Introduction to music notation

If you want to learn about dance music, you will have to learn a lttle music theory. Now, music theory the way musicians have to learn it is complicated and takes forever to master. For you as a dancer it is a lot easier: you mostly have to learn about rhythm, not about melody, and in general, you do not need to know a great many pesky details.

Here are the topics you are going to see in this course:

• Staves. Those are the lines that musical notes are written on.
• Time signatures. They tell you the basic difference between a 1-2-3 waltz and a 1-2-3-4 foxtrot.
• Note length. Here you are introduced to the bestiary of rhythm notation, and you will see how it is all written. Then you can study the examples to see how all of this is used in dance music.
• Some advanced topics: triplets, 12/8 rhythm, speed of the music, cut time, some nitpicking about subdivisions of the beat, unit notation, quicks and slows.