Thanks Kat for this bpm mention. I try to notated all my cards (as I call/practice) with the type of tune and the practice tune (sometimes I call to recorded so this helps) and the best bpm. Sometimes I note a start at and increase to as well.

I attended a workshop once where I was instructed to stomp out the bpm instead of telling the band. Very difficult for me for a variety of reasons but I was told bands don't know bpm which I (on behalf of musicians everywhere) took exception to. My response was, "well, the bands I work with, do."

Good information re: beats vs measures too. I have tried for years to explain to a dancer that more notes does not = more beats and more steps. 

Loving all the comments!

Mary Collins

On Thu, Sep 5, 2024, 8:17 AM Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

I'm loving this discussion too!

It took me a while when I started calling, to realize how the dancers and the musicians count differently--
In our group we always listen to a full added-on A1 as an intro- ie 16 beats of music-- and that's what I tell our beginner dancers: "We're going to listen to 16 beats of music and then start dancing" .

But what the musicians seem to need to hear, if they are new to our group, is "We need you to play 8 *bars* of extra music as an intro" .
Until I figured this out, I was asking the musicians for 16 beats, and they were playing 16 bars, and everything got messy!

But Rich's comment below has got me interested in hearing from more people about their typical range of tempos- it's something I've recently started thinking more deeply about--

Now when I do my dance outline, I set a target tempo in bpm for each dance, to help our musicians select an appropriate tune for each (I went to a great workshop last summer where I learned that some tunes, like irish reels, sound fast but actually tend to be among the slower-tempo'd tunes -- and most of our musicians struggle to play them faster than 110bpm- making them a poor choice for a lot of the simple, high-energy dances that our group does.)

Rich Goss wrote:
"The sweet spot for most dances is 116bpm (beats per minute).  The range is generally 108-120.  For a one night stand, I would shoot for the low end."

So I've been keeping track over the last year, -- asking my bands to report to me after each dance, whether we danced at the target tempo I had set, or something faster or slower than it...

I would say in our group, our typical easy dances run with a tempo of 112-120 - even for total beginners..

and some dances in the middle of the evening get up to 125+, with all the high energy in the hall.

It's actually our more challenging dances towards the end of the evening, (which are not very challenging for most of y'all, but we are a basic-level group!) that end up going slower- when we put in heys and other flowy moves, then we get into more groovy-feeling tunes in the 105-110bpm range.

Would love to hear about other groups' tempo ranges!

Kat K in Halifax, NS, Canada

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