The immense appeal of the freestyle was proven all over again when record crowds of spectators showed up in April in Las Vegas, Nev., to watch the best of the best duel it out to music in the FEI World Cup Final.

Anyone who witnessed Debbie McDonald, Edward Gal and Anky van Grunsven showcase their mounts in wildly different, but equally captivating rides, got to see the art of the freestyle at its height. They also got to see a level of freestyle design most could only imagine.

But riders at every level ride to music every weekend at shows all over the country, from training level to Grand Prix. To accommodate them, professionals make their living creating, choreographing, and shaping music for freestyles. And it’s hard to be competitive without a truly professional-sounding and looking product.

But professional freestyle designers can charge thousands of dollars to pick the music for and choreograph a freestyle. What’s someone on a budget to do?

Every rider aspires to be able to dance with their horse as Anky van Grunsven dances with Salinero, but the complicated and intense effort behind her performance is beyond most when they go to design a freestyle. But fret not; it’s not mandatory to have German musical masters at your beck and call. It’s possible to put together a winning ride on your own–it just takes some ingenuity and lots of attention to detail.

Beth Hall, who choreographs and designs freestyles out of her Woodwinds Studios in Alabama, and Karen Rob-inson, who does the same at her Applause Dressage in Vancouver, B.C., agree that the average amateur rider can indeed create her own winning freestyle ride. But there are some things you should keep in mind.

The Music Makes It Happen

The crux of the whole freestyle-design process is finding the right music. And herein lies one of the main pitfalls–picking a favorite piece of music, not for it’s appropriateness, but because it’s a favorite.

“The most blatant error is falling in love with a piece of music before you know whether the tempo will work for the gait, and then allowing that emotional attachment to result in reluctance to move on to other music choices,” said Hall. “Don’t undertake freestyle music production unless you’re emotionally prepared to be absolutely ruthless in selection of music for your horse.”

Robinson advocates shopping in little-visited corners of your music store–such as the easy listening and soundtrack sections–for freestyle music free of vocals.

As for licensing issues for music, the U.S. Equestrian Federation has an existing contract with the American Society of Com-posers, Authors and Publishers which covers performances of copyrighted music at recognized shows. So, if you’re planning to use copyrighted music in your freestyle and showing at USEF-recognized shows, you’re not violating any copyright laws. If you want to be absolutely sure you’re complying with copyright laws, it’s possible to obtain a mechnical license from the ASCAP.

And one of the most important things to decide upon during your music selection is a theme. You can’t just piece together three or four different pieces of music that might each fit your horse’s gaits but don’t form a cohesive whole. Look for pieces of music that have similar instruments, or are from the same artist or genre–Broadway or science-fiction movies, for instance.

“You’ll need to decide what impression you want to make with your music: Do you want to give them goose bumps or make them laugh? Do you want to wow them with an original set of music they haven’t heard before, or do you want to involve your audience with familiar tunes that will get their toes tapping? Your personality and your horse’s expression should be considered when you’re choosing your music,” Robinson said.

Riders need to make sure that nothing in their chosen music will unnerve their horses, said Robinson.

“Some horses become tense or frightened by certain instrument sounds; I have had horses react negatively most often to booming bass and high-pitched brass. If you choose music that causes an initial negative response in your horse, consider how he’ll react when that music is played by a powerful system in a horse show environment,” she said.

Keep the music’s quality in mind when putting your music together too.

“If you can only afford to pay for one element of freestyle production, pay a professional sound studio to edit your music onto a CD,” said Hall. “The quality of editing and sound production can make all the difference between a ‘fun’ freestyle and a winning one.”

Recording engineers usually charge by the hour, so the key to minimizing the costs here is to “be ready with specifics for editing, length and location of the edits as found on your original CDs, and have noted all the required tempo adjustments according to beats-per-minute,” Hall added.

It’s All About Tempo

What’s this about “tempo adjustments”? Yes, the most important element of your music–its tempo–can be adjusted to match your horses’ gaits, to a certain degree. Obviously, you can’t make an opera into a fast-paced jig, but there is some flexibility.

But the first step is determining the tempo you’ll need to match your horses’ gaits. “Your goal is to establish a clear relationship between your horse’s gait tempos and the tempo and rhythm of musical selections,” said Hall.

Tempo is slightly different than rhythm. Rhythm is a regularly repeated pattern, while tempo refers to the speed, or pace, of that pattern. They key is to match the tempo of the music–its pace–to the speed of your horse’s footfalls.

Your secret weapon in this mission? A metronome. The first step would be to videotape your horse at all the gaits and movements you’ll be incorporating into your freestyle. Watch those videotapes with your trusty metronome at hand and determine your horse’s individual gait tempos.

The average horse will trot at a tempo of about 152 beats per minute–start with this on your metronome and adjust up or down to match the footfalls of the horse’s two front legs. The walk and the canter tempos for average horses fall between 90 and 115 beats per minute.

Keep in mind that innumerable factors influence your horse’s tempo–including his size, length of stride, and level of collection. Use these numbers as a starting point to find your horse’s individual pace.

Once you have a ballpark idea of your horse’s tempo at each gait, ask a friend to help. Have her stand at the side of the ring with the metronome while you practice your ride and fine-tune the beats-per-minute for each movement and gait. You can even ride with the metronome in a shirt pocket, listening for the clicks, to make sure you’re on target with your tempo numbers.

