A little introduction

Welcome to Feel the Beat, a course in music theory for dancers, and also a little a course in dance theory for musicians.

Why should you want to read this course?

Your teacher said something about dance music and you have no idea what she was talking about, because you are not a musician. Or maybe you do know a bit about music and you can not relate what you know about music do what your teacher just told you.

You are a musician and your band was asked to play a dance gig. You announced "And now for a lovely Bossa Nova", knowing that this was one of the big dance crazes of the sixties. To your amazement almost no one got up to dance, and the three couples that did seemed to do three different dances.

Or maybe you simply want to learn some more about the music you dance to. You don't see the point? Please read this justification of why I wrote this course..

So where do we go from here?

Well, here are the sections of this course

• Music notation. All about those little black balls and what they mean. Also, stuff about quarter notes, beats, triplets, and what not.
• Structure in music, and what you do with it when you dance.
• Musical instruments. What do they do, and what does that have to do with dancing.
• Dances.