The Map of Tango Musicality Elements
Podcast and transcription.
Discover the essential “Map of Musicality Elements,” tips to interpret music with your partner, and how understanding musical patterns can transform your dance. Whether you’re a seasoned dancer or just beginning your tango journey, this episode is packed with insights to inspire your next step.
Listen to the podcast here or in your favourite podcast app.
Hi, this is Dimitris Bronowski, the curious tanguero. My goal is to bring more people to tango and more tango to people. I hope you’ll find this episode useful and that you’ll share it with your friends.
Today we’ll discuss tango musicality.
Musicality is a path that has no end.
I took loooots of musicality classes recently, and I would love to share some things that I learned. I won’t give you all the answers I received for the simplest reason that… I cannot. I am simply not good enough. But I will point you in the right direction.
I wish someone had pointed me in the right direction over a decade ago.
It would have saved me thousands of euros spent heading in the wrong direction.
Not to mention my frustration when I was feeling stagnated.
And this is what I want to do for you today:
Give you a map so that you can be in control of your direction.
I realised late that musicality is my path toward a more interesting dance for me and my partners.
Also, I found out that focusing on the music is mentally stimulating for me, which I really enjoy.
But not everything has to be hard.
During my classes I learned easy and hard ways to interpret the music.
Before addressing them, there is an important point I want to make:
Musicality has two parts:
- Being able to listen to the music and be attentive to the feelings it evokes.
- Being able to interpret it with your partner.
For the first part you truly need a teacher that knows to help you (at least I needed).
If you want to go down that road, there is a Map of Musicality Elements you need to understand. I’ll share it with you. Take it to your teacher and ask for their help.
Before that, a word of caution:
Most teachers won’t be able to help you.
There are simply very few teachers that have made musicality their expertise.
My top recommendations:
For leaders over 55 years old, Helaine Treitman is my go-to choice. I’ll put a link so that you can find more info about her on thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango (you can explore her 9 Musicality Tips here or an intro to her musicality masterclass here)
For leaders younger than that, there are a few other resources that might be useful.
The Map of Musicality Elements
Getting close:
Ask your teachers to help you identify those elements in different songs:
- Rhythmic Base: Marcato in 4, Marcato in 2, Syncopation, 3-3-2. The concept of Drag is an important one here too.
- Main melody: distinction between melodic melody and rhythmic melody, tutti, variation, phrasing phrase, drag, and triplet.
- Bridges.
- Counter melody (as with main melody: distinction between melodic and rhythmic, tutti, variation, triplet, and number of instruments involved).
Now, let me be clear: these are the elements that you need to know when looking at the music from ‘very close’.
Parts – Getting some distance:
If you pull a bit back you will see the musical phrases.
And musical phrases tend to follow patterns too.
Here you can ask your teachers to explain to you about the A, B, and the C type of musical phrases and how they repeat during a song.
Understanding this will help you predict the behaviour of a song even if you have never heard it before.
An advanced tip: normally part A is powerful, part B is more dramatic/danger related/doesn’t have many notes, and if there is a part C it’s about hope.
And that brings me to the third point of focus:
Mood – Getting further away
Finally, you can discuss with your teacher about the ‘colours’ and ‘emotions’ of a song.
And this is a beautiful way to interpret the music, that’s not obvious.
You will be able to evoke emotions to your followers while they have no idea how you did it.
Alright, this was the Map.
You can find and download it at thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango
If I was you I would download this map/checklist and take it to my teachers to make sure I can recognize each one of the elements in the music and have at least one way to interpret them.
No need to get stressed, learn one thing at a time, each element will bring lots of advancement to your dance.
Important:
In the next episode, I will discuss the second topic: Interpreting what you hear.
If you enjoyed what you learned in this episode, don’t keep it to yourself. The best thing you can do is to share it with your friends. That’s what social media and messaging apps are for. You’ll be helping them and me.
The second best thing you can do is to visit thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango There you’ll find a list of free and paid resources to help you improve and enjoy your tango. I am updating that webpage often with new stuff so make sure to re-visit it every once in a while. thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango
P.S. I asked some tango DJ’s to give me feedback on that blog post and tell me if I missed something. Their answers can be found here.