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 Rhythm
Boot Camp
By Mike Wittmers
Build musicality in your tap dancers with rhythm
IF YOU’RE A TAP DANCER, YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE RHYTHM. Having good
rhythm not only makes us better dancers, it makes us more
intriguing as people. When I sit in a coffee shop to write, I
plug in my headphones and listen to my newest iTunes playlist.
Because of my dance and music background, I can never just sit
still and listen. During prolonged moments of thought and
introspection I play air guitar and drums. I tap my feet. I
bob my head back and forth and lip sync. Yes, I am that
dorky guy. I am fully aware that people are staring at me and
I don’t care. You see, half of them may snicker and laugh but
I know the other half is wondering what I’m listening to and
why I am so comfortable with looking like an iPod commercial
in public—and that’s all I need to appear more interesting
than the out-of-work actor/waiter sitting next to me.
In order to give students a chance to look ridiculous in
public like me, we have to start their ear training at an
early age. Rhythm is as much about feeling as it is about
numbers and counts. While you can teach the math part
of music, you must instill the feeling part. This may
seem like a difficult responsibility to take on, but actually
it couldn’t be easier.
SING IT WITH YOUR FEET
To young ears, lyrics are the most obvious part of any song,
and though they might not always sing them correctly or on
key, children generally understand the concept of when
to sing those lyrics. Around age 7, I was forced into the sad
realization that Barry Manilow was not singing “at the
Cocoa, Cocoa Banana.” Nonetheless, when that chorus kicked in,
I shouted the praises of said chocolaty treat to the heavens
in perfect time.
As teachers, we can use this kind of faux pas to our
advantage: We teach our students to sing the lyrics with their
feet! In order to make this educational venture successful,
it’s important for us to have a grasp of this concept
ourselves. Let’s keep it simple to start. How would you tap
out these lyrics?
“We all live in a yellow submarine, A yellow submarine, A
yellow submarine.”
Here’s what I’m feeling:
R R L R L R R R L
Heel-push step step shuffle hop toe hop step
R R L R L
Shuffle ball change ball change
R L R L R L
Toe toe heel heel (cramp roll) toe toe
No counts. All feel. I know every sound I make with my feet
will match each syllable with perfect timing. Why? Because I
know when to sing the lyrics. Let’s get “old skool” on
this next one. Sing along!
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?”
R L R R L L R L R L
Scuff heel heel-push shuffle ball change toe heel step
R R L R L R R R
Shuffle ball change toe heel toe heel toe L R L
Shuffle heel toe
L R L
Shuffle heel toe
In the beginning it’s important to pick songs that are
lyrically simplistic (nursery rhymes, school songs, etc.). As
your students become more proficient at this exercise you can
give them more advanced songs or even chall enge
them to pick their own songs. You will be surprised at what
they come up with, and you will gain a better understanding
of how well they feel music. This idea of singing the lyrics
with our feet is like throwing
a tiny pebble into a glassy lake—one action, many ripples.
Here’s how it works in an improv setting: Pick a song— let’s
try “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Line up your students. Then,
one at a time, each student taps out the lyrics, giving one
tap sound to every syllable.
It’s just that simple. No two students will do the same thing.
Not only will they be improvising with their taps but they’ll
get to see and
hear the different ways their peers feel a song with their
feet.
From a choreography standpoint, lyrics can be very powerful in
tap. No, I don’t mean kicking your foot
out when someone sings the word “kick”—
that’s a little on the nose. What I’m looking for is how the
taps follow the phrasing of the lyrics. For example,
think about the song
“Feel Good Inc” off the album Demon Days by Gorillaz.
Listen to the rap lyrics at 1:35 of the song. Now think about
how rhythmic our taps would be if they could match the
phrasing of the lyrics there instead of the beat. Your
first few attempts at this process might result in some
awkward pauses or uncomfortable weight changes. That’s OK.
This is how we push the envelope of tap, create new steps, and
best of all (drum roll) get away from patterns and repetition!
These ideas are great ways to implement ear training into a
class setting and instill the ability to feel music in
our dancers.
I’M A SCAT MAN
If you or your students have ever taken tap class from me,
it’s a good bet that on more than one occasion you’ve heard me
scat out beats to demonstrate the rhythm I need from your taps
or the groove I want you to hear in the music. My comfort with
scatting in front of anyone at any time comes from 12 years of
playing drums, 26 years of tapping, and most important, not
being afraid to express how I feel music.
Musicians have been scatting longer than most of us have been
alive. Scatting has all the makings of its own language and
yet somehow,
no matter what their background, everyone understands it
almost immediately. Scat is all about vocally expressing what
you’re hearing or feeling in a song, without using actual
words: “Dwee do bah do bop bah doodle-ee-do bop.” We should
approach tap the same way. Learning to scat makes
it easier for us not only to interpret rhythms on the fl y but
to improvise to anything. Scatting is like
adding another line to the sheet music of a song. If you
listen to jazz singers scat, you hear
moments when they are with the groove and then moments
when they vocalize against it—harmony and dissonance. This is
the ideal format for tap choreography.
