Bulgarian dance rhythm is built from steps of two and three fast pulses. Dancers and players often internalise the pattern as unequal steps rather than a stream of equal counts— a useful teaching vocabulary is бързо (bŭrzo, quick, two pulses) and бавно (bavno, slow, three), and a slow step simply lasts about half again as long as a quick one. Bulgarian theory calls the results неравноделни — “unequally divided” meters; the Turkish word aksak, “limping”, describes how they feel underfoot. Bartók was struck enough by them to name a whole set of pieces after them.
“Horo” is not the whole of Bulgarian music — it is one country on a bigger map. Know which land you are standing in:
Collective dances on the village square — circles, open chains and short rows depending on the dance and local practice. The selector below is a meter study library, not every choreography.
Often danced solo, in couples or facing off with a handkerchief overhead; collective and regional variants also exist. The seven-pulse family is broader than one form.
Many slow table songs (na trapeza) and Rhodope slow songs unfold in free, non-metric, ornamented time—the other pole of the measured dance repertories. A fixed metronome is not the right model for those performances.
Music tied to the calendar and the life cycle — Koleda carols, Lazaruvane in spring, harvest songs, the wedding cycle. Sung because the day demands it, not for dancing.
A kaval or gaida player alone with a drone, improvising in free time before the dance tune begins — the instrumental cousin of the slow song.
Twenty-eight representative Bulgarian dance-meter studies, from the even walking pravo to the twenty-five of Sedi Donka, spanning eighteen signatures and several regional families. Bulgaria has hundreds of named local dances and variants; this lab is a practical meter map, not a claim to contain every choreography. Pick one and you get four things: the cells written out as бързо and бавно, the rhythm engraved as a pulse line and a step line, a real traditional melody danced to that rhythm with its notes dropped into the cells so you can see which one lands on the limp, and the tupan underneath it all.
Where no freely licensed transcription of a dance's melody exists, the card says so plainly instead of inventing one.
Tupan teaching separates two jobs. The basic pattern accompanies the singing: the kiyak lays down дум on the bar and on every slow step, the switch answers тек on the quicks, and it stays out of the way. The solo pattern is for the otsvir, the instrumental interlude, where the switch hand fills the space between the steps — in the Balkan school it is the switch that does the talking and the beater that accents. Switch between them while the band plays and listen to the drummer change role.
A common traditional learning route is embodied and aural: people absorb rhythms by stepping, singing and playing, with notation useful as a later map. This school supports that route: put steps together like a village bandleader, walk them like a dancer, and name the dance by ear like everyone at the wedding. Your best scores are saved on this device.
A bandleader builds a bar out of steps: quick (2 pulses) and slow (3). Add steps, hear your bar, and see it engraved. If your build is a real dance, Horo will tell you its name.
Dancers learn with their feet. The band plays the dance selected above in section I — you tap the pad (or the spacebar) on every step, quicks and slows alike. Two bars to listen, then you join the line. Horo scores every step and tells you whether your бавно is getting its full length.
At a wedding nobody announces the meter — you hear two bars and your feet already know. Horo plays a dance; you name it. Streaks are the score, exactly like being the person at the table who always knows.
The defined 28-study meter map is complete and testable. The ledger below shows which cards have a sourced melody and which have a title-checked direct performance. Open gaps remain visible; they are not filled with invented tunes or uncertain videos.
A meter is not music until somebody plays a tune on it. These are real Bulgarian dance melodies, each one running in its own uneven meter with the tupan keeping the steps underneath — the same dances you just counted, now as actual tunes.
A growing set of verified performances for the meter families above. Some local dances still link to search rather than a confidently identified direct recording; the app says so instead of attaching the wrong choreography.