Armed with the knowledge of your horse’s individual tempos, you can now select music to match. With your metronome, determine the tempo of the music you’d like to use. Ideally, you’d set the metronome to your horse’s tempo, and let it tick away while you play the music, and see if they match. A professional music engineer–or even you using some music software–can adjust the tempo of a recorded piece of music, but only to within about 5 percent of the original.

“Very often, a small tempo adjustment makes all the difference in your impression of the music with the horse. Don’t give up on a piece of music with wonderful rhythm when it might just need the tempo adjusted slightly,” said Hall.

Be subtle with your transitions between music sections, advised Robinson.

“Music has natural breaks at the end of a phrase, which shouldn’t be ignored. Cutting from your trot music to your canter music in the middle of a phrase sounds abrupt. Use the natural breaks in the music to make transitions from one to the other,” she said.

The one time that you want a definitive break in your music is in the end, at your final halt. “Modern music often fades out at the end. Fading out on centerline at the end of a freestyle performance is an anticlimactic way to finish. Try to find a sharp but natural-sounding ending to the music to end,” Robinson continued.

Putting It All Together

While you’re keeping the beat, humming to yourself, and finding new music genres to plumb, remember that all this music is supposed to be accompanying a great technical test of your own design.

You’re allowed to ride a freestyle one level lower than you’re currently showing. “The advantage to doing so is that you’ll be confident with the technical requirements and can make the pattern more difficult and interesting,” said Robinson. Any movements you include from a level above your freestyle will be penalized.

The key is to recognize your horse’s strongest movements and flaunt them, while minimizing his weaker moments. But don’t sacrifice technical correctness for flair.

“The approach to placing your movements should always be to first perform them well, and then, if you can, perform them well in difficult or interesting places,” said Robinson.

Practicing the movements you want to incorporate into the test should also include timing them, so you know how long a section of music you’ll need to fit them. Know the time limit for your level, and aim to have your freestyle be a little bit shorter than that, to allow for late music or mistakes.

But before you even begin to plan the pattern of your test, make sure you’re comfortable riding to music. While you’re schooling, play music that matches your horse’s tempo and practice matching your rhythm to the music, independent of riding different movements. Concentrate on getting the footfalls to match the beat of the music. Once you’re comfortable riding in time to the music, and can do it easily, then you can start to plan your choreography.

Contrary to riding a normal dressage test, riding a freestyle isn’t all about doing things precisely at the letter. There’s a lot more latitude in a freestyle.

“A key to successful freestyle pattern riding is to think outside the box,” emphasized Robinson. “As long as you perform the required movements in such a manner that the judge can assess them, it doesn’t matter if you ever start or finish a movement right at a letter. Freestyles rarely ride exactly the same way twice, and remembering what is and isn’t important can help you stay on cue with your music and make a good artistic impression.”

Robinson has plenty of hints for adjusting mid-ride to match the music, should you lose touch. Cutting corners, making turns either more shallow or deep, and turning before a letter, are all ways a savvy rider can catch up to or wait for the music. The key is to know your music intimately.

One of Robinson’s best tricks is to not plan your final halt at G, since it would be disastrous if you’re ahead of your music–imagine halting right in front of the judge with the melody still blaring. If you plan your halt earlier, you can carry on to G without being obvious about waiting for the music.

The most flexible plan is to turn to the last centerline off the long side, rather than at A. That way, you can adjust the timing of your turn according to where you are in the final moments of the music.

The Seven Deadly Pitfalls

Avoid these common mistakes in freestyle design:

-Failing to match the tempo of the horse’s gaits with the tempo of the music.
– Falling in love with a piece of music before knowing it works with the horse’s gaits.
– Confusing busy choreography with artistic choreography; overlooking the importance of interpretation.
– Creating choreography beyond your ability. Add difficulty only when you’re confident in the movement.
– Failing to use the natural breaks in the music for your transitions between movements.
– Planning your final halt at G, leaving no room to wait if you get ahead of your music.
– Jumping ahead to choreographic design before learning to ride in sync with the music.

Where Is The Interpretation?

At the very heart of freestyle design, you’ll discover the essence of the art form–interpretation. Choice of music joins interpretation on the artistic side of the freestyle score sheet–and receives emphasis through the coefficient–for many good reasons. In interpretation, you connect two entities, music and movement; the greater the degree of connection, the better the potential for a high artistic score.

But many riders have only a vague notion of what interpretation means.

First, the music needs to lay a rhythmic groundwork into which the rider fits the horse’s gait rhythms. Second is the relationship between the pattern of the test and the musical phrasing. You continue to build a connection between horse and music by fitting movements very precisely within phrase beginnings and endings.

In my opinion, in recent years the original intent of the dressage freestyle has been corrupted. Many riders seem willing to spend vast sums of money on freestyle design simply to dodge the underlying essential difficulty in freestyle–the interpretation of music through the horse’s movement. Some riders go so far as to design a five- to six-minute pattern without ever having listened to potential music, then have music created to match their test.

The result of this process asks music to interpret movement and not the other way around. In no sense is this method interpretive, because you can’t choreograph in an aural vacuum. This very expensive approach begs the question, “Does the rider or the music editor deserve the ribbon?”

If the element of interpretation is eliminated from the scoring, consider how little of art remains. Without seeking to interpret a piece of music, a freestyle is merely an elaborate test pattern to which background music is added.

Ordinary riders shouldn’t be discouraged by current trends in international freestyle design–of having music composed, performed and recorded specifically for a test. First-rate music is accessible to every rider through recordings featuring the best compositions played by the best musicians in the world. The door to high-quality freestyle is open to any rider who chooses, free of charge, to create an artistic freestyle through painstaking and thoughtful design work.

Beth Hall