Robert Muraine aka Mr Fantastic - Music, Dance & Orginality

Music

'an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color'

Dance

a successive group of rhythmical steps or bodily motions, or both, usually executed to music.


If you compare the word 'music' to the word 'dance', both have a set of basic rules. You are dancing if you are moving your body with emotion to some kind of music. You are making music as long as you are using some sort rhythm, melody, harmony or color to create sound.

Now what is great about both of these types of art is that as long as you fit the simple definition of each, you are technically doing each art. So if you are rhythmically making sounds with an object of some sort then you are technically making music. If you are moving your body in an awkward way to the beat of music, then technically that awkward motion IS considered dancing.

Now if you take it one step further you have many genres in each category. In dance, you have: ballet, jazz, contemporary, ballroom, street dancing, all sorts of traditional dances, the list goes on as music and trends evolve. The same with music you have also many genres: rock, country, folk, classical, various traditional, electronic, hiphop, etc. Now to have a genre of music or dance you must have a completely new set of rules buy that still imply the original rules.

For example you have Dubstep as your music genre, there many rules that you must follow in order to make or create real dubstep. First there are your obvious rules: 140bpm (give or take) is your tempo, you have to have a groove in the music that half times this tempo, so you can bob your head to it at 70bpm (half of 140) and that is what gives it it's slimy slow feeling. After you have your tempo, you must know your structure, your intro will usually go until 33 bars until you hit the Drop (The reintroduction of the full bass line and drums is known as the drop.) Then usually a bridge till 97 bars then you will have your second drop of the song, followed by its outro, also usually 33 bars. Your sound is also then very important, you have to have a fat snare hitting every 2nd & 4th beat, and major kick holding the beat together, shuffling hi hats and little clicks and whistles just a little off, to make your head bob skank-like. Yes if you have most of these elements in your music, it's considered dubstep. The point here is not to give the perfect dubstep definition but to show that as long as you follow these rules, what you do around these rules is totally up to you. If you want a a song that sounds like dusbtep with a heavy metal element in it, then go for it, just make sure your basics or foundation is there to call it dubstep, and fill in the blanks with you.

Let's take popping as the dance genre, originally popping was a dance to funk & motown music in the early & late 80s, and hitting would be done on the snare or clap of the beat. The "hit" is the one unifying move, the punctuation mark in the popping language, the 'hit' or as many people mistakenly call it the "pop". It's called a 'hit' just in case you've had it wrong. First things first, you learn how to hit if you want to be a popper. Hitting will pretty much be your basic move to fall back on, to keep you on beat, and your body in rhythm with the music (sounds kind of like the definition of dance doesn't it?). The hit isn't limited either, you can hit within all the sub genres of popping. Sub genres in popping? Yes: waving, ticking, tutting, strutting, boogaloo, gliding, isolation, animation, finger tuts, etc (too many to list for my point). As long as you are hitting on the beat, you can basically do whatever motion you like and call it popping, just like how you can when you create dusbtep music.

All the sub genres of popping also have their own rules an niches, just like the subgenres of dusbtep have their small differences and add-ons. Say for example waving, waving is a dance style composed of a series of movements that give the appearance that a wave is traversing through a dancer's body. In order to give this appearance, you must learn the foundations of waving, how to move different parts of your body in the right order and position to obtain the best possible translation of a wave. Once this 'foundational' or 'basic' move is learned, what you do with your waving is up to you. It is very important to learn the basic skills properly before you try to do "your own thing". 'You must first learn the rules before you can break them.' The same goes for music, how can you call the song you made dusbtep, if there are no dubstep elements involved.


My final point for this article is:

Having inspiration is not the same as having knowledge. They are two different things that you must marry together if you are attempting to create professional music and dance.