dance music is counted in sets of 8 beats. It’s as simple as that. Sets of 8 exist because that’s how musicians compose the music; it’s how they give structure to the music. It’s the same way a sentence gives structure to the written word, as you’ll see below. Sets of 8 are important to dancers for a number of reasons but, most importantly, because they identify and define the underlying beat of the music.
I remember the very first time I ever heard the structure of music counted with the help of John, a stranger at a dance bar. This was a big event for me. John caught my eye because the level of his dancing was high, higher than anything I’d ever observed in my local scene. I was dying to know his secret so I approached and asked him why his dancing was so distinctive. He said he was connected to the music—through the count—and he demonstrated. We proceeded to listen to the house band, music I had listened to for years.
He counted the music in sets of 8 beats. He counted eight beats of music—“one two three four five six seven eight”—and then started over. He emphasized each count-1 of the music, the first beat of each set of 8, with his hand. (And, to a lesser degree, he also emphasized each count-5, the fifth beat of a set of 8, with his hand.) Like a conductor in a band, he made punching motions with his hand on all of the first counts and, with his help, I could hear that all the count-1’s were, indeed, naturally emphasized in the music. (Lingo Alert Sometimes the word “count” is omitted and a count-1 is identified as, “the 1 of the music” or just, “the 1”.) Moreover, I could hear that the 1’s were beginning points that signaled the beginning of something new in the melody. The concept of a beginning point was subtle but, if someone identified it for me, I could hear it.
He kept track of the sets of 8 as they passed and identified the bigger structure of the music. He predicted and caught all the big accents and breaks in the music with his hand motions—music, he claimed, he was not familiar with. This went on for song after song and, with his guidance, I could hear that every song had the same basic structure of sets of 8. I thought that maybe it was a trick; perhaps he was the band’s manager or something. Nope. He was just a stranger, first time in town, first time at this joint.
Not only did every song have the same structure, he claimed most popular music had this structure of sets of 8. Nahhh…impossible…surely it worked only for these songs because, well, they’re all from the same band or something. I couldn’t believe it would work for all songs—could it? Is it possible that I had danced for years oblivious to the common structure in virtually all dance music? Was I that detached from the music that no matter how many songs passed me by I couldn’t hear the structure that now screams at me? It’s remarkable that in seven years of dance lessons, nobody had done this demonstration for me before.
While it took time before I could count sets of 8 on my own to a broad spectrum of music and test this earth-shattering hypothesis, he was right: All dance music, except waltz, shares a similar structure. Heck, most popular music, even the knarliest rock or rap you’ve ever heard, probably shares the same repeatable, predictable sets of 8 as dance music.
Sets of 8, which identify the underlying beat and reflect the true structure of the music, are the foundation of counting music. For beginners, counting music is done off the dance floor when you’re not dancing to help you connect to the music. Counting is simple: start on any count-1 and count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, then start over. If you want to count how many sets of 8 go by, count the second set like this: 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; count the third like this: 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; count the fourth set like this: 4, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and so on. In this book, a set of 8 beats looks like this:
Musical Count: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Whether you can hear them or not, sets of 8 are “in” the music. Once you develop your ear—which you will, over time, if you consciously listen for sets of 8—a set of 8 will stand out, with integrity, in much the same way a sentence stands out from within a paragraph. In fact, if the song has vocals, a set of 8 is sometimes a complete sentence or phrase of words and a set of 8 is often called a phrase of music or, more accurately, a mini-phrase.
For me, hearing sets of 8 was a two-part approach. First, I listened for the count-1’s, the first beat of a set of 8. A count-1 stands out because it typically has an emphasis or accent. It also stands out because it’s a beginning point for a piece of the melody so it sounds like a natural place to start something. It’s the same type of feeling you get at the start of a new sentence.
Second, continuing on the written-word analogy, I listened to the melody of the music and tried to hear the “sentences” (the sets of 8). If I could hear, melodically, that I was coming to the end of a “sentence” in the music, then I could predict when the next “sentence” would start. If I predicted correctly, it got confirmed by hearing the accent on the next count-1 and the feeling that, melodically, a new “sentence” had started. Today, I believe this is the primary way I connect to the sets of 8 in the music and much of it is done subconsciously, without thinking. Like the written word, music has themes and these themes are directly related to the musical count.
So what’s the catch? Hearing the count-1’s and sets of 8 is hard. If it were easy to hear I would have heard it on my own and you would be able to hear it on your own and we could all drop this book and go dance. Even after I realized that sets of 8 existed, it took many months of listening and practicing and getting confirmation from others before I could hear the structure and it became second nature. Until I could count sets of 8 I was never 100 percent certain if I was on the beat.
