WCS timing, swing timing

[MartinHarper]

A question that's been bothering me for a bit.

Are WCS triple-steps meant to be danced "swung" or "straight"?
Additionally, is WCS meant to be danced to music that is "swung" or "straight" or both?

[clevedonboy]

Originally Posted by MartinHarper

A question that's been bothering me for a bit.

Are WCS triple-steps meant to be danced "swung" or "straight"?
Additionally, is WCS meant to be danced to music that is "swung" or "straight" or both?

swung triples, swing music BUT

in practice a lot f WCS tracks (e.g. love potion number 9) are cha cha cha so are straight leading to straight triples if your feet are following the music. Socially it makes no difference. David F posted something about this WRT competitions though

[Lindsay]

Some answers can be found @ www.swingworld.com/articles.htm
Re. straight/swung, depends on the music, both work.

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by clevedonboy

swung triples, swing music BUT

in practice a lot f WCS tracks (e.g. love potion number 9) are cha cha cha

Unless I am much mistaken the triple step in a cha cha is on a different beat of the bar to the triple step in wcs, though.

[straycat]

Originally Posted by El Salsero Gringo

Unless I am much mistaken the triple step in a cha cha is on a different beat of the bar to the triple step in wcs, though.

You are not even slightly mistaken

(although a scary number of people don't ever seem to figure it out)

[Mr Cool]

Originally Posted by straycat264

You are not even slightly mistaken

(although a scary number of people don't ever seem to figure it out)

Not as scary as the number of dancers who think triple steps should be danced regardless of what the music is doing.

[Caro]

Originally Posted by El Salsero Gringo

Unless I am much mistaken the triple step in a cha cha is on a different beat of the bar to the triple step in wcs, though.

ok I'm probably just going to reveal my own ignorance here (for a start I don't dance chacha and I don't know what MH means by swung or straight - would be nice if somebody explained though ), but:
- yes you should start WCS by dancing 2 normal steps on 1,2 and then triple on counts 3,4,5 and 6 (assuming it's a 6 beats pattern) but with a mixture of 6/8 beats and more complex patterns then you could end up doing the triple steps at any time, couldn't you?
- Although it is generally a good idea to begin a major phrase with a new pattern (hence step step on 1,2 and triple on 3,4 then it varies with the pattern), there are also other ways of phrasing the music (well if I remember correctly from Jordan and Tatiana musicology DVD ).
- And anyway you can syncopate at pretty much any time as well to fit something you hear in the music...

So is there really beats to which it is 'incorrect' to triple in west coast ?

I know I tend to triple a lot even in MJ if the song is bluesy/swingy, I can't help it my feet seem to have their own will ...

[Caro]

just found some stuff that might be useful although fairly technical
- just in case I wasn't the only one not to know the difference between 'swung' and 'straight'

In music, a swung note or shuffle note is the rhythmic device in which the duration of the initial note in a pair is augmented and that of the second is diminished. A swing or shuffle rhythm is the rhythm produced by playing repeated pairs of notes in this way. Lilting can refer to swinging, but might also indicate syncopation or other subtle ways of interpreting and shaping musical time.

In some jazz music, especially of the big band era, there is a convention that pairs of written eighth notes are not played equally--as the notation would otherwise be understood--but with the first longer than the second. The first note of each of these pairs is often understood to be twice as long as the second, implying a triplet feel, but in practice the difference is rarely that pronounced (see "amount of swing," below). This is an assumed convention of notation in many styles of jazz, but usually does not apply to jazz before the early 1930s, latin jazz, bebop, or to the work of composers writing in the 1950s or later, unless "swing" is specified in the score.

Notes that are not swung are known as straight notes.

[Dorothy]

Interesting reading,not sure if I get it, but I can recognise music that "swings".

I didn't think West Coast Swing music 'swung' though (on the whole)?

[timbp]

Originally Posted by Dorothy

Interesting reading,not sure if I get it, but I can recognise music that "swings".

I didn't think West Coast Swing music 'swung' though (on the whole)?

Vaguely relevant article: http://www.swing-dancer.com/200603C.html

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by Caro

but with a mixture of 6/8 beats and more complex patterns then you could end up doing the triple steps at any time, couldn't you? ...
So is there really beats to which it is 'incorrect' to triple in west coast ?

No, to the first, yes to the second.

In WCS your triple must be on 3 & 4, or 1 & 2, (or 5 & 6 or 7 & 8 if you're counting up to 8 across 2 bars)

In a ballroom cha cha your triple step is 4 & 1. (or 4 & 5 and 8 & 1 if you count to 8 across two bars)

There's no way in Lindy or WCS (as far as I know) to switch to dancing on the back-beat like you do in a Cha Cha. You can do it in Ceroc and it's downright weird.

