Freestyling

by Francesca Prescott

Riding a freestyle to music is something I’ve always wanted to do. Apart from one unofficial competition years and years ago, and the hastily improvised program I did with my friend Josephine last November for our stables’ internal competition, I’ve never had the opportunity to ride one. Also, until last September I wasn’t allowed to ride an official freestyle test as I’d never passed an exam required in Switzerland to move up to a level where freestyles, aka Kürs, are offered at competition level. 

So I’ve decided that 2015 is going to be the year of the Kür for Qrac and I. I’m probably completely nuts, as choreographing a freestyle, finding the right music, and riding everything at the perfect moment has to be one of the most difficult things to do on horseback, apart from maybe…well, actually I can’t think of anything more difficult to do on horseback, but I’m sure there is something. Polo, maybe? I’m hopeless with balls and clubs and stuff like that.

I think I’ve found my music. I’ve spent hours and hours (and I seriously mean HOURS AND HOURS) going through on my computer, listening to the gazillion tracks I have on it, listening to samples of music online, buying tracks and albums that I think sound promising. I’ve watched umpteen freestyle videos of superstar riders on Youtube (oh the beauty, the perfection!), and pulled up recent videos of my horse and I during training or at shows (oh the evading quarters, the imperfection!), watching them over and over while playing various tracks.  I’ve been convinced I’ve found something perfect many times, only to change my mind because I like something else better. Also, depending on how “big” Qrac moves in trot, the tempo changes, making it hard to decide on a specific track. A friend filmed my lesson this morning, and Qrac was moving with far more scope than the previous time my lesson was filmed, so the track I thought too “big” for him last week seemed perfect today.

I guess I should aim for big, right? I mean, bigger is better. When it comes to trot, less is definitely not more.

As far as the style of music for my freestyle, I honestly thought I’d go for something poppy and Latino. When my friend and I rode our pas-de-deux to the new Ricky Martin track, Adios, late last year, I was sure I’d choose something in the same vein for my freestyle. But then I started to feel that using Latino music with a Lusitano horse was way too cliché, and that it had probably been done to death. Also, when you take the lyrics out of many top 40-type tracks they tend to sound a little bland, kind of like elevator or supermarket music. The mega high energy David Guetta/Avicii -style stuff is cool, but it’s not really Qracy and me. I tried tracks from musicals, but felt that none-Anglophone judges just wouldn’t connect with the likes of “Oklahoma!” or “Hair”, and French musicals really don’t do it for me.

Coldplay seemed like a possibility for a while; I think their riffs are great, but nothing really made me think “that’s it!”, and surely the judges are sick of Viva la Vida, and Clocks? I liked Princess of China for the canter, and also because I always feel like a princess when I’m riding Qracipoo. But I wasn’t totally convinced. And considering how often I’m going to be listening to this music, I need to be sure. I need to really love it.

And then I remembered a track I’d seen Carl Hester ride to at Olympia in London, when I went there just before Christmas with a girlfriend to watch the Grand Prix and the Freestyle. The particular track is Heart of Courage by Two Steps from Hell. Carl Hester wasn’t the only rider to feature this track in his program, and both my girlfriend and I had commented on how fabulously electrifying it was. I knew it wouldn’t work for Qrac; it's far too “big” for him, but I thought I might find something that felt similarly inspirational and epically elevating without being so overpowering.

So I bought a few Two Steps from Hell albums and had a good listen while fiddling with my training and show videos. Of course, ITunes helpfully intervened, suggesting that if I liked music by Two Steps from Hell, I might also like Audiomachine, and being a sucker for their helpful suggestions, I bought some of those to see if they were right, which they were to some extent, especially a couple of tracks on the album they composed for the movie Tree of Life. Still, Two Steps from Hell seems to work best, and after faffing around on the computer for another gazillion hours I’ve managed to narrow it down to one track for the canter, three for the trot, and one for the walk

Anyway, now I need to ride my freestyle while someone films it, see if the timing is right (not to mention whether Qracy and I can actually do what we intend to do!). Next, from what I’ve gathered, I send the video and my music choices to a professional who will lay down the tracks and edit the music according to the choreography, and then send me a CD.

And then we ride it to see if it works. If it does we ride it over and over and over again until we get it all beautiful and perfect, and we stop falling over our outside shoulder, and losing the quarters and the bend in the half passes, and the flying changes go through on cue, and the extended trot flows and we don’t fall on our nose, and we don’t mistake the wheelbarrow for a giant green fire-breathing dragon.

Will we be ready by April? All we can do is try. And it’s a fun, exciting, motivating goal to work towards.

Have you ever ridden a freestyle? If you have, or if you would like to, what type of music would you choose?

Singing in the Ring

Qrac and me at a show last summer

Do you have moments when you’re driving in your car, music blaring, dreaming up freestyle choreographies that match the beat of the song you’re listening to? I do! All the time! There I am, cruising along to, say, “Bailamos”, that old hit by Enrique Iglesias, visualising Qrac and I dancing across the arena, half-passing and tempi-changing and piaffe-passing, then pirouetting during the break in the song before taking off in a fabulous extended canter. Yeah, it’s totally daft, but it’s a fun fantasy. And yeah, it’s definitely a fantasy especially if you know how difficult it is to ride a perfect ten metre circle. Needless to say, Qrac and I aren’t quite ready to do fancy footwork to Enrique Iglesias! But that’s ok. It’s something to work towards, right?

