Re: [Callers] Proper use of vocal mic by caller

On Feb 25, 2012, at 1:26 PM, Rickey Holt wrote: Answering as a MWSD caller. My understanding is that the "rest it on you chin" was an attempt to keep the mike close to the mouth as the caller turns their head. This may have been taught in caller schools. Inexperienced mike users (like when someone comes up to make announcements) often gesticulate (perhaps with the mike in their hand!) and move their head around, causing the distance from their mouth to the front of the mike to vary widely and the attendant sound level to change tom inaudible to too loud. If you can find a way to work with the mike without the sound level changing by inadvertently changing the distance to the mike, I would go with it. I also believe that holding the mike while singing may also have other techniques to learn than simply using the mike for instruction and patter calling. Finally I will say that the sound systems we use in MWSD are great at having everyone hear and understand the caller's voice, to some detriment at making the recorded music sound great. In MWSD, the dancers are always hanging on the caller's commands since there is no pattern to the dances. My experience when I first started dancing contras, and mostly even today (coming up on 20 years), is that contra dance sound systems usually have the caller sound muffled, fuzzy, too much bass, and as a result hard to understand. That can cause squares in the back of the hall to fail, just due to sound problems. -- Clark Baker, Belmont, MA cmbaker(a)tiac.net