You're overthinking it

First off, overthinking it does not even come up on spellcheck.  Hello?

Anyway, the other day someone told me I was overthinking it.  I had made this intricate poster of dance music.

What's to think about with dance music, anyway?  Well turns out that there's a lot, and I put it on a poster just to organize my thoughts.  People weren't buying it, though.  

I'm thinking about dance music because I associate it with good times, and also because I'm in a band that will play tonight at the Village Tavern in Clinton.  Dance music has a few common denominators, and functions similarly to pop music.  This is perfectly unsurprising when we think that american pop music, like on pop music stations, is dance music.  I just wanted you to notice the important distinction.

The commonalities to dance music are a steady beat, around 120 beats per measure;  and this beat should be characterized by a pulse.  Pulse is used intentionally here, because we know that hitting the bass drum on notes 1 and 3 of the measure, and hitting the snare on beats 2 and 4 resembles the human heart beat.  It does, however, have to stay steady, and be something reliable;  so actual heart beats are out.  I'm thinking, why wouldn't anyone just record over an actual recording of a hear beat? in order to get this answer.

There should be some external motivation, outside of the music, in order to dance.  There should be an easy chord progression.   Again, I'm using easy here out of deliberation:  some Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) and Ballets have intricate chords.  Easy chord progressions seem to revolve around a basic mode, like the pentatonic;  or two or three chords;  but the rules are subject to change around this basic cluster concept.

Songs like Twist and Shout have three chords, whereas basic disco songs have two chords, songs by Squarepusher sometimes have no chords, songs by instrumentalists (sometimes called Classical) have tons of chords. 

Additionally, there has to be some sort of tension.  This is the case in all music, but it is especially noticeable in dance music because of the use of our evil sounding chords, the minor chords.  

I have more to write on this topic, but I'll have to type some more later.