Having trouble hearing the beats. Google "all guitar chords". Then click on Metronome, To change from 3/4 to 4/4 just click on those numbers. Tempo slide the bar. You can also accentuate the beats. If this doesn't help nothing will. Happy Counting and Listening.

I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble hearing beats. Have you thought of consulting a suitably qualified teacher?

Telemark. You must learn not to read into a statement something that it does not say.

Perhaps you should learn to write what you mean.

I very much doubt it.

A metronome can help to feel the basic pulse of a tempo, but dancers' difficulty in hearing the beats in a piece of music is nearly always in the area of discerning where the beats fall in the music that they are hearing. It is quite common to be able to identify the basic pulse, less so to be able to hear the accented beats.

Dance technique doesn't always help, in that it doesn't really explain what, for example, a percussive accent IS. Tango technique is particularly odd: in 2/4 music, we are told that there are two equally accented beats on the two beats in each bar. Oh? Doesn't that just make the music LOUD? They can only be accented relative to each other (there ARE no other beats).

I have read a very experienced examiner talk of tango music being written in 2/4 because that makes the notes more spread out on the page, and therefore easier for the musicians to read - what can you say, but laugh? Had he ever actually looked at a score, he would find more bars on the page, but the same number of notes - duh! Even very experienced dancers can display astonishing musical ignorance, at times.

"dancers' difficulty in hearing the beats in a piece of music is nearly always in the area of discerning where the beats fall in the music that they are hearing"

Yes, in particular it can be about learning to essentially ignore other "distractions" in the music which can by intention be quite captivating. Of course later those distracting elements might be expressed in the dancing to good efffect, but that's only after the ability to detect the underlying beat is secure.

"Tango technique is particularly odd: in 2/4 music, we are told that there are two equally accented beats on the two beats in each bar. Oh? Doesn't that just make the music LOUD? They can only be accented relative to each other (there ARE no other beats)."

Oh, but there are two other beats, they are just given as upbeats rather than downbeats in the 2/4 system of notation.
In the 4/4 notation more popular for its clearer presentation, these would be beats 2 and 4, while your accented beats are 1 and 3.

The notation and the numbers are not part off the music, only a way of talking and writing about it.

And for the record, the claim that the accent of the two beats is equal represents a simplification that is not really consistent with good musical phrasing in the composition of the dance.

Not so. By definition, music notated in 2/4 has two crochet beats (or quarter notes). If you subdivide the beats into quavers (or eighth notes), you do NOT create any additional beats (they're half-beats), nor you disturb the musical stress pattern that is 2/4 (or March Time). Two bars of 2/4 at the same tempo does not sound (ie it is not stressed) the same as one bar of 4/4 - they are different, and not interchangeable. Dancers do themselves no service to be blind to the difference: it is NOT a matter just of notation, but of a different pattern. No composer would write in one, meaning the other, and the standard technique cannot be reconciled with musical considerations. Two beats cannot both be stressed - and indeed they are not.

In 4/4 music there are two stressed beats, but the stress is not the same, beat 1 being stronger than beat 3 - another reason why you cannot really dance Tango to such unsuitable music.

"Not so. By definition, music notated in 2/4 has two crochet beats (or quarter notes)."

The music does not care how you notate it.

The reality is that there are four elements in a measure's worth of music quite worthy of being termed beats.

It doesn't matter if you choose to notate two of them as downbeats and the other two us upbeats - all you are doing is changing the terminology.

For the many people who prefer to speak in the context of the 4/4 sytem of notation, it is entirely correct to call these beats. For those who prefer to use the 2/4 system, they would be upbeats.

But the music doesn't care what language you speak.

"Two bars of 2/4 at the same tempo does not sound (ie it is not stressed) the same as one bar of 4/4"

You are making unwarranted assumptions. The sound is up to the judgment call of the musicians, the notation system might once have influence that but is far, far from being the primary determining factor.

"No composer would write in one, meaning the other"

Actually, they do this all the time. And there are hundreds of years of tradition that "this ink on the page should actually be played as if it were..." Much music in 6/8 is actually performed in 2, for example.

"In 4/4 music there are two stressed beats, but the stress is not the same, beat 1 being stronger than beat 3 - another reason why you cannot really dance Tango to such unsuitable music."

A musical tango requires four elements - two strong and two weak, but the strong elements are not ultimately equal in strength. This is implicit in the concept of tango music, regardless if its evident to you in the ink on the page or not. (It's even implicit in slow waltz music, where subsequent measures do not have equal stress - a reality found nowhere in the ink on the page, but made use of by musical dancers)

Sheet music is not meant to be executed by a midi synthesizer - it is intended to be interpreted by a musician with musical intelligence. To develop a midi sequence file that would produce a pleasing tango, we would first have to hand the sheet music to an intelligent musician to translate into a far more specific set of instructions, containing far more detail about stresses.

I've no intention of wasting my time with a detailed answer - I've never read such rubbish.

Just one comment, though: of course, 6/8 can be counted in two - that is why it is termed a compound time signature.

If any of you can find a recently recorded 2/4 Tango tell me. You may have great difficulty in finding one that isn't 4/4. My teacher 28th in the world treats all Tango's as 4/4 even if it is an old one recorded in 2/4.
Where does the difficulty lay. After a Progressive Link the first step of a Closed Promenade should be on beats 3 4. and not 1 2. In 2/4 it doesn't matter because it will naturaly be on 1 2. Footnote. There are only two Tango's that i know of in 2/4 that can be sung successfully by a vocalist. One is Doris Day's Hernandos Hideaway. The other Elton John's Pinball Wizard. Neither of these would be suitable for a competition.