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Owned by Musa

🏆 Home of the #1 Award-Winning Method Helping Salsa Dancers Around the World

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🎶 MUSICALITY MONDAYS ARE HERE!
Look in the calendar! Every Monday, we’re going LIVE inside Social Dance Mastery to train one of the most important skills you can develop as a dancer: your musicality. 🔥 Each week we’ll explore things like: 🥁 Rhythm & timing 🎵 Clave, tumbao & instrumentation 👂 Training your musical ear 💃 Connecting movement to the music 🔥 Salsa history, structure & musical styles These sessions are for members of the Social Dance Mastery community, so come ready to listen, learn, ask questions, and grow together. 📅 Every Monday ⏰5 PM Mountain / 7 PM Eastern 🎥LIVE inside the community 👇 Comment “I’M IN” below so I know you’re coming to the next Musicality Monday!
🎶 MUSICALITY MONDAYS ARE HERE!
1 like • 5d
@Mariella Van deuzen oh yes ok we will have recordings! its touchy finding a good time😂 ... should Sunday morning be a better time for you? we might do another call then but we are going to start with Mondays
2 likes • 5d
@Raúl Del Carmen Amazing see you then... let me know if there's a specific topic you need help with!
🔑 The Secret Keys of Social Dance Connection — Workshop Replay Now Available!
Why do some dances feel effortless while others feel completely disconnected—even when both dancers know what they're doing? The replay of our Secret Keys of Social Dance Connection workshop is now available! 🎥 In this workshop, I introduce my Dynamic Movement Model and explore three powerful keys to understanding connection on the dance floor: This workshop is your introduction to our full 4-week Secret Keys of Social Dance Connection cohort! In the full experience, we'll go deeper with guided training, practical exercises, and resources to help you develop greater awareness, confidence, adaptability, and connection. 🎁 Special Workshop Offer: Join the 4-week cohort and receive a complimentary Personal Movement Assessment plus lifetime access to Social Dance Mastery! ▶️ Watch the replay HERE 🔑 Ready to go deeper? ENROLLMENT LINK HERE After watching, comment below: Which key resonated with you the most?
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Building a confidence progression for musicality
Hi @Musa Starseed , You have a lot of stuff curated re: the history of salsa and different aspects of musicality. I'm working through the 30 day transformation right now. As I go through it, one thing lingers in the back of my mind. I know individual instruments that focus on the down beat pretty well. When I play them individually or even 2-3 at a time, I can catch the rhythm pretty fast. However, listening to a real salsa song, there is just an insane amount of variety and different instruments and patterns. My mind just panics and sort of gives up. I'm talking about the problem of finding the one and dancing to the pulse. I feel like without this ability all other patterns and stuff I learn in group and private sessions are just not that useful. Is that the right approach - focus deeply on rhythm and musicality first? People say if you listen to a lot of salsa, your mind kind of internalizes it. I'm just not so sure if it works like that for me. Asking the people in my life for help is like asking fish how to swim - they don't consciously think about swimming, they just do it if you put them in water. I feel like I'm a colour blind person and everyone is describing how to see colours easily, and it's just not clicking for me. Do you have a progression of easy to hard salsa songs that I can work through and build some confidence like a step-by-step ladder so I can train my brain out of this negative feedback loop it's kind of stuck in?
0 likes • Sep 7
Yes, I understand exactly what you’re talking about and this is exactly the things that we help dancers with … our approach really focuses on the foundation first and a lot of people usually skip this. If they do have the opportunity to learn from the foundation, that’s amazing …but usually the reality is that people just need to fill in some gaps that were missing. For you what you are really needing to do is focus on “pulse training” …. Have you accessed the “salsa heritage playlist” yet… this is a good list of curated playlists … to start with… you might have to get on a call With me so I can really provide you with the personalized tools And resources you are looking for to get your pulse control so that the polyrhythm doesn't overwhelm you. Thanks for being open and honest with where you are in the process. Just remember that we’re here for you with whatever tools you need. We have been working with people who have had the same issues and we’ve helped them transform them so let me know how further you would like to go, and we can continue to talk more but if you haven’t already, I really encourage you to go into the Salsa heritage playlist and see if you can find some good songs that you wanna work with for pulse training!
Day 4 counting bars
The music clip at at 26:45 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcif91msZcs , is supposed to be 16 bars. I counted 5 times and could only get 14 bars, or 12 bars a few times. Can you confirm it is 16? It would help to annotate the music with on screen with counts? I'm really confused about this.
0 likes • Sep 4
And yes you are right about the annotation… but I specifically wanted you to use your auditory/kinesthetic for this one … just strengthen that ability… we will have more Visually annotated exercises later on. We rely so much on the visual and this can become a crutch if the other senses are not being used to integrate rhythm and music concepts. But if this is totally stopping you I can make a visual for you!
0 likes • Sep 4
This is actually amazing. Where did you get the tapping transcription from? I would love to use this in our work to really show a visual of those things! Ok for the piano i think I understand what you’re saying … your Listening to the pianos melody and its sort of getting you off track of the rhythmic meter? Does that sound correct. The tricky part about this famous piano riff “oye como Va” is that it’s a highly syncopated melody… the first 2 piano beats are the only beats on quarter notes but the piano beats after that are all mostly on the off beats… so this is where pulse training really shows its weight and we go over post training in some of our courses, meaning that your ability to maintain the rhythmic meter on the on beats as well as the offbeats… …. I know some amazing ways to get this integrated… if you are interested!
Musicality question about the Bass
Hi @Musa Starseed , my salsa teacher, who's an amazing dancer worked through some rhythm and finding 1 exercises with me. She says to block out all instruments except the BASS, which she relies on for finding the 1. She says there is a tension and relaxation cycle between the 1 and the 8. But when researching online, I found the bass is very frequently "syncopated", so I'm not sure if that's a good strategy now. She is right that my problem is I'm listening to too many sources of information, and I need to strip it down to something simple. I'm not sure what that looks though. Thanks for any guidance!
0 likes • Sep 4
Greetings I love this question and I’m so glad you’re in the community because what you’re talking about is exactly what we help people with. so when it comes to finding the “1” we definitely don’t start with the bass because the bass is one of the most syncopated tumbaos… it actually accents the 4th beat and the 8th note of the second beat of the musical measure… no disrespect to your teacher but we have found more success helping people find the 1 by starting with non-syncopated rhythmic tumbaos … such as the cow bell… the maracas… then we move to the syncopated rhythms such as the conga and the piano montunos…. The bass can be played non-syncopated but the bass really helps For people wanting to get their on2 timing because of the natural energy lead the bass gives in it’s syncopation… now when it comes to actually getting that skill of Finding the 1…. we can help with that!
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Musa Starseed
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@musa-starseed-8925
Author of Social Dance Dynamics | Founder of the #1 method helping social dancers worldwide transform their dancing.

Active 2d ago
Joined Nov 11, 2025
Miami