Here’s a way to visually understand this concept: Draw a large
dollar sign on a piece of paper. Now, label the straight lines
“music” and the curvy line “ography.” Just like this dollar
sign, your best choreographic effort will end up weaving in
and out of the music seamlessly. With beginning students, your
curves will be close to the straight lines. The more advanced
your choreography gets, the farther away the curves will be
from the straight lines. The thing to remember is that the
music lines never change. The song is set. When John Mayer
sits down with his guitar and starts strumming his newest
slice of chord-progression heaven, he is not thinking “Ah,
yes! This groove sounds just like three shuffle ball-changes
and a front Irish.” Most likely he’s thinking “Dum bah-dah dum,
ba dum da-dum dum.” We must tap to him because he will
not change for us. This is why we need to start thinking and
feeling in terms of scat, rather than getting so wrapped up in
names of steps.
A good place to start your “scat homework” would be Al Jarreau.
I suggest the album Givin’ It Up. It’s a collaboration
between Jarreau and jazz guitarist George Benson. The best
song to hear some cool scat rhythms would be “’Long Come Tutu”
(as it’s listed on iTunes; it’s called just “Tutu” on the CD).
You’ll get a good sample of scatting and it’s also a good
challenge for tapping out lyrics. The only difference is that
this time you’ll be tapping out syllables and vowel sounds.
“BECAUSE NED SCHNEEBLY TOLD ME TO!”
One of my favorite movies is School of Rock. All sight
gags and one-liners aside, I can’t help but wish that I had
had a Ned Schneebly in my life when I was younger. There are
actually some valuable lessons to be taken from this movie.
One of the most important things Ned does is send his students
home with CDs of music they’ve never listened to before. At fi
rst it seems dumb to the kids, but over time they end up
finding a musician or band they really connect with. I have no
idea where my musical knowledge would be if someone had done
that for me when I was growing up. So I will give all of you
the push that I never had.
Whether you are familiar with the following artists and
songs or not is irrelevant. I want you to focus on listening
to them with your “tap ears.” Listen to each
song a couple of times without dancing. Learn where the
changes are (verse, chorus,
bridge, chord changes, changes in meter). Once you have a feel
for the song, start thinking about what the groove, lyrics,
and individual instruments are saying and how you would bring
them out with your feet. Caution! This is usually the
point when most choreographers would try to fit steps or
patterns they already know into a new song. Wrong idea! At its
best, choreography doesn’t work like that. You need to think
of each song with a clean slate, otherwise you’re trying to
cram a square peg into a round hole. Although it might work
out with the counts, it will be apparent to viewers that
something has been forced. Let your feet do what the music
tells them to do. If the song is screaming for “Ba-dee ah,”
give ’em “Ba-dee ah.”
This is how we implement our ability to scat. Now let’s get
into some homework.
Song: “Tia Lupe”
Artist: Alien Ant Farm
Album: TruANT
This song is a great mix of Latin, pop, and rock. The verses
are in measures of 7 and the chorus is in measures of 4. Some
of the notable accents to listen for are:
•The
kick drum as it drives the verses on counts 1, and-3, and-5,
and-7.
•The
use of the toms during brief fills in the chorus.
•The
phrasing of the lyrics during the bridge (2:34–2:46).
•
The cymbal pattern, played on the ride-bell during the last 50
seconds of the song, stays steady, but because the song is in
7, it bounces back and forth from the “whole” counts to the
“and” counts.
Song: “Kit Kat Jam”
Artist: Dave Matthews Band
Album: Busted Stuff
“Kit Kat Jam” is one of my favorite songs on this album. It’s
funky and goes back and forth between 6/8 and 3/4! Things to
listen for:
•The
“broken high-hat” (cymbals) groove. This is when the high-hat
is played with melodic pauses rather than consistently
straight through.
•The
change to 3/4 at 1:40 of the song.
•The
slightly hidden melody of the saxophone.
Both of these songs are rhythmically advanced, but
anything you take away from them can easily be geared down for
lower levels. You just have to be creative!
The examples and exercises I’ve given are only suggestions. To
your students, rhythm is only as interesting as you
make it. I encourage you to take this information, spin it to
fit your own class situations, and then find new ways to make
learning rhythm fun, so you can pass it off to the next
generation of dancers. Learning rhythm is a never-ending
process. As long as someone out there is making music, we will
always have homework to do!
Photo captions (from top to bottom):
Teach your students musicality and their tapping will be as
golden as Wittmers’ tap shoes.
Wittmers hoofi ng it on the set for one of his instructional
DVDs in 2006.
Mike Wittmers holds the attention of young tappers at the Kidz
Klub at the Dance Masters Chapter 13 convention in 2005.
All photos by Bill Wittmers
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