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How to Make Dancing Flame Music

Any performance of the Hawaiian art of fire dancing is correctly executed and most exciting when accompanied by music. The music that accompanies such an intense, high energy dance must be high energy as well. Thus, the music is fast and focuses mainly on rhythm rather than melody. Because of this, percussive instruments are used when creating flame dancing music. This allows the focus to remain on the dancer or dancers, as the instrumentalists sit in the background as the backbone of the performance.

Things You'll Need

  • Variety of hand percussion instruments
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Instructions

    • 1

      Choose a tempo for your rhythm. It needs to be fast enough to allow the dancer to create an impressive image, but it cannot be so fast that the performer or instrumentalists fall behind.

    • 2

      Decide a bass line for each section of your song. Music of this type should be in 4/4 timing, thus a simple rhythm for a bass or low sounding percussion instrument is the popular "four-on-the-floor" rhythm. The instrument is struck once during each of the four beats and it is struck exactly on the beat. This also helps instrumentalists to keep their timing.

    • 3

      Add higher and slightly softer rhythms to the bass rhythm. When completed and played together, the overall rhythm should be 1/16th notes, or notes played four times per count. A common way to know if you are playing 1/16th notes is to count with the beat using the words "One E and a (pronounced "uh"), two E and a, three E and a, four E and a." Each of the 16 overlapping components of the rhythm should sound exactly when one of these words are said.

    • 4

      Practice switching rhythms and creating new ideas.

    • 5

      Listen to other fire dance rhythms and compare yours to those. If you are happy, it is good. Begin your next song!

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