Saturday, September 6, 2014

Counting Beats per Step

Hello all!

I am going to summarize three ways of counting musical beats per step.

Note:  For each example below, we will be using the standard Foxtrot count, which has a single two- beated step, followed by two single-beated steps, for three steps in total.
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Method #1:  This method is probably the most widely used out of all three.  We say one word for every step.  We use either "Slow" meaning the step is two beats or "Quick" meaning the step is one beat.

Example:  "Slow, Quick, Quick"

Method #2:  In this method, we are still using one word for every step, but we are using numbers instead of "Slow" and "Quick."  So the first step would correspond with "One" the second with "Two" the third with "Three" and so on.  The quicker the step, the faster we say the number to emphasize how many beats the step has.

Example:  "One(Prolonged), Two, Three"

Method #3:  This method is efficient, but I would consider it the hardest to follow for a beginning student.  In this method, we just count beats, and then we simply dance to the timing we have formed.  So for a slow we would count "One, two" and then the next quick would be "Three" and the next quick would be "Four."

Example:  "(One, Two), Three, Four"

Method #4:  A method I actually formed myself.  I find it to be the best way for conveying beats per step to a student.  It is similar to method #3 above, but instead of continuing with rising numbers, we reset our count at the beginning of every step.  So every two-beated step gets a count of "One, two" and every one-beated step gets a count of "One"

Example:  "(One, Two), One, One"

I am certain there are other methods which I have not stumbled upon yet.  If I missed any, please bring them to my attention!
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Thanks for reading!  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!

-Aaron Mullen

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