Traditionally, Lindy Hop was danced to the swing music of the big band era, and this musical style has left its mark in the form of the dance. Swing music is normally in 4/4 time (or sometimes 2/2 time), which means that there are four beats in each bar of music. However, individual musical phrases are often larger than a bar—typically 2 or 4 bars long in swing music, corresponding to 8 or 16 beats.
Obviously, the individual notes in a piece of music vary in length—some notes are held for exactly one beat, some are held for longer and some are held for less time. A common feature of swing music is that when a series of shorter notes are played, the first of each consecutive pair of notes is held for longer than the second of the pair—the two note lengths are in a ratio of 3:2 or 2:1, rather than straight 1:1. In written music this is marked by the phrase "with a swing", and the notes are all written as eighth notes even though they are of differing lengths.
In modern circles, Lindy Hop is danced to a much wider variety of music. This is always in 2/2 or 4/4 time, with tempos varying from around 120 to around 260 beats per minute.
The Musical Interpretation chapter later in the book includes more information on swing music and its interaction with Lindy Hop choreography. |
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Welcome to an incomplete book about Lindy Hop.
I wrote the text here five years ago, based on my notes from when I was originally learning Lindy Hop in the mid-1990s. My original plan was to take a large number of illustrative photographs, which would make the bare text much more comprehensible.
However, that was five years ago and I've not gotten as far as taking a single photograph. So rather than waiting any longer, I thought it worth releasing the text as-is, in case it's useful to anyone else.
I'd interested to hear any feedback, but unfortunately I can't promise to do much about it.
And maybe one day I'll get as far as illustrating the book, and creating the originally-intended printed version:
This book is dedicated to the memory of Frankie Manning (1914-2009), Ambassador of Lindy Hop.
David Drysdale
November 2012