The Music Matters... By Charlene Strickland Our author attended two freestyle clinics, one in 2015 and one in 2017, both featuring


professional freestyle designer Cynthia Collins. Each time the primary message was the same: LET YOUR HORSE SELECT THE MUSIC.


spaghetti Westerns. In the musical freestyle, horses “vote with their feet” to tell riders what music moves them. In a successful musical free- style, it’s the horse who leads. “If your horse likes the music and picks up


H


the tempo,” explains Cynthia Collins, freestyle designer at Luna Tunes Freestyles in Victor- ville, California, “then your horse picked this music!”


Watching the Response How do you know when a horse prefers a piece of music? He moves with energy and anima- tion. He visibly responds to music choices. Watching him, you notice he “clicks” with certain themes and instruments. Cynthia’s freestyle clinics are a three-way


e says yes to the saxophone. He swings to the beat of big bands. And though he’s German, he chooses themes from


Cynthia has designed more than 1,500


freestyles for equestrians at all levels of dres- sage—both for fun and for competition. She started designing freestyles when she was a student of Hilda Gurney’s, who encouraged her to expand her business. She occasionally holds clinics to explain how she constructs her freestyles and is able to produce the basics of a ready-to-show freestyle in approximately 90 minutes. “To me, the music tells me the choreog-


Cynthia Collins, professional free- style designer, helps a rider adjust her headset at the May 2015 clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona.


collaboration: horse, rider and freestyle designer. She plays clips of songs while observing the horse at the trot to judge his reactions. “The horse gets the first say,” she says. One technique is to watch for the horse to respond using


the volume. “Start with the music low, and then turn it up,” she says. When she sees the horse perk up, she knows that the tune speaks to him. Trying a version of “Crocodile Rock” with a Warmblood,


for example, she says, “He connected to the saxophone!” The instrument noticeably sparked the horse’s trot. “With more brass, he looked better,” she explains. And for his canter, the beat of “Living the Vida Loca” seemed to activate the reach of his hind leg.


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raphy. I always get the music first and set the choreography to fit,” she says. When trying out music for a horse, Cynthia asks the rider for any preferences. She looks at the horse’s body type and movement. She also matches the music’s tempo to the horse’s footfalls. Some Warmbloods with extravagant gaits


might respond well to the boisterous beats of a Scottish theme. A bigger horse might pick


movie music, such as that produced by American company Two Steps from Hell. A lighter horse might show better with lighter music. For example, with a First Level PRE horse who’s very


supple, Cynthia might suggest a modified zigzag in the leg yield in the trot. “The whole purpose is to show how supple he is. You’ve already showed the lengthening,” she says. “The Spanish horses are very bendy.” She’s noted some breed variations. “The Lusitanos and


Andalusians love the music. Thoroughbreds are opin- ionated and don’t let you pick the music,” she explains. “Arabians can be fussy. A lot of Warmbloods don’t care as much.”


All clinic photos are by Charlene Strickland.


to the Horse


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