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- Jan 31, 2019
What absolutely kills me is when a singles skater picks the same type of music as is the theme for rhythm dance. Like, last year, tango in singles was just mind-boggling choice.
Why is music recycled so often in figure skating?
- Thread starter Mathematician
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There are also many possibilities of choice in classical music. I often listen classical or instrumental and many times I think something would be nice to use at FS. Maybe some is used, I can't remember everything and have not seen everything. A little bit a off topic but aside: My husband likes Yello. I have often said Yello, especially the race would suit well in FS. Then I was layed off last autumn and had time to watch some small Novice competition. A little girl showed up wearing yellow and black checkered dress and music choide was Yello's the Race. That was nice.
Classical music is also safe choice. Finland has two feds which take care of rights. I read some rules about when the music is when the music copyright free. So it is safe to choose that kind of music. Also I read (article is in Finnish and long and has a lot of local stuff, so I don't link it) that companies that play background music choose songs familiar to the audience to guarantee a pleasant customer experience. Maybe in FS is tought about same? Maybe people who follow only big competitions do not pay so much attention to overused music. They like Carmen or Phantom of the Opera and when they hear it at competition they just think "Phantom of the Opera", "Carmen", how nice.
Edit: I doubt judges like so much overused music. They must listen to it time after time and I think they like variety of music. As I have told many times in competition threads, one of our local commentators, Mika Saarelainen, is also a highest possible level judge and he likes when skaters choose different music. Also sometimes he like the music which I think is a weird choice. One example is he liked Nicole Shcott's Bohemian Rhapsody version last season and praised how nice that some skater dares to choose something different instead of the same old pieces of music.
Classical music is also safe choice. Finland has two feds which take care of rights. I read some rules about when the music is when the music copyright free. So it is safe to choose that kind of music. Also I read (article is in Finnish and long and has a lot of local stuff, so I don't link it) that companies that play background music choose songs familiar to the audience to guarantee a pleasant customer experience. Maybe in FS is tought about same? Maybe people who follow only big competitions do not pay so much attention to overused music. They like Carmen or Phantom of the Opera and when they hear it at competition they just think "Phantom of the Opera", "Carmen", how nice.
Edit: I doubt judges like so much overused music. They must listen to it time after time and I think they like variety of music. As I have told many times in competition threads, one of our local commentators, Mika Saarelainen, is also a highest possible level judge and he likes when skaters choose different music. Also sometimes he like the music which I think is a weird choice. One example is he liked Nicole Shcott's Bohemian Rhapsody version last season and praised how nice that some skater dares to choose something different instead of the same old pieces of music.
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- Mar 24, 2019
Having been the skater, coach, choreographer and costumier at various points in my (somewhat varied) career 
I can tell you that many, many competitive skaters and coaches have a very limited musical library from which to choose program music. This is because they have spent most of their lives at the rink, listening to what other people are skating to rather than being out in the wild, exposed to all manner of musical experiences. These days, a skater's life is so taken up with skating, off-ice, ballet, gym work, etc that they often have little time for much else. I had parents who were utterly obsessed with music and actually wanted me to be a concert pianist (or flautist) rather than a skater and although this was very unhelpful from a skating point of view, it gave me a seriously wide musical education and therefore a great catalog from which to pick music to skate to. The younger skaters are pretty much bound by what their coaches pick and some coaches can be ultra-conservative and run everything past "the judges"...
There is also little issue of "musicality", which is the elephant in the room when it comes to skaters. Some of them have all the musicality of a brick. Which makes choreographing anything for them really, really difficult. Most fans and judges want to see some element of interpretation and with a skater who is pretty much blind to rhythm that is a really tough call. The reason tango is so often used is because it's one of the easiest things to work with when you have a skater with no musicality, ie a red and black costume (sigh), a stamp of the foot and some spiky arm movements, and you're good to go. And for me, that is better than a stirring piece of music which is almost completely ignored as the skater crossovers around the rink building up speed for jumps with no regard to the music at all. As familiarity with a piece of music helps a skater actually put their elements, etc, in the right place and end at the right point, sometimes a warhorse is pretty much the only way to achieve that.
Personally, I like to be surprised with something new but it's not always possible.
