In 1998, when Ruth Hogan-Poulsen’s career in dressage was really beginning to take off, she was invited to compete on a Rhinelander, owned by Liz Ritz of Ohio. Liz had become pregnant. “[The horse] was not a fantastic mover, but he was incredibly smart and trainable,” Hogan-Poulsen says. They qualified to go to Gladstone, NJ, and Devon, PA, to try to make the Pan Am Games team. There was only one problem – Hogan-Poulsen would have to come up with the required musical freestyle at the last minute. She had never done one before, but she didn’t have the money to pay for professional help. Having grown up in a musical family, she decided to give it a try herself. Using a dual cassette player, she choreographed a freestyle to the music from the movie Titanic. To everyone’s surprise, she won not only all three qualifying events, but the musical freestyle competition at Devon, too.

Today, Hogan-Poulsen has a successful career coaching top-level riders in musical freestyle. She also recognizes the value that riding to music holds for every horse and rider, and she produces CDs for everyday training.

“The first item on the dressage training scale is rhythm and relaxation,” Hogan-Poulsen points out. “One of the first things you’re judged on is rhythm and regularity, whether it’s a trot in a Training Level test or the passage in Grand Prix.”

Riding to music is an effective way to improve your horse’s rhythm – the maintenance of a regular pattern of footfalls. You can easily tell if your horse is slowing his tempo (the time between strides) on a volte or speeding it up across the diagonal. Music can also be used to relax a nervous horse or energize a lazy one, depending on the kind of music you choose, and it can be a vehicle for bringing horse and rider into closer harmony. When both are moving to the beat of the music, they find themselves moving in harmony with each other. In this way, it makes sense to practice riding to a musical beat. Besides that, it’s a lot of fun!

Julia McIntyre, a Young Rider from Barre, Vermont, really enjoyed her introduction to musical freestyle as part of her participation in the Children of the Americas Dressage Invitational (CADI) in the summer of 2007. “I find it exciting and fun to ride to music,” Julia says. She feels it helps with rhythm, especially in the canter, and also says it helps her focus on the riding and prevents her from getting distracted by what’s going on outside the ring.

CC Christenson, who competed in her first musical freestyle last summer (Fourth Level), enjoys the expression and creativity that go with it. “The music takes my mind off the riding and helps me feel it more,” she says. “It makes me ‘do’ rather than ‘think.’”

Jeanne Woodward, a First Level rider, drives this point home. “Dressage riders get stuck on the figures and forget about the rest of the picture,” she says. “We get almost too focused on the science. Riding to music taught me to let go and deal with the artistry rather than the science of dressage. When you lose the fluidity and joy of it, you lose everything.”

Do Horses Hear Music?

“Rhythm is basic to every mammal,” Ruth Hogan-Poulsen says, citing the rhythm of the heartbeat and breathing. “And the horse has an innate ability to maintain the pattern of the movement of its legs.” When she free-longes her horses to her Riding with Soul CDs, the horses will very often go to the gait that they hear in the music. If the song is soft and soothing, with a clear four-beat rhythm, they will automatically walk. If it is an energetic piece, they will automatically canter. Hogan-Poulsen also notes that horses respond differently to different pieces of music. For example, a horse may show a preference for classical rather than jazz, even if the rider prefers jazz.

Hogan-Poulsen’s barn manager, Melissa MacLaren, rides a Norwegian Warmblood, Sam, whose response to music was obvious during a training session at East Hill Farm, which Hogan-Poulsen owns with her husband, Bo, in Plainfield, Vermont. In the outdoor arena, MacLaren and Sam warmed up to the soothing music of “Enya.” Sam’s legs swung, relaxed and free, as he trotted on the diagonal, right on the beat.

“This music is so good for his mind,” Hogan-Poulsen said, as Sam cantered in circles, supple and smooth.

Next came a “spicier” piece of music – Vanessa May’s “Can-Can.” Sam sharpened up, showing more height and snap. He also got so excited that when he passed the boom box, he leaped sideways out of sheer exuberance.

The training session also showed how music can be used to help a horse move up a level. Under Hogan-Poulsen’s direction, MacLaren asked Sam for a passage – something he had not done in many years. To the emphatic one-two beat of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” MacLaren slowed Sam’s forward momentum and asked for more height. With his head down, the horse seemed to frown in concentration. He stopped trotting, picked up his feet in time to the music, and then paused. “He’s trying to figure it out,” Hogan-Poulsen said. When he started up again, MacLaren used her seat to emphasize the tempo, and Sam got it.

Next, they tried the more difficult piaffe. At the stroke of Miami Sound Machine’s cymbals, MacLaren urged Sam to move while Hogan-Poulsen stood beside him, holding him on the spot. She tapped his hindquarters lightly with the whip in time to the music to help him feel the beat. At first the horse took little steps in place, then something clicked, and he started piaffing, pushing himself into the air rhythmically.

For the grand finale, they put the two steps together – passage, piaffe, passage, piaffe. When the lesson was over, Sam left the arena with his ears forward and a very pleased expression on his face.

So did the music help him? “It would have taken him a lot longer,” Hogan-Poulsen says, “and it would have been more frustrating for him without the music.”

Getting Started

Whatever your level, you can enjoy and benefit from riding to music. At 78 years old, Bebe Whittle is no longer competing, but she continues to work at dressage and uses music to keep it fun. She has a CD player in her indoor arena, and her horse is so used to it, she can ride him right up to it and change the music or turn the volume up without dismounting. She made her own riding CDs. You can, too. Here’s how:

1. Find your horse’s BPM. Using a pocket metronome ($10 to $20), measure your horse’s beats (footfalls) per minute at the walk, trot, and canter. You can have a friend do this while you ride, or you can do it on your own by watching a video of yourself riding, or possibly while lunging your horse. Keep in mind the walk is a four-beat gait, and the trot is a two-beat gait. Even though the canter is a three-beat gait, there is a period of suspension after it that counts as the fourth beat musically. Most horses range from 90 to 100 BPM at the walk and canter and 142 to 152 at the trot.

