Lets's hear it for Recorded Music!

In a previous issue Caroline Brockbank asked for members’ experiences of using recorded music.

From LPs to MP3 players

Some teachers are lucky enough to work with a musician, and some groups book bands regularly, or for the occasional special event. Many more of us, however, rely on recorded music. Many of us teaching today learned to dance to a record player, complete with jumping needles and scratched vinyl. We moved on to cassettes and then CDs took over. Then along came digital files, MP3 players and the capacity to store music on your phone, tablet, or iPod, or stream it when required.

A selection of media players is now available.

Graham Coles in Bristol uses Media Monkey, a music manager, mentioned in The Manual. It has spreadsheet characteristics to regroup tracks in different ways: by deviser, book, etc. The default ‘Album Art’ property would be to show a CD front cover, but Graham has used this property to store a copy of cribs converted to image format. Apps such as Audacity allow you to take, for example, a Jimmy Shand recording and slow it down to usable speed. Graham also has ‘Amazing Slow Downer’ on his laptop, which he uses to store a speed-adjusted copy of the music in advance to avoid the interruption caused by doing this in front of the class. Many of us use iTunes; and RSCDS recordings can now be accessed via Spotify – invaluable when caught out with only a phone.

Playlists are your friend

I have dozens of playlists on my iPod for every tempo, number of bars and number of repetitions so that I can instantly find a 4x48 jig or 3x32 strathspey. Accessing tunes this way avoids the class getting restless whilst you search for a track, or being subjected to The Clash instead of Muriel Johnstone. Recorded music must be as immediate as using a musician. So, playlists mean you have the right music organised together, ready to go before you start to teach. I have playlists labelled, for example, ‘high octane reels’, ‘steady jigs’ and ‘student ceilidh’. I also have ‘gathering tunes’, for welcoming dancers to the hall and setting the mood. Which is an advantage of recorded music over live – you can provide endless incidental music without ever feeling you are taking advantage. Step practice playlists are also a good idea so you can select, for instance, a series of reels with the right impetus for teaching pas de basque.

Store different recordings of the same dance

You can then choose an appropriate recording for the age and experience of the dancers and the state of the floor. Everyone will have their own favourite bands and recordings; the best ones give a good crisp sound with clear rhythm. Among my own favourite all-purpose RSCDS CDs are those for Books 7, 11, 20 and 34 – not necessarily packed with dances we do often, but lovely steady recordings with fantastic tunes that can be used for many disparate groups of dancers. The Drummer is rarely danced, so I love to use it with children for The Grand Old Duke of York.

Versatility

Whilst the received wisdom is that live music is more versatile (because you can ask for eight bars, or the music to be played slightly slower), recorded music can also allow for more flexibility. You don’t have to plan your lessons weeks in advance, and you can change your lesson plan instantly, mid-class, without upsetting a musician who has done careful preparation to your specifications.

Eight bars please…

A musician can play 8 or 32 bars and then stop. Recorded music obviously doesn’t have this facility, but you can turn it to your advantage. You can encourage the class, on occasion, to count bars and wait for the right point to start dancing, which helps them appreciate the barring and the changing tunes. In the days when you dropped the needle on the record and hoped for the best, waiting until the start of the phrase was something you had to do all the time! Using recorded music you can occasionally ask the dancers to stand for 8 bars and try the figure again, several times if necessary, which avoids the teacher using the first 8 bars of the track over and over. Or you can get the set to stand for 32 bars mid-dance and count until the next time through, perhaps picturing the figures in their head – and then wait and see who is ready when the time to move comes around. And tracks that begin with two chords are handy for practising a bow and curtsey.

Can you turn it up?

The best music in the world is no good if people can’t hear it, so amplification must be suitable for the space and the size of class. A sound system that works well in a small hall with two sets may be useless in a large hall with six sets. People’s bodies absorb sound, so whilst sound-checking beforehand is important, music that sounds deafening in an empty room may be barely adequate once fifty people have arrived, chatting and wearing sound-absorbing fabrics. Fortunately, speakers are getting smaller and more portable, and some have the facility to plug in a microphone.

Music on the go

The best musicians can be held up in traffic, or have some kind of last-minute crisis. So even if you are teaching with a musician, it’s a good idea to carry some back-up recordings just in case. And with recorded music, you can dance to the sound of a full 5-piece band whenever you like – at any time of day. My own particular circumstances mean that I am often encouraging people to dance at 9am on a Monday or midday on Thursday – and because I use recorded music, I can do so to the music of Gordon Shand or Alastair Wood at the press of a button. And of course you can enjoy the sound of your favourite band on the stereo system of the car on the way home from a dance as well, and re-live the highlights!