I can tell you that many, many competitive skaters and coaches have a very limited musical library from which to choose program music. This is because they have spent most of their lives at the rink, listening to what other people are skating to rather than being out in the wild, exposed to all manner of musical experiences. These days, a skater's life is so taken up with skating, off-ice, ballet, gym work, etc that they often have little time for much else. I had parents who were utterly obsessed with music and actually wanted me to be a concert pianist (or flautist) rather than a skater and although this was very unhelpful from a skating point of view, it gave me a seriously wide musical education and therefore a great catalog from which to pick music to skate to. The younger skaters are pretty much bound by what their coaches pick and some coaches can be ultra-conservative and run everything past "the judges"...There is also little issue of "musicality", which is the elephant in the room when it comes to skaters. Some of them have all the musicality of a brick. Which makes choreographing anything for them really, really difficult. Most fans and judges want to see some element of interpretation and with a skater who is pretty much blind to rhythm that is a really tough call. The reason tango is so often used is because it's one of the easiest things to work with when you have a skater with no musicality, ie a red and black costume (sigh), a stamp of the foot and some spiky arm movements, and you're good to go. And for me, that is better than a stirring piece of music which is almost completely ignored as the skater crossovers around the rink building up speed for jumps with no regard to the music at all. As familiarity with a piece of music helps a skater actually put their elements, etc, in the right place and end at the right point, sometimes a warhorse is pretty much the only way to achieve that.
Personally, I like to be surprised with something new but it's not always possible.
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- Dec 7, 2022
Having been the skater, coach, choreographer and costumier at various points in my (somewhat varied) career
There is also little issue of "musicality", which is the elephant in the room when it comes to skaters. Some of them have all the musicality of a brick. Which makes choreographing anything for them really, really difficult. Most fans and judges want to see some element of interpretation and with a skater who is pretty much blind to rhythm that is a really tough call. The reason tango is so often used is because it's one of the easiest things to work with when you have a skater with no musicality, ie a red and black costume (sigh), a stamp of the foot and some spiky arm movements, and you're good to go. And for me, that is better than a stirring piece of music which is almost completely ignored as the skater crossovers around the rink building up speed for jumps with no regard to the music at all. As familiarity with a piece of music helps a skater actually put their elements, etc, in the right place and end at the right point, sometimes a warhorse is pretty much the only way to achieve that.
Personally, I like to be surprised with something new but it's not always possible.
Regarding the knowledge, that's what I suspected from the outside. The biggest hint at this for me is that very often when I think "oh, great someone skates to that, I would not have thought they know this" a little later I have to realize it just very recently has been used in a film and that's why it's now used or even becomes popular... A huge, huge amount of music simply comes from very big, popular movies, not just the instrumental scores. Thankfully the people who are responsible for soundtracks often really know music...
Nonetheless I don't fully understand it - rarely are the (top) skaters themselves responsible for picking the music. They have teams. They have choreographers. And someone who works full-time or to a high degree as a choreographer should know some music??!
But maybe then the second aspect you explain comes into play, and more so than I thought. I know some people are just amusical, but I would not have thought so many skaters to be. Yeah, likely you will pick something for them that you think will be safe...
At the moment I am really bothered (even more so than usual) by bad music editing and cuts. I just don't get it. I think the biggest teams even have real music editors for this job or can at least get them- and then they come up with stuff that sounds like a pupil had to do it on his own within 5 minutes between training and sleeping... So that's when I think there's also a lot of ignorance regarding this matter. The people who make the programs somehow just don't seem to care, yeah, they have other things on their minds.
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- Apr 23, 2018
And many many teenagers and young adults simply don't like classical music or think they won't and aren't about to do the work to change their minds (and why should they? they have plenty of their own music to listen to, even if I don't like it). So if they and their choreographers decide they {deep sigh} have to skate to Serious Music, they will go for the easy and familiar. And hey, it's a system that has worked for many many decades now...Having been the skater, coach, choreographer and costumier at various points in my (somewhat varied) career
I admit to a sneaking suspicion that the ones with good or unusual choices (classical. modern, pop/rock) and work best with those choices are the ones who deliberately have their own say in what they use. But I have no prof whatsoever.
Cutting mp3s and such is not hard, I can do it, thousands of fans who make musicvids for their favourite movie or TV show can do it... the programs are inexpensive and easy to use. I don't get it either.
It is SOO irritating. Sometimes I wonder if all coaches/choregraphers are shopping in the same little online music shop where they have like 20 pieces of music to choose from...It would explain why suddenly someone for example in Germany comes up with some new music, and then later a skater from Japan has the exact same music! What are the odds?
I am starting to wonder if copyright issues is the problem? We all know there is a huge amount of laws and regulations how music can be used and performed. Maybe there truly is very little to choose from when it comes down to it....
I am starting to wonder if copyright issues is the problem? We all know there is a huge amount of laws and regulations how music can be used and performed. Maybe there truly is very little to choose from when it comes down to it....
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....
