I had an interesting discussion (in fairness, I'd accept "argument", "display of shocking arrogance", or "blatant dick-sizing session" from those involved) regarding bpm in swing, and my follow-up research only left me with more questions than answers.
Much of modern dance music falls into a few distinct sweet spots; you'll find hiphop at 90bpm, house at 120-130, breaks at 125-145, and drum & bass around 180bpm. What your average weekend club dancer doesn't give a crap about is how this happened. Much of these modern tempos comes from the turntable itself, how that works is easily shown with some of dance music's most popular stolen beats; you take The Winstons - "Amen Brother". They don't call it "music's most important 6-seconds" for nothing... and no doubt you've heard it.
You play that 45 on 33rpm and you get the basic Amen break as used in hiphop; made hugely popular by NWA - "straight outta compton". Now you take Amen Brother, but instead of your crackly old 45, you press the song to vinyl at 33rpm; and play it at 45rpm. You get up around 180bpm - and you've just made a jungle (drum and bass) breakbeat.
Then we come to my favorite genre; breaks. Breaks centers around 125-135 - in laymen's terms, it doesn't require a speed adjustment at all when sampling the original source break. It generally is a direct sample of the original breakdown drum solos in soul, jazz and gospel; the breakbeat. You can hear all this working here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQLk7NcpO4&feature=related - the first speed is a very comfortable, tried-and-true break; modern breaks tracks would have a beat at roughly this tempo. The next segment; a classic jungle tempo. And the final segment, a very recognizable gangsta rap tempo.
This holy relationship of 90-133-180 (or more accurately, the conversion of (90bpm@33rpm = 133bpm@45rpm) , (133bpm@33rpm = 180bpm@45rpm) ) is to the broken beat dj, a godsend. Take your favorite hiphop loop and bump the pitch to 45rpm, you have a breaks loop. Take a drum and bass record and drop it to 33rpm, you have a breaks loop. Take a breaks track, and gradually spin the record up to 45, you have a seque from breaks to drum and bass. Done right, it can make for a very good, varied, mix guaranteed to get your dancers sweaty and happy.
I've spun all of these genres (ok, perhaps not house) at one point or another, and I stuck with breaks for a very specific reason; it hits a sweet spot around 135bpm that is extremely accessible to dance to. It's energetic, moving, upbeat. It's an exercise pace; a speed that most of the gym-rats would note as a moderate jog. It's fun, bouncy, and maintainable for long periods of time.
But what about the area in between? The jump from 133 to 180 is a pretty significant tempo change - and somewhere just above 150 the average dancer gets tired; this is a pretty significant tempo to match for extended dancing. You can bop around in short periods to 155 quite easily (see The Prodigy - "Everybody is in the Place") but unless you're a marathoner, you'll be heading for the sidelines quite quickly; this is an extremely energetic pace to maintain.
This realization has become law in drum and bass production; where early tracks might clock in as slow as 160, today's records are rigidly 180-185bpm; making dancing more accesible to people accustomed to popular hiphop tempos as they can easily halftime the beat to the laid back nod that makes hiphop so damned great.
So to bring this back to the starting topic - somehow we'd ended up talking about bpm at the local swing dance, and I was told I was listening to 150bpm. Obviously, this conflicts with tried-and-true dancefloor knowledge I've just lovingly bestowed upon you, above, so obviously, I wouldn't hear such a thing. A beer was bet, an iphone was retrieved to seek the sage wisdom of the internets, let's just cut to the chase and say the gauntlet was thrown.
And, as would come as virtually no surprise to anyone who knows me, I was wrong. The song, Count Basie's "Corner Pocket", clocks in at a hefty 155-160bpm.
So now I'm out a beer, and left to wonder... why? Why is 155bpm completely palatable in swing but not in electronic music? Why will we leave the breaks dancefloor clutching our chests for air at 145bpm but settle in for a nice brisk walk at lindy's 155?
Is it duration? Is it impact? I'm not sure. Maybe it's exertion. Listening to the both of the 155bpm examples I've listed above, I find myself throwing my entire body into electronic music... and yet, despite the same tempo, swing inspires a casual, relaxed stroll. So if it's not tempo in music that drives you to exert more... what is it? What is that edge that The Winston's one hit has, that Count Basie's many brilliant, celebrated hits do not?
Has modern music production and mastering squeezed more energy out of tempo? Is the answer in the compressor or the subwoofer? I know - quite well, in fact - that tempo alone doesn't dictate danceability nor even inspiration. But what makes those six seconds from 1969 so compelling, so energy draining, so exhausting, so... fucking awesome?
Eh, only about two of you probably cared to read this to completion anyways. Maybe one of you will have the answer... until then... beer on me?
I think one difference is the music around the beat.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you dance to the beat, but in the Prodigy song, you have other drum patterns that are much faster than the base beat layered on top.
In the Count Basie song, the faster layers are done on say a saxophone.
I don't think you're as compelled to keep up with the sax line when you're dancing as you are to a rolling snare.
I could understand why you would think that but that's not it; both styles of dance you would "step" on the same exact beat.
ReplyDeleteI think it's more a few things; with swing, you're much more relaxed, instead of jumping in the air and totally freaking-the-fuck out to the music, the dance is more like a relaxed but brisk walk.
Also, you don't find swing djs beatmatching four hour long sets with no breaks for your poor dancers; in fact there's a very real need to NOT beatmix songs in the swing scene - the pauses between tracks are when people switch partners; there's lots of rest breaks, downtime, and soforth. If they had that much downtime at clubs people would e-puddle the entire floor. :)