Editing Music: Adding beats/Looping Measures

[blue dog]

There seems to be a trend lately (especially in ice dance), where a particular piece of music is added beats, either to make it legal (in 1998, I remember Anissina/Peizerat's Romeo and Juliet had this very obvious heartbeat that Prokofiev did not compose), or to completely make it fit into a rhythm prescribed by the ISU for the SD (Harlem Nocturne in Ralph/Hill's SD, to me, had beats added to it so it fits the rhumba).

How do you feel about the creative edits that music editors add to music, just to fit the rules in skating (whether its to.fit the time constraints or the rhythm requirements )

Personally, when skaters do this, I find that I cannot focus on the music at all. It feels like two rhythms are fighting for dominance, almost, since all music (even if the ISU does not think so) have rhythm. It is even worse, to me, when skaters place beats of a different style on top of a song that is in a different style--sometimes neither the addition nor the original piece are even in the same key signature (at a local competition, a synchro team was skating to Katy Perry's Firework, with Arabic music added on top-- a major key in 4/4, with a Hungarian minor in 3/4 on top).

I find the looping of measures (adding a repeat sign where it does not exist ) has become prevalent lately.

One offender of this was any Tosca program. The North American version (Kwan and Langlois/Archetto, both choreographed by Morozov) used the ending as the beginning and also as the ending again. The Russian version (Slutskaya and Yagudin) repeated the second to last measure so the skaters have enough time to get into a ending pose/grab their head to show madness, etc.

 

[Violet Bliss]

^^^ I'm guessing you are not a fan of Adam Lambert's Ring Of Fire?

 

[blue dog]

^^^ I'm guessing you are not a fan of Adam Lambert's Ring Of Fire?

I generally avoid Adam Lambert's music.

 

[Olympia]

Except Lambert has the most beautiful clear tenor, which I noticed when he sang in very simple, unadorned style (on YouTube) a melody from Brigadoon.

I know what you mean about the extra beats. Kwan did that with Scheherezade, I think and also with East of Eden when she turned it from an exhibition program to a short program. It made me a bit batty. But it's still better than that Olympic year they made the ice dancers do the polka, and the exquisite couple of Klimova and Ponomarenko had to twirl to "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music. Eeek! I can't even remember what the intense Duchesnays skated to. I must have blocked it out.

 

[dorispulaski]

An audible beat is required in dance. It is a -2 point penalty if you don't have it. Zhiganshina & Gaszi were penalized for the FD earlier this year and have added a synthesizer beat to their music. A junior team was also penalized on the JGP.

So whether it's likable or not, dance will still be doing it.

 

[Serious Business]

It bugs the living crap out of me is how I feel about it. There is such a thing as a good remix, just dropping the most dreadful prefab synth loop on a piece of music is not the way to do it. I understand judges are rather tone-and-tempo-deaf individuals who need all they help they can get to ascertain whether dancers are doing their moves to the beat. Well, fine. But with a century or so of recorded music behind us, there is plenty to choose from that already have a beat. If you don't know a good remixer to fix up your music selection, select something else. Don't get so married to it you'd take it even when it's diseased.

 

[Olympia]

I realize I got kind of OT with my previous post. Music resentment is catching, I guess. You were talking about imposing a beat over music with a different rhythm, while my mind immediately leaped to one of my pet peeves, added or repeated measures inserted onto existing tunes.

Both are frustrating. I do echo your wish, Serious Business, that skaters would just move on to another piece of music instead of trying to wrench something into shape by hammering an extra beat on top of it.

 

[blue dog]

Doris that explains the 'Bolero-esque' beats in Eleanor Rigby last year.

SB I'm with you. The argument a friend of mine at the rink had was if they didn't synthesize then teams might have to skate to organ pieces with dance beats (like compulsory dance music) orhave pieces reorchestrated like Webster and Kravette did here in 1995: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyjI1C5a1tY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Now we do have dj's but I wish the beats they choose to add at least match the piece. Its when the beat is totally at odds that makes me cringe. Also, I've noticed that a lot of teams that add beats to music totally ignore the added, more obvious rhythm. Its like they can hear it, we can hear it, but they're interpreting the melody, not the rhythm.

 

[Spun Silver]

I can't believe I never noticed beats being imposed and measures being added. I guess I've gotten so used to skaters butchering classical music and opera that the awfulness all blends together for me. That and skating has ruined my ear for music. :disapp: Thanks for initiating this topic.

 

[dorispulaski]

Another issue is, of course, the cost. Skating is hugely expensive. And any 13 year old can run a looper. Guess why the addition of beats often sounds like it is done by a 13 year old? And lest you doubt,

Thirteen year old recording a back track with a looper, and then playing over it.

What really annoys me is the addition of beats to a song so that a team can dance the rhumba to a piece that is not a rhumba, or a waltz to a piece that is not a waltz. Here are Paul and Islam, skating the Golden Waltz to a tango to which they have added a waltz beat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRquAWq8NXw

And here's the before and after of the couple who were recently penalized for not adding a beat:



Zhiganshina & Gaszi's FD before the beat went on, at Nebelhorn

Zhiganshina & Gaszi's FD after the beat went on at Skate America

Another thing that happens is that a couple will speed up or slow down a piece to match the beat requirements:

Here's the requirement from the Judge's Handbook for the ChaCha Congelado, the pattern dance for juniors this year:

Music - Cha Cha 4/4
Tempo - 29 measures of 4 beats per minute
- 116 beats per minute
Pattern - Optional
Duration - The time required to skate 2 sequences is 1:07 min.

and the requirement for the rhumba, the pattern dance for seniors:

Music - Rhumba 4/4
Tempo - 44 measures of 4 beats per minute
- 176 beats per minute
Pattern - Optional
Duration - The time required to skate 4 sequences is 1:00 min.

This is why the old CD's used prerecorded music (and why that prerecorded stuff was so uniformly awful)

 

[blue dog]

Doris, is Cam your son? That's cool!

As others have intoned, there are plenty of pieces out there that skaters need not add beats to music that do not have obvious beats. The allowing of vocal music in dance opened that discipline up to music not available to the others. I really don't know what choreographers and coaches are doing, especially in the case of what Paul and Islam did with the golden wango. Perhaps this is yet another rule the ISU needs to add? Then again, it was them who ruled over a year ago that music must have an obvious beat, etc (I remember when this rule was hammered in, Fabian Bourzat, during an interview said that this will be a good thing for all couples, since not everyone is like Virtue and Moir, who can perform to the subtle beat of Mahler).

The looping can be bothersome, because it feels like the parts skaters want to loop just so they can keep spinning or elongate the footwork sequence are not parts that are meant to be repeated. The music wants to move on, but the skaters do not.

To their credit, the editors David Wilson and Lori Nichol use (Hugo Chouinard and Lenore Kay) actually cut the music, rather than loop/repeat/add beats here, etc (although Hugo was responsible for the Bolero-esque beats and the slowing down of Joshua Bell's violin solo in Eleanor Rigby last year).

 

[dorispulaski]

Grandson

There's nothing like a proud grandma for hauling out the file of photos, only these days, it's youtube videos.

It's like the for-seniors version of getting Rick-Rolled.