2. Choose some music and make your CD. Bebe Whittle went through all her CDs, measuring the BPM of songs she liked – everything from opera to country. She made copies of everything that had the right BPM, then assembled her riding CDs with a typical training session in mind. She started with slow, stretching walk music, then worked up to trotting and cantering. Her CDs last about 30 minutes, and she ends her training sessions with lots of walking.

When choosing your music, consider that you may want to vary the BPM by up to 10 BPM, depending on whether you’re going after relaxation or more energy at any point in your training session. Just make sure the music has a clear beat – something that would be easy to tap your foot to. While vocals are not preferred in musical freestyle, you can certainly use them for training. If there’s a piece you’d really like to ride to but the BPM isn’t right, you can buy inexpensive music-editing software to speed it up or slow it down a little.

3. Dance with your horse. Put a boom box on the fence or in a corner of an indoor arena. It may be difficult if you’re sharing the arena with other riders, but music in the air is better than an iPod with earphones. This way you can hear what’s going on around you for safety reasons, and your horse can hear the music, too. When Bebe puts her music on, she gets more energy out of her horse. Some riders find their horses anticipate what gait will be asked for when the music changes. With both of you listening to the music, it begins to feel like dancing.

Prepare a Musical Freestyle

Hogan-Poulsen recommends riding a musical freestyle at home no matter what your level. “It improves your riding, and it takes a long time to make it what you want it to be,” she says. “I encourage people to get started whenever they want.”

Depending on your budget and how much time you have, you can either hire someone to select and edit your music and choreograph your freestyle, or do it yourself as Ruth did that first time years ago.

In preparing the musical freestyle, there are two basic approaches. You can either select the music first and choreograph a pattern to go with it, or you can build a pattern first and then select and edit music to fit. Choose music that has good dynamics – clear changes of volume, pitch, or intensity. In choreographing the freestyle, keep in mind every level has certain required movements. (Visit the USDF website for guidelines.) When you know the requirements, you can choreograph the freestyle to show your horse off to his best advantage. Jeanne Woodward points out, “Do four of what you do best and one of something you’re weaker on.”

The freestyle is judged on both the technical and artistic side. At the lower levels, the harmony between horse and rider and the choice of music weigh heavily in scores. At the upper levels, judges look at the level of difficulty of the pattern – the degree of calculated risk involved in being able to pull it off well.

The judges use four basic guidelines:

1. Suitability. Does the music match and express the horse and his gaits? If you tap your toe to the music when watching a video of your freestyle, you should be able to see the horse’s feet hit the ground in time to the music.

2. Cohesiveness. All the pieces of music in your freestyle should be linked in some way – such as by theme, genre, featuring the same instrument, or coming from the same movie.

3. Editing. There should be a smooth flow, with no abrasive cuts or fades. Consider pitch and key of the music, the number of beats per measure, and avoid anything that would sound jarring. Pay attention to phrases in the music – the way the notes are grouped to express different musical ideas – and be sure not to chop them up.

4. Phrasing and dynamics. There should be a clear beginning and end to each movement in your pattern, matched with the musical phrases. Take advantage of dynamics – changes in volume, intensity, pitch – to accompany your horse’s movements, such as the lengthening of the trot. “This can have a big emotional impact on your freestyle,” Hogan-Poulsen says.

When practicing your freestyle, learn where you need to be when the music changes. If you need to be walking at E, for example, when the walk portion of the music begins, you may have to cut a corner to get there in time. “You will never ride the freestyle exactly the same way twice,” says Hogan-Poulsen, “so you need to know the music inside and out.”

Julie Mallery of Perth, Australia, rides to music every day. “It’s so much fun,” she says. “It puts both my horse and me in a really good mood. It’s a great escape from everyday life.”

For more information on Ruth Hogan-Poulsen’s services and pre-made CDs, go to www.ruthhoganpoulsen.com or www.dressagefreestyles.com

SIDEBAR

Music Saved This Horse’s Career

In 1999, Ruth Hogan-Poulsen’s veterinarian approached her about a dressage horse that had become dangerous. When anyone got on him, he reared. When anyone went into his stall, he tried to jump out the window. 

Hogan-Poulsen knew the horse, Charmont, had been pushed too far and too fast in his training. “He was mentally and physically fried,” she says. She agreed to take him for a few months to see what she could do.

He arrived at her barn in a padded horse ambulance. Ruth decided she would treat him like a normal horse, turning him out every day and finding him a horse friend. He became calmer, but the first time she got on him, he reared and broke her nose.

“It was tough,” she says. “He had meltdowns, but I never made a big deal out of it. I never gave him any reason to be afraid of me.”

Charmont’s fear began to fade, and Hogan-Poulsen started showing him under the name Soule Believer. (The veterinarian was Dr. Soule.) Eventually, he was winning Prix St. George-level classes.

What kept Charmont from moving up to Grand Prix was his inability to perform the required piaffe, and learning the difficult movement was too emotionally taxing for him, until one day when Hogan-Poulsen was riding him around the arena at a relaxed walk with very slack reins. As Scottish bagpipe music came on, Charmont started jigging to the tempo of the music. Ruth couldn’t believe it. She called to her assistant who rewound the tape, and they watched to see if he’d do it again. He did. Here was a key Ruth could use to unlock Charmont’s full potential. Little by little, over several months, Hogan-Poulsen was able to get Charmont to shorten his steps until he was trotting on the spot – still in time to the music. The horse went on to compete successfully at the Grand Prix level for two years before he retired.