I’ve only ever ridden one freestyle program, and that was years ago, on Amanda, the mare I received as a wedding present from my father-in-law. Amanda wasn’t a dressage horse, she was more of a jumper. Amanda had a lot of thoroughbred in her and was never an easy ride. I jumped her for a few years, but never really enjoyed it as she hated touching the bars so would either jump massive, or pull up sharply, catapulting me over the jump instead, which kind of sucked.

Anyway, after my children were born I decided I no longer wanted to be a human cannonball, and luckily for me, my decision coincided with the arrival of two lovely dressage divas at my stables who took me under their wing, introducing my mare and I to dressage fundamentals such as “outside hand, inside leg”. Over the next few years I saw my mare change from a wiry, skinny-necked, hollow-backed sewing-machine to a chunky, nicely chiselled Muscle Woman. Ok, so she was never going to be a dressage arena dreamboat, but the physical metamorphosis was definitely impressive. Amanda and I entered a few dressage shows, and the one we did best in was a freestyle program performed to Brian Ferry’s “Slave to Love”. I’d spent ages trying to find a song that matched Amanda’s cadence in trot, and “Slave to Love” was perfect. Of course, it didn’t work quite as well for the canter or walk work, but back then (I’m talking maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago) we didn’t have the technology we have now to create sophisticated home-made freestyle mixes (not that I’ve any clue how to create one now), so we had to make do with riding to one track. Having said that, I remember other people managing to put various tracks together, but I guess they were just more techno-savvy than me. Anyway, whatever; riding that test was the most fun I’ve ever had in a competition.

Qrac and I are going to be competing next week (in a regular program, not a freestyle), so we’ve been working hard towards the test. It’s nothing complicated, and frankly I find it kind of depressing to think that I’ve been riding for eons and yet I’m still competing in the lowest levels. Not that I’ve done many shows; as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m not a competitive person. I’m far too emotional, and my nerves tend to get the better of me. Also, I’ve never had a horse long enough to be able to rise through the dressage levels. When

I bought Qrac two years ago he was extremely green. All he did was run, so we had to go back to basics, get him to work through his back, get him to connect, focus on trying to keep him soft and relaxed. One of my main difficulties is keeping him in a slow rhythmic trot; he didn’t come with a built-in metronome and finding the right cadence is quite a challenge. The most common comment I get during my lessons is “slow down”, yet no matter how hard I concentrate, I have an extremely hard time finding Qrac’s correct “slowness”.

When I mentioned this to one of my trainers the other day, she suggested I find music to fit his ideal rhythm. So I went home,  grabbed my iPad, found the video of my recent clinic with Bernard Sachsé, sat down in front of the computer, opened iTunes and then spent ages going through songs, trying to determine which songs fit matched his tempo when he was working at his best. It was an interesting exercise as many songs I’d imagined would work didn’t at all. In the end I made a playlist of four songs that work best. These are “Hall of Fame” by The Script (I’m currently addicted to that song), “Breakeven”, also by The Script, “Perdido sin Ti” by Ricky Martin (yes, I still love him) and “Weather with you” by Crowded House.

Unfortunately, there’s no music system at our stables so there’s no way I can burn a CD and play it while I’m riding. I don’t like riding with an iPod and headphones; I think it’s dangerous as you can’t hear what’s going on around you.

The only solution is to sing!

So I’ve been singing my heart out during my last few training sessions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not torturing my fellow riders, belting out “Hall of Fame” at the top of my voice! For one, it’s really difficult to ride sitting trot and not massacre Danny O’Donoghue’s catchy tune. I sing softly, sometimes even just in my head, but I’ve found that this simple trick really helps. As soon as Qrac speeds up, the song rhythm reminds me to check him with a little half-halt, and the problem is solved. I also think Qrac enjoys being sung too; his ears flick backwards and forwards, somehow he’s more “with me”. I’m not saying “Hall of Fame” is going to solve all our cadence problems, and that thanks to Danny’s uplifting track we’re suddenly going to woosh through the levels and “the world’s gonna know (y)our name”, but it’s a useful tool to work with, especially in the downward transitions from canter to trot, which is where Qrac has a tendency to run. All I have to do is find the song to find the rhythm. Besides, it’s kind of fun, too!

As for the other songs I mentioned that also work with Qrac’s tempo, they don’t seem to come to me quite so naturally. I can belt them out nicely on the way to the stables in the privacy of my car, but for some reason I’ve found them far more difficult to sing on horseback. Or maybe it’s just because, similarly to my Enrique Iglesias freestyle fantasy, I’m far too happy trotting around in my own little “Hall of Fame”!

Do you have any personal, quirky “tricks” you use while riding? Have you ever done any freestyle programs? And, more generally, what music do you enjoy?