I apologize in advance for any mistakes in musical terminology. If you see something wrong, feel free to fix it.
It was pointed out that the typical walking tempo for dancing to tango music corresponds to 1/4 notes (for music written in 2/4 time). That made me wonder about milonga. I had an unsubstantiated belief that since the milonga walking tempo is just about twice as fast as tango, it must be that the walk corresponds to 1/8 notes. Not so! From what I can tell, the typical walking pace for milonga corresponds to 1/4 notes too, for music written in 2/4 time, as it was in the good old days. The habaniera (sorry for 7-bit ascii, I don't have a proper enie at hand) figure -- bump, ba-dump bump -- which is very common in milonga music, is typically written as 1/8 dotted, 1/16, 1/8, 1/8 and it takes up one measure of 2/4. Dancers take 2 steps for each such measure, so each step corresponds to a 1/4 note, from what I can tell. So it seems to be that milonga music really is played at a much faster tempo than tango, instead of taking more steps in music that is played at the same tempo. Again I apologize for misunderstandings and errors, and I look forward to what others have to say about this stuff. best, Robert Dodier _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
