What music for which dance (or vice versa)?
It is not intended to provide a technically correct explanation, but to show that dance lovers can have an idea about this with a few simple and clear guidelines.
You learn this of course best from own experience. In the dance school the dances are usually (by pair) announced. During the lessons you learn to distinguish the different types of music.

Appropriate, accompanying dance is determined by


- rhythmrhythme
- pace
- instruments
- atmosphere
- personal appreciation.


The rhythm you find to count each accent in music. This is usually indicated by a drum or bass.
Every sequentially, belong together, and repeated group of accents with a similar structure is called a measure. Any measure starts (usually) with a main emphasis, heavier or sharper than the intermediate accents.


If you were to count how many main accents (or measures) there are per minute, then you know the tempo of the song. This is sometimes expressed in measures per minute MPM or more succeed: Beats Per Minute or abbreviated BPM.
(Number of measures per minute x number of beats in a measure = BPM, who wants to count...)


If you in such a measure have three accents, then you have to make the typical 1-2-3 or hum - pa -pa rhythm (three-quarter bar (measure) or time of three.), it’s a waltz. The time between the counts appears to have (approximately) the same length. In a slow count we are dealing with a slow waltz or English Waltz, at a fast pace with a Viennese Waltz and the American waltz is situated somewhere in between.
In almost all other tracks you will find a rhythm with a multiple of 2 recognizable, often four times: a quadruple. This also means that you basically a lot of different dances can do: Popcorn, Boogie, Bachata, Samba, Chachacha...
With a clear rhythm of four with a heavy first beat and the intermediate count of equal length, we deal with a Disco. On the slow versions we dance Popcorn. The count is Slow Slow Slow Slow.

If the last two beats are split into three parts, and you hear a Slow - Slow -Quick -Quick -Quick (so 3 Quicks instead of 2 Slows) then it is probably a Chachacha. The Quick -Quick -Quick corresponds to the side –lock-side steps in the Chachacha. You hear it as if it were the rhythm and sound of sliding feet in the name of the dance. However, the same rhythm can be extended and faster with a SSQQQ QQQ structure, and then we dance a boogie or Lindy hop.
In the list of dance styles you can find a dance measure, count or partition of the accents (Slows and Quicks) and tempo (speed) in BPM (or a fork from a slow dance to a fast danceable pace).

metronoomSometimes a small difference in tempo or mood is enough not to choose on the same number not for a Jive, but for Quickstep.
But that's a personal appreciation course. Perhaps you'd rather dance slower songs with clear pattern, or perhaps you would rather freak out on faster songs...

In similar rhythms instruments are often used to determine which dance it is. So you can be caused by excessive guitar and the very typical sharp sound on the fourth beat to recognize the Bachata immediately. Or the slow, heavy first beat of the Rumba (In Cuban music give the claves often the rhythm.).

You do not start any (base) step of a dance on the first beat of a measure, but it usually does. Sometimes, however, that is on the second or third beat. And sometimes it also includes various styles (e.g. Salsa and Mambo On Two) and differences between dance schools.

In the lesson half count will often be "and'' counted as:
one - and two - and three - and - four...
A quarter beat is often called as "e" means an e- two- e - three - e - four...

That 'e' is so short and fast that never the entire foot is on the ground, only the ball of the foot (for example, Samba).

Sometimes the (Latino) atmosphere of the number determines whether you dance easier a sentimental rumba or a spicy Chachacha. Mambo and Salsa have the same rhythm, but Mambo sounds clearer, shorter, blockier and more truncated. In contrast salsa rolls and flows. Will be clearer than reading letters: listen to samples, test it out for yourself.


Our sense of rhythm is innate. Few other animals have it.
Vocal learning hypothesis: according to this hypothesis, only animals that can mimic vocal, can observe beat induction (rhythm), although it could not be demonstrated in dolphins and seals (also 'vocal learning'). Vocal learning appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for having a sense of rhythm. That in addition to people also have several birds.

The dissociation hypothesis claims that there is a dissociation (decoupling, split between perception and consciousness) between the perception of rhythm (rhythm perception, duration -based timing,) and observing regularity. Rhythm perception does occur in other primates (monkeys), beat induction (beat- based timing) is not.