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by Caro

I don't know what MH means by swung or straight - would be nice if somebody explained though

Straight triplets: think one-and-two, three-and-four

Swung triplets: think one a-two, three a-four

[spindr]

Originally Posted by El Salsero Gringo

Straight triplets: think one-and-two, three-and-four

Swung triplets: think one a-two, three a-four

From the mists of memory there is a counting scheme suitable for expressing syncopations.

1 n e n and n a n 2 n e n and n a n 3, etc., etc.

the gap between each "word" is 1/8th of a beat long.

So, "1 and 2, 3" becomes

• "1"
• wait half a beat
• "and"
• wait half a beat
• "2"
• wait a full beat
• "3"

this is a "cha-cha-cha" rhythm.

Similarly, "1 a 2, 3" becomes

• "1"
• wait three-quarters of a beat
• "a"
• wait a quarter of a beat
• "2"
• wait a full beat
• "3"

this is a "strict" jive triple step.

Obviously, you can play with the timing so that you vary things -- you may need to, to fit the music well.

SpinDr

P.S. Of course, some teachers just get confused and call all sorts of odd timings, e.g. mixing "and" with "a", etc. -- they seem to be frightened of explaining timing. My favourite is when they try to make the steps in a cha-cha-cha take equal amounts of time, i.e. 2/3rds of a beat each, ugggh!
P.P.S. See also http://www.afterfive.co.uk/guide/lat...ce_styles.html if you like your rhythms in a more musical notation.

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by El Salsero Gringo

No, to the first, yes to the second.

In WCS your triple must be on 3 & 4, or 1 & 2, (or 5 & 6 or 7 & 8 if you're counting up to 8 across 2 bars)

Can't find the link now, but I'm sure I've seen 1 2 & 3 4 5 & 6 (or possibly 1 2 & 3 4 & 5 6) as an alternative timing for straight eighths music. And of course if the count starts on beat 3, then you'd have 3 4 & 1 2 ... so the "triple" falls in the same place as Cha Cha.
In a ballroom cha cha your triple step is 4 & 1. (or 4 & 5 and 8 & 1 if you count to 8 across two bars). (N.B. I'm saying a triple can fall on 4 & 1 without it being a gross error, not that there's a mode of WCS dancing where tripling on 4 & 1 is the norm).

Straight triplets: think one-and-two, three-and-four

Swung triplets: think one a-two, three a-four

Basically this is correct, but I think you either mean "triple steps" (talking about the dancing) or "eighths" (talking about the music). Triplets have a specific musical meaning and at least to me, the mere mention of them strongly implies the music is "swung".

I don't know if this will help anyone, but here's my understanding of how this all works in terms of the music, and what "eighths", "triplets" and "swung eighths" actually mean. It's probably old hat to most of you, but I was confused for ages about what "eighths" meant, here's a bit of explanation as I understand it:

Firstly, an eighth is not an eighth of a beat, as I naively thought for many years . It's an eighth of a bar, and as a bar has four beats, it's actually half a beat.

So with straight eighths, we're dividing each beat up into two, and so we have:

Eighths: 1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8---1
Beats:.. 1---&---2-------3---&---4-------1

Now a lot of jazz actually divides each beat up into three, or triplets (so there are 12 triplets in a bar), but the notes only fall on the 1st and 3rd triplets of each note:

Triplets: 1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9-10-11-12--1
Beats:... 1-----&--2--------3-----&--4--------1

Now the way you write music with triplets turns out to be a pain in the neck, so the musicians started saying, "let's write the music as if it were with eighths, but we'll know you have to play the "middle" eighths with the same timing as the 3rd triplet in each note. They often called this playing with a triplet feel. So now we have:


Triplets:................... 1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9-10-11-12--1
Eighths with a triplet feel: 1-----2--3-----4--5-----6--7-----8--1
Beats:...................... 1-----&--2--------3-----&--4--------1

Now the other way of looking at this is to say we're still playing eighths, it's just that the 'half notes' are shifted, or swung from the halfway point to lie closer to the end note. What's particularly interesting about this is we can now talk about the amount of swing. The "usual" amount of swing recreates that triplet count and so moves the & beat so it lies 2/3 of the way along. But you can have "lightly swung" music where the & beat is just delayed a little bit, or "hard swung" music where the & note lies even closer to the end (though in practice the & beat rarely ends up past about the 3/4 point). Straight eighths music, of course, is not swung at all - the & beats fall exactly half way between the full beats.

