Aniseteph
New member
I can recognise a waltz or a polka (they're both 3/4 time????). But I have no idea what that means in any meaningful way. Therefore, I can't recognise any unusual ME rythmns/time signatures. Ok so it's beats to the bar, but what does that mean in practical terms?
The one does not quite follow the other, IMO.
In practical terms (just my take on it), the bottom line is that you need to be able to hear the beat and recognise patterns in the rhythm so your dancing fits the music.
Forget ME rhythms for a mo. Time signatures: can you hear the basic beat in a piece of music - is it going 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 like Baa baa black sheep, or 1-2-3, 1-2-3 like Oom-Pa-Pa out of Oliver? (Or something more complicated, like Take Five :shok. The time signature is a way of writing that down - top number is how many beats in the bar, bottom is what sort of length note they are. This page has a helpful exercise.
With the two examples above the heavy beat is on the first beat of the bar, the rest of the beats are lighter. It's a pattern and you could turn it into Dums and teks: OOM pa pa, OOM pa pa, DUM tek tek, DUM tek tek...
Keeping the same 123 rhythm, and keeping it as regular as a metronome - let's change it a bit: DUM DUM tek, DUM DUM tek.... or DUM DUM DUM, DUM DUM DUM,...
Or try having the bars different: DUM DUM DUM tek tek tek, DUM DUM DUM tek tek tek...
Try leaving a space intead of one of the beats: DUM DUM DUM tek tek tek, DUM DUM DUM tek tek tek...
See how you change the feel and make different patterns (but don't change the time signature)? The ME rhythms are just recognisable patterns like that in which the placement of the heavy and light beats within the bars has been played about with (most are 4/4 or 2/4, I just chose 3/4 above cos the oom pa pa is an easily recognisable starting point).
Recognising them is important for dancing because a) you know what's coming and can just let yourself just dance rather than thinking, and b) you can do the right thing. The particular pattern of heavy and light beats gives each rhythm its own feel and mood, and different moves and styles tend to fit with each - start hip drop/kicking with something that is usually used as a taqsim background and it will look wrong, even if you are on the beat, in the same way that doing a floaty oriental routine in ATS get-up is wrong. It just jars.
It's useful to know the names for communication purposes. You cannot write the rhythms out as a string of dums and teks because it doesn't tell you the spacing. Personally I don't know how useful it is to tell a 2/4 from a 4/4 ME rhythm (unless you are talking the same language to a musician), as long as you recognise it as "ah, that one, it's going to do so&so for this long and these moves will work and those won't".