| I hope will be both informative and enlightening to the reader, who maybe a tap dancer or non tap dancer, it is a general reference to elements that surround jazz tap. I have included much of the information I have gathered over the years during my exploration of every thing related to tap and most of all, it's associations with jazz as a whole. I have basically started from the ground up, passing on some of my little nuggets of information to any one who finds it of interest. I hope every one can find some thing of interest in my writing so that I have at least helped some one on there way to finding out some answers to questions they have had unanswered for some time. At least, I hope I can offer some direction in pursuing your own quest for tap related information. |
| Tap dancing as the name suggests is the technique of tapping you feet on the floor rhythmically, usually with music although it is not always the case as it is just as interesting without music. In the beginning the tap sound was produced with wooden soled shoes called clogs. One of the greatest historical tap dancers named Bill Robinson was famed for wearing these types of shoes although they had been used long before in other cultural dances. The sound they produced was a sound similar to that of knuckles on a wooden door. To enhance the sound metal plates were later screwed to the bottoms of shoes and these plates were then developed into raised shapes to give a fuller sound. The design and shape of the tap plates have remained virtually unchanged for many years now with only minor differences in size and number of holes used to secure the tap plate. |
| You can basically tap in any shoes within reason, even in big boot's, as a recent successful Australian stage production has shown. Until fairly recently tap shoes were something that you had to create your self by fitting your own tap plates to a pair of dance shoes or took them to a shoe repair shop to have them fitted. Today you can buy tap shoes off the shelf with taps fitted and with all the latest features of strengthened soles, sole lifts and reinforced toe boxes for toe stands. Shoe customisation can get quite technical and it is no longer a simple procedure to order a pair of tap shoes from a dance accessory out let if you are a professional tap dancer. |
| I like to put my own taps on as I find that although shoe repair shops are used to attaching the tap plates, they really have no idea about the sound they create or the fact that they need to be attached just right in places. Besides, I think it is much more fun fiddling with the taps in order to get the best sound. I have never really been happy with the sound of my taps, it has always been a compromise. Achieving the sound in you have in your mind is a difficult thing, but I have found that you can achieve the sound you want by means of a balance of tap surface and the right adjustment of the tap plate screws. The actual shoe has also got a lot to do with the sound, the heavier they are the deeper or thicker the sound. You can also get around these factors with the correct sound amplification and re-mixing techniques. |
| The setting up of the tap plates on the shoes is a personal thing and there are many tricks and tips that people use when attaching them. Some people like the tap plates lose and some like them tight. The tapping style also needs to be taken into consideration too, different set-ups are required for different tap styles. I have found that the screws supplied with the taps are really inadequate for the job and are the cause of many flying tap plates. For this reason I open up the holes in the tap plates and put larger screws in which are more secure. It is also best when you have the sound you want from the taps, to lock the screws in place with some sort of adhesive, so the sound you have tuned the taps to is not lost after rigorous tap workouts. I was once shocked to see the bottoms of an Will Gaines shoes (American Jazz Tap dancer based in the UK) , as they were worn right down to the screws and yet he had a beautiful sound, This goes to show that it has a lot to do with the skill of the performer not the tools for the job. |
The surface is also a big consideration which is often over looked. I
have often turned up to watch tap performances where the tap dancers are
forced to tap on a stage covered with the soft type of plastic linoleum.
This is always the kiss of death to the tap dancer who relies on sound
in their performance. Although for the tap dancers who specialise in presentation,
poses, gestures and gimmicky acrobatics, it is not really a problem.
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Basic tap steps are the building blocks to all tap dance combinations and routines, they are taught in the first few sessions of attending a tap class. The basic steps are the shuffle, hop and the step ball change which is really a combination of the first two. From these basic steps a multitude of combinations can be obtained, the most important of them being the time step. The time step is the back bone of the tap dance routines and combinations, because it is used like a link between tap combinations and also as the intro to a tap routine. The time step performed by eight to ten people simultaneously is a wonderful sight and was used to great effect in films of the 30's.  The time step has many variations and in the early days tap dancers were known by their time step as it was a personalised thing. The time step ranges from simple to complicated depending on your level of skill and the amount of steps in your own repertoire. The rhythm of the time step centres around an off beat. An easy way that has been used to remember the rhythm of the basic time step is the rhythmic sound of the sentence. "Thanks for the bug-y ride". This is the basic time step rhythm that all time steps are built on. |
| After you have learned the tap steps and all the variations of the time step, there are an infinite number of combinations to apply them to. There are also many different names applied to the steps and combinations too. I will not go into the realms of tap step name unification, but if you attend classes in your particular part of the world I'm sure you will find your own local names for steps that are used the world over. There are some special tap steps and one in particular called a wing, which are basically a step where you jump into the air and kick out a shuffle of taps before landing on your feet again. There was an act called the Condos Brothers whose speciality was wings and they could do every conceivable combination of them. Frank Condos was famed for achieving the five tap wing. The funny thing though, about wings, is that they are quite hard to master through practice, but they are not really appreciated by an audience of non tap dancers as they are made to look so easy by the dancer. From a jazz tap point of view these steps take too much out of a dancers legs which leave no time for recovery. That is why more often than not special steps like the wings and others are left till the end of the act. |
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American tap has always been inextricably linked to jazz, although tap has many different paths it's initial American roots are with jazz. Jazz is difficult to categories and so is tap dancing, but basically jazz tap is about improvisation around a general theme. Improvisation also known as ad-libbing, jamming or off the cuff dancing, which basically means the production of some thing out of initially nothing. Jazz tap is what takes place when an artist expresses them self on a moment to moment basis creating and developing as they go, more in-depth definitions are given else where in this site. In reality any one can improvise, however, that does not mean that we will all sound as rhythmically together as some one who has been tapping for some years. Jazz tap's common use of the off beat accents make it so complementary to jazz as that is the root concept on which jazz music is built. In jazz the term swing is commonly used to define the use of accents which mainly fall on the third and forth beats of the a bar. A bar being the measure of 4 beat in a 4:4 time signature, 32 bars being a common jazz arrangement of a jazz standard and the 8 or 16 bars which are commonly used for the playing of the blues. |
| It has often been said and even inferred by some of the late great masters of tap, that tap has had a profound effect on the way jazz has developed. It is said that the rhythms used by some of the early tap dancers were instrumental in the developed of a new jazz era which brought about the changing face of jazz music at that time. Before the advent of well known jazz drummers, drummers used to play along in the back ground and were felt rather than heard. It is believed that while these drummers and other musicians were playing, they were listening to what the tap dancers were doing and subconsciously using these off beat rhythms in their new compositions and arrangement's. The drummers started to emerge with a more pronounced sound which had the effect of steeling beats tap dancers would usually use in their act. |
| This had a knock on effect with tap dancers, who now starting to employ the use of trick steps or acrobatics and even folk dances from Russia. As the intricate rhythms could no longer be heard above the thundering drumming of the new age drummers, dancers looked more towards visual presentation. This visual importance even got to the extent of where dance groups would not even use taps on their shoes, probably because they needed the grip on their feet for dangerous acrobatic stunts on a slippery stage. |
