Hi,

Can anyone suggest music for a very slow international rumba - slower than the usual 25 bpm?

Thanks so much in advance!

rumbagal. If you want a really slow Rumba which has been used in a demonstration by Paul Killick Google Paul Killick then Video then second one down.. Try The Greatest Performance Of My Life. sung by Shirley Bassey. 20 BPM

when you say 25 or 20 bpm do you mean beats per minute? because that is roughly one beat of music every three seconds in rumba music. i am confused please help

To the rest of the world BPM means Bars Per Minute and not beats per minute. Haven't you noticed that any disks from the UK or Germany have written along side the tune .24 or whatever bpm and 64bpm written also,which means the total amount of bars on that particular song. There are in 4/4 time four beats to one bar of music. In dance music which is eight bar phrased there are usually eight blocks of eight each containing eight bars in one phrase. Think of each page of a book as one bar. In one chapter there are eight pages. In the book there are eight chapters. Equalling 64 pages or 64 bars of music.

thank you that does clarify things one more question though and this comes because i have a musical background and not a dance background why refer to them as bars and not measures? is there a dance specific reason that will help me in my dancing? or is it just a term? i am only asking because my instructor has as strong a musical background as dance background (she played flute and danced ballet from a very young age). is she just talking to me in a language i already know? should i be learning other terms? thank you again for any clarification

"why refer to them as bars and not measures?"

We could turn that question around and ask "why refer to them as measures and not bars?" It is a terminology thing.

It appears the US prefers measures full of quarter notes and eighth notes while the English (and at least some others) prefer bars with crochets and quavers.

Musicians and nightclub DJs need the tighter control of specifying tempo as beats per minute. Dancers are generally more worried about choreography to fit into several bars/measures so have traditionally specified tempo in bars per minute.

So, why is the famous song titled 'Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar' and not 'Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Measure.'

Counting in beats. Would the average person be able to find if I asked Google. Marcus Hilton Basic Foxtrot . Go to beat 92 and tell me which way Karen is looking. It's much easier to count 23 bars. In fact it's no trouble at all. And if it was something towards the end of there demonstration I would find it impossible counting beats. As for using the words measure to describe a bar of music is plain stupid.I would say at a guess that the word bar of music was used long before Columbus sailed to America. Is that right.

so in a nut shell, bars is just a term. it is just the word dancers use for measures which is the sheet music term which combined with time signature gives us the beats per minute so as a musician i can set the metronome. in music the bar is the physical line that separates measures and therefore parts of the song including denoting the beginning and end and any time signature changes or key signature changes. now i understand, thank you polished and social dancer.

On of the stupidest things that folks can do is argue over disagreements which can be resolved by simply consulting conventional reference material.

Merriam-Webster shows numerous definitions for the word 'bar."

Here's the definition in musical terms.

Music
a. A vertical line drawn through a staff to mark off a measure.
b. A measure.

Merriam-Webster: bar

Use the definition that you, your partner, and your coach all understand. It doesn't matter which.



jj

Most of the world wouldn't recognise the musical term "measure" at all. A measure IS a bar, and what the definition says is a bar is, of course, a bar line (the line in musical notation that divides the bars).

I have never seen tempo referred to in MPM, but always BPM, and while occasionally it is beats per minute that is meant (90 bpm for slow waltz, for example), it is much more likely to be 30 bpm (ie 30 bars per minute: the same as 90 beats per minute).

Measures? Why do Americans have to keep inventing vocabulary for things that already have perfectly servicable words?