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Music for the Modern Dance Class
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Phrasing (Odd and square: to be, or not to be, square, that is) It has always been one of my theories that we, as humans, were innately wired to hear even sets of eight. (OR) Because the main body of music which has evolved into what we know today as pop, rock, country, spiritual, hip hop, jazz, and etc, have so evolved to be organized in 8 bar phrases (or similar), we have been environmentally trained to hear them. I am not so sure that the majority of modern dance combinations have been put in even sets intentionally, I think that is just the way we work without doing something else intentionally. But that does not have to be so. With new awareness and listening, that phenomenon can be broken. However, odd phrases should only be used if they work and, in general, make sense artistically and aesthetically. The use of odd phrasing does not necessarily coincide with the use of odd meters. In fact, odd meters can be used in even sets of 8 bars and seem very natural. In most music from the classical period (ca. 1700) to the present, especially in the pop music of the last 50 years, what I will call “even phrasing” was used. This means that nearly all of the phrases were constructed with 8 or 16 bars. In fact, many “Blues” forms are built around 4 or 8 bar phrases. Odd phrasing has to do more with the number of measures than the number of counts. As odd meters deal with the number of counts in the measure, odd phrasing deals with the number of measures in the phrase.
Odd phrases differ from even phrases in one principle way, the measures are not, or are not always organized in sets of eight or in symmetrical sets. There might be a set of eight, then a set of ten, then another set of eight. Another example might include the accumulative / diminutive effect of adding counts then subtracting counts. IE: 6 counts, then 7, then 8, then 7, then 6 and so on. (This is similar but not necessarily the same as using mixed meters) |
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| Copyright 2007 Neil Dunn | |||
