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Is that because the music is cool and varied enough that it's now fun to just dance alone, but it wouldn't have been fun with older music? Or because, with 100

by tlb 7y ago

Is that because the music is cool and varied enough that it's now fun to just dance alone, but it wouldn't have been fun with older music? Or because, with 1000 kinds of music today, nobody can figure out how to dance together to a given song? Or did people dance alone all the time in the old days, but nobody recorded it?

The_rationalist 7y ago
It's fundamentally funnier to dance with another, but is inherently harder because it require social skills.
Sharlin 7y ago
There are likely many reasons, among them the fact that the invention of recorded sound made listening to music something you could do alone in the first place, and the general trend of individualization in the Western society in the 1900s. When it comes to partner dancing, there exist modern social dances that can be danced to a wide variety of pop music, mostly descendants of the original 30s/40s swing dances like Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, and even moreso than those predecessors, emphasize improvisation and nontraditional lead–follow dynamics. West Coast Swing is probably the most popular example while by no means mainstream; partner dances simply aren’t that fashionable even if there has been a resurgence of some sort in the past decades. (Coincidentally, I happen to be currently in Budapest, at one of Europe’s largest annual WCS events!) Of course, there’s the fundamental fact that solo dancing requires next to no skill, while acquiring even basic partner dancing skills requires one to take a class, or at the very least ”learn by doing” in an appropriate environment.
mrob 7y ago
I think it's mostly because of drum machines. Real drums have complex sounds, and take a long time to fully decay. Synthetic drums strip the sound down to its most important elements, and cut it off sooner so the sounds don't layer over each other so much. This makes the rhythm clearer and stronger feeling. I've never heard real drums anywhere near as danceable as a TR-808: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:808patterns_01.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:808patterns_01.ogg

by tlb 7y ago

The_rationalist 7y ago

It's fundamentally funnier to dance with another, but is inherently harder because it require social skills.

Sharlin 7y ago

There are likely many reasons, among them the fact that the invention of recorded sound made listening to music something you could do alone in the first place, and the general trend of individualization in the Western society in the 1900s. When it comes to partner dancing, there exist modern social dances that can be danced to a wide variety of pop music, mostly descendants of the original 30s/40s swing dances like Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, and even moreso than those predecessors, emphasize improvisation and nontraditional lead–follow dynamics. West Coast Swing is probably the most popular example while by no means mainstream; partner dances simply aren’t that fashionable even if there has been a resurgence of some sort in the past decades. (Coincidentally, I happen to be currently in Budapest, at one of Europe’s largest annual WCS events!) Of course, there’s the fundamental fact that solo dancing requires next to no skill, while acquiring even basic partner dancing skills requires one to take a class, or at the very least ”learn by doing” in an appropriate environment.

mrob 7y ago

I think it's mostly because of drum machines. Real drums have complex sounds, and take a long time to fully decay. Synthetic drums strip the sound down to its most important elements, and cut it off sooner so the sounds don't layer over each other so much. This makes the rhythm clearer and stronger feeling. I've never heard real drums anywhere near as danceable as a TR-808: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:808patterns_01.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:808patterns_01.ogg