Ever feel like you’re missing the beat or struggling to connect with the music when you dance?
You’re not alone!
I’ve put together 5 easy listening tips that’ll help you sync with the rhythm, feel the flow, and boost your confidence on the dance floor. 
Tip 1: Listen with INTENTION (and subconsciously, even when you’re doing chores!)
Tip 2: VISUALISE your moves to the melody, feel the rhythm
Tip 3: Struggling with music that feels ‘free’? BREATHE with the music .
Tip 4: Trouble catching subtle beats? I’ve got a simple trick!
Tip 5: Explore different versions of the SAME music & song to stay versatile.
Whether you’re into flamenco, classical Spanish pieces, or just want to feel more connected to music in any dance style, these tips will help you move with confidence from home, to studio, to the stage!
Watch the video, and hey, if you’ve got your own music listening tip, share it in the comments—I’d love to hear it!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Here’s the video transcript in case you prefer to read.
5 music listening tips to practise your dance
#1: Get to know the music very well
and that means listening to it intentionally
familiarise yourself with the melody,
get to know what the rhythm or the rhythmic cycle is,
get to know where one phrase starts and another ends.
The other way is subconscious listening, by absorption.
That is the opposite of intentional listening, because sometimes
we don’t have enough time to be sitting there
listening to the music, right?
So let’s say you’re cooking or you’re cleaning the house
or you’re in the train station waiting for the train,
just listen to the music as part of the background
even as you go about doing your thing.
Subconsciously, you are absorbing it and that makes a difference too.
#2: Visualisation
As you are listening to the music,
visualise your dance moves,
start associating that dance
move to that part of the music.
So it’s a way of focusing.
You’re training your mind to go through the routine
or the technical move to learn how to do it better, cleanly.
And that is a technique that you can use
when you are not in the studio
because we don’t always have the studio,
we don’t always rent the studio
and pay that money to then practice.
You can do it wherever you are,
at home in house, or commuting.
Feel the rhythm as well and that’s the important thing:
feeling the rhythm as you visualise it
#3. What to do when the music is ‘libre’, free flow?
So there isn’t this very obvious beat.
And you can encounter that in any kind of music
not just flamenco but a classical Spanish piece
where the composer or the musician
decides that this is going to be artistically libre
or free. In that case you don’t
have the reference of the pulse or the beat anymore.
What we then do is listen to the main melody.
And as one of my maestras says:
‘Breathe with the music’
and let it take you where it goes,
Let it inspire you.
So we don’t have to be so hung up that
oh my gosh, this piece of music doesn’t have that pulse,
how do I dance to it?
Well, you can! Breathe and flow with the music.
#4: It’s a bit of a technical tip.
When we can’t hear the pulse or the beat very clearly
because it’s just gotten very soft
what I do is then I put on my earpieces
and I’m blocking out all the ambient sound.
That way, it helps me be able to hear a little bit more clearly
those subtle beats.
No. 5 Hear DIFFERENT versions of the SAME music
or the same song.
Why? Because different musicians and
different singers can sing the same piece differently.
Take for example, Isaac Albéniz’s Asturias.
Asturias is played in many forms in terms of its pace,
its dynamics, on different instruments from piano to guitar to the harp.
So it helps to be able to familiarize ourselves with all that
and I think that gives us security
at the point when we’re dancing to live music.
It then trains our minds to be versatile
The same concept applies to flamenco song, flamenco cante.
The same flamenco singer can sing it differently
from today and tomorrow.
So listening to the same letra (lyric)
in different versions of it
then helps you to be versatile and very adaptable
and that’s really important in flamenco.
I hope these 5 listening tips will be useful for you
to practice your dance
and if you have your own music listening tip
make a comment and let us know!