There is also little issue of "musicality", which is the elephant in the room when it comes to skaters. Some of them have all the musicality of a brick. Which makes choreographing anything for them really, really difficult. Most fans and judges want to see some element of interpretation and with a skater who is pretty much blind to rhythm that is a really tough call. The reason tango is so often used is because it's one of the easiest things to work with when you have a skater with no musicality, ie a red and black costume (sigh), a stamp of the foot and some spiky arm movements, and you're good to go. And for me, that is better than a stirring piece of music which is almost completely ignored as the skater crossovers around the rink building up speed for jumps with no regard to the music at all. As familiarity with a piece of music helps a skater actually put their elements, etc, in the right place and end at the right point, sometimes a warhorse is pretty much the only way to achieve that.
Personally, I like to be surprised with something new but it's not always possible.
Thank you for your outlook, and particularly for the description of "the elephant in the room".
Even if a skater is somewhat above brick level, we are asking the impossible of many skaters, particularly young ones: learn all these difficult jumps, moves, spins, etc (and sometimes all they are learning is the first
) and have such innate musicality that you can skate to the deep cut of my favorite semi-popular rock band of my youth.Jumping off (I realize you know this) choreography is hard. Skaters who excel at it work hard at it. Rohene has said on multiple occasions, for example, Jason is not necessarily innately musical. He takes difficult choreography and works works works at it every single day. Some can be innate: the same interview Rohene said Mariah Bell could not hold an ugly position "if she tried". His scorn was reserved for those who did not want to put the work in.
So why give a skater an unusual piece of music if they are not going to put the work in, or are incapable of that work? Time to break out the tango and Carmen
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- Mar 24, 2019
Exactly! Although, the other slight fly in the ointment of the choreographer is the need for the skater to want to skate to the piece(s) chosen. One of my coaches discovered right before a competition that I simply couldn't skate what she had choreographed for me and determinedly drilled into me over the preceding months in an effort to cope with my dreadful nerves and tendency to freeze. I decided to ditch that program and music and pretty much made up a new one as I went along, my reasoning being that I adored the music I'd chosen and skated far better to it than I did to her choice. Also, if the program wasn't set in stone, I couldn't "go wrong"... This is not an approach I necessarily recommend but it taught me the lesson that the skater has to really want to skate to their music - even if they aren't innately musical - in order for it to work. I've never forgotten that. And can usually spot a program with the coach's choice rather than that of the skater.Thank you for your outlook, and particularly for the description of "the elephant in the room".
Even if a skater is somewhat above brick level, we are asking the impossible of many skaters, particularly young ones: learn all these difficult jumps, moves, spins, etc (and sometimes all they are learning is the first
Jumping off (I realize you know this) choreography is hard. Skaters who excel at it work hard at it. Rohene has said on multiple occasions, for example, Jason is not necessarily innately musical. He takes difficult choreography and works works works at it every single day. Some can be innate: the same interview Rohene said Mariah Bell could not hold an ugly position "if she tried". His scorn was reserved for those who did not want to put the work in.
So why give a skater an unusual piece of music if they are not going to put the work in, or are incapable of that work? Time to break out the tango and Carmen
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- Apr 23, 2018
I hope this is not throwing a cat amongst the musical pigeons here, but just for people saying "there are so many choices, there is so much classical music, why can't they explore, why ...." how many of us explore (I mean really as in listen to as much of it as our own) other culture's music outside the western-centred bubble? Genuine Chinese, Korean, African, Indian, many indigenous etc? If we were honest I would say not nearly as much as we like to think - that top 100 music countdown this year was on favourite musical instruments and yeah, there were quite a lot on the lower ranks I have rarely, sometimes never, listened to. (Speaking of which, sooner or later figure skating needs to get out of its ethnocentric bubble, in more ways than just musically).
Again, the music these young skaters like to listen to isn't classical music (and why should they?), and the music their teams choose for them skate to may very well be a tool rather than a pleasure, so, like most workmen choosing tools, they go for what works. They don't get extra marks for being unique or adventurous or pleasing the viewing audience, after all.
Again, the music these young skaters like to listen to isn't classical music (and why should they?), and the music their teams choose for them skate to may very well be a tool rather than a pleasure, so, like most workmen choosing tools, they go for what works. They don't get extra marks for being unique or adventurous or pleasing the viewing audience, after all.
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Generational bias, but I think that’s why 80s music can work so well for a skating program- it’s often nicely structured with a verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus (or similar) structure that has some nice transition points from jumping pass to spins to stop sequence and builds to a nice conclusion without having to do a ton of cuts.
Peter Gabriel’s tour this year is about 80% new music and then a few of his personal obligatory war horses. (I think he knows that he absolutely has to do ‘Sledgehammer and ‘In Your Eyes’ even though he’s done them a million times before.) But then that’s a case when fans know he‘d rather look forward in his music than backward and don’t even seriously think of asking him to do something from his Genesis days.