(Waits for someone with actual musical knowledge to correct this...)

[Tessalicious]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

Can't find the link now, but I'm sure I've seen 1 2 & 3 4 5 & 6 (or possibly 1 2 & 3 4 & 5 6) as an alternative timing for straight eighths music. And of course if the count starts on beat 3, then you'd have 3 4 & 1 2 ... so the "triple" falls in the same place as Cha Cha.

My gut response to that is 'Ick' which is not entirely fair, but I can't bear to try and align WCS and Cha-cha musically, they are just so completely different.

If we're talking in terms of WCS, the first level of accepted syncopation (ie anything other than 1 2 3&4 5&6) is 1 2&3&4 5 6 (as taught at Southport in June by Deborah), and the '&'s are accented physically because they're different. I'm sure there are others, and the one you suggest works too.

However, it is different from the way a Cha-Cha triple step fits across a bar for the simple reason that the cha-cha-cha on 4&1 is supposed to be there, it's specified by the music and the dance doesn't work without it, unlike the WCS 'alternative timing' which is a syncopation and as such feels completely different from the set rhythm that fits into the dance.

(for an example of why just the fact that it is syncopation with attitude rather than just meant to be there, compare Bach with jazz)

All the other stuff, while I'm not sure how correct it is musically (the system you use is the American note-naming system of quarter and eighth notes) is probably quite a useful way of explaining it. The problem occurs with triplets when you have to battle with the concept of the fact that all of a sudden you have 12 eighth-notes in one bar.

Of course, the actual answer to this paradox is that they are no longer eighth notes, because they have been shortened - rather think of them as parts of beats, and while 'straight' music has 2 parts per beats, swung music has 3, where you step on the first and sometimes third only.

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by Tessalicious

My gut response to that is 'Ick' which is not entirely fair, but I can't bear to try and align WCS and Cha-cha musically, they are just so completely different.

Um, I did point out that all I was saying was doing a WCS triple with the same timing as Cha Cha was not automatically wrong, not that you should be doing it all the time (i.e. trying to align WCS and Cha Cha musically).

If we're talking in terms of WCS, the first level of accepted syncopation (ie anything other than 1 2 3&4 5&6) is 1 2&3&4 5 6 (as taught at Southport in June by Deborah), and the '&'s are accented physically because they're different.

The timing variation I gave was apparently suggested by Mario Robau as appropriate when dancing to "funky" WCS music, and he's about as authoritative a source as it gets(*). Yes, I find it weird, and no, I'm not saying it has the same feel as Cha-Cha. However it shows that you could end up doing a triple on 4&1 in WCS. (Though I don't think it "feels" like a normal triple, because the "pulse" on 4 changes the feel).

(*) Of course, the fact that it was someone quoting him, in a link I can no longer find, is about as unauthoritative as it gets...

[El Salsero Gringo]

So, um, basically, what we're saying is that the triple step in WCS and the triple step in Cha Cha are on different beats?

[Keith J]

This is a very interesting discussion!
I guess an added complication is the Follow in WCS is by default, very slightly behind the Lead on 1, catching up on the 'and', hits the '2' on queue, and then is into the triples. (3 & 4) - on a 6 beat basic. Its a difficult concept to deal with as many beginner and improver Follows start on 1 without a lead initiated and they should be 'weighting backwards if anywhere' and 'waiting' for the lead body to move backwards before coming forward. This is a huge contribution to the look and feel of WCS.

Would the natural progression to the discussion to be to look at what is going on between the 1 and 6? If its playtime, you can massage what is going on here. After all what we want to add is style and interpretation, and not do triples all the time.

I have thought for a while particularly in WCS, its a format and structure to give the body natural timing, i.e. a foundation which can always be relied upon to work when all else fails. So it becomes a metronome.

The techniques once solid allow bleeding of the time, and I would guess this is what interests us visually in the dance?
Some sound advice from Kyle and Rob Cordoba was think of the timing all in 2's and do not get hung up on the 6 and 8 packs when trying to dance with breaks and hesitations.

Here's Skippy's defn:
COUNT - ROLLING COUNT (Rolling Triple) -
Rolling count breaks each beat of the music into 3 separate parts: "&a1 - &a2 - &a3 - &a4" (through 8 beats of music). Musicians call this a “Dancers Count.” They refer to this form as “Swingin’ it” - which has to do with the "feeling" of the dance and not a particular KIND of dance. Rolling Count is the secret to an upper level dance performance. Rolling Count produces what we call "3 dimensional" dance.