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Very clever redo of the Madi & Evan program. Extra points since the teams both have Detroit roots. Thanks for the fun.Just for you:
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- Oct 22, 2022
That was giving me a senior moment/day. I knew I'd seen a dance couple do a racecar program, and was pretty sure they were American, but beyond that I couldn't remember who or when. I also didn't remember it was the same music mentioned in the earlier post. I guess I did my annual dropping of a few more brain cells last week on my birthday. A yearly tradition 
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And now I see I should have added that to the previous post containing the Punsalan/Swallow video. The number of brain cells lost annually expands in number with each new decade 
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Coming back to this thread because this Goldenskate interview with Donovan Carrillo contains an in depth dive about how he chose his program music. This from a small fed, (the smallest of feds) underrepresented culturally, and young, "hip" skater.
1. Donovan chose the music.
2. For his long program, he chose a Mexican singer from the 50s, Pedro Infante. [My comment: Of course, all Spanish or Latino music is not the same, and Mexican music is pretty unusual in figure skating.]
He wanted songs that were known in English as well because he, Donovan, wanted the program to be inviting to all. His coaches didn't want that, he didn't mention the judges, he, Donovan, a 22 year old Mexican, made that choice himself.
He did want to end on a faster note, and Benoit suggested a song "Cuba" to mix that Donovan liked and approved.
3. For his short program, he asked Benoit for Justin Timberlake songs. Again, Donovan made the choice of Justin Timberlake, Benoit sent songs mixed for a program for approval, and Donovan said yea or nay.
So sometimes figure skating fans also need to address the other elephant in the room: a skater can be young, a skater can listen to "new" music in their own lives, they can be from a "new" culture unfamiliar to figure skating, and still choose ballads from the 50s for no reason other than they want to skate to those songs. Not because of judges, not because of coaches, but because it is what they want.
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starting at 15:00 for the choreo discussion
1. Donovan chose the music.
2. For his long program, he chose a Mexican singer from the 50s, Pedro Infante. [My comment: Of course, all Spanish or Latino music is not the same, and Mexican music is pretty unusual in figure skating.]
He wanted songs that were known in English as well because he, Donovan, wanted the program to be inviting to all. His coaches didn't want that, he didn't mention the judges, he, Donovan, a 22 year old Mexican, made that choice himself.
He did want to end on a faster note, and Benoit suggested a song "Cuba" to mix that Donovan liked and approved.
3. For his short program, he asked Benoit for Justin Timberlake songs. Again, Donovan made the choice of Justin Timberlake, Benoit sent songs mixed for a program for approval, and Donovan said yea or nay.
So sometimes figure skating fans also need to address the other elephant in the room: a skater can be young, a skater can listen to "new" music in their own lives, they can be from a "new" culture unfamiliar to figure skating, and still choose ballads from the 50s for no reason other than they want to skate to those songs. Not because of judges, not because of coaches, but because it is what they want.
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starting at 15:00 for the choreo discussion
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- Dec 28, 2013
Oh WednesdayMarch, real Argentine tango dancers would kill you for your view of Tango. Stamping the foot is Flamenco, not Tango! (Stamping occasionally happens in Milonga, which is a variant of Tango, but it's not a core part of the dance). Spiky arm movements - gah! But yes, rhythmically it's entry level - many Tango dancers are older and many (ahem!) have the musicality of a brick.... Sorry OT, will shut up now.Having been the skater, coach, choreographer and costumier at various points in my (somewhat varied) career
There is also little issue of "musicality", which is the elephant in the room when it comes to skaters. Some of them have all the musicality of a brick. Which makes choreographing anything for them really, really difficult. Most fans and judges want to see some element of interpretation and with a skater who is pretty much blind to rhythm that is a really tough call. The reason tango is so often used is because it's one of the easiest things to work with when you have a skater with no musicality, ie a red and black costume (sigh), a stamp of the foot and some spiky arm movements, and you're good to go. And for me, that is better than a stirring piece of music which is almost completely ignored as the skater crossovers around the rink building up speed for jumps with no regard to the music at all. As familiarity with a piece of music helps a skater actually put their elements, etc, in the right place and end at the right point, sometimes a warhorse is pretty much the only way to achieve that.
Personally, I like to be surprised with something new but it's not always possible.
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- Mar 24, 2019
A thousand apologies for the gross oversimplification but I think you know what I'm getting at. (I wasn't referring to the Argentine tango, which is sinuous and intricate and definitely requires musicalityand emotion.)
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I don't understand the question in the context of this thread.
Are you trying to ask if Seimei was music that was not "recycled" and therefore revolutionary. I would say it is wonderful if it was new, but "revolutionary" may be too strong a word in the context of this thread. This is not the thread to talk about the program as a whole (at least that is not how I read the OP's question)
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