19 Mar
2023
19 Mar
'23
7:11 p.m.
Hi Kat,
As someone not in the bands you were working with in this is a bit of
speculative reply, but here's a try anyway. Thinking about how I'd feel as
the band in the first situation, being asked to give previews of the tunes
we intended to play after which the caller would tell us which tune to play
when, heres why I wouldn't be thrilled:
* We usually don't know what tunes or sets we're going to play. We have a
bunch of sets we like, but we normally select a specific one right before
it's time to play based on a range of things: what dance has the caller
chosen, what role does the caller see this dance filling, what was the last
dance like, maybe what is the next dance like, how does the hall feel, how
tired we are, etc.
* Hearing each tune once through doesn't tell you that much about what it
will feel like to dance to. For example, in one of my bands we play Trip
to Moscow as a trancy peaceful march, while in another we play it as a very
energetic set to end a half with.
* If the caller chooses the tunes for us they might pick ones that we don't
think fit musically with what we're playing before or after, or with this
spot in the evening.
* It's normally the caller's role to choose the dances and decide the
general feeling for each slot, and the musicians' role to pick the tunes to
match.
Sometimes we'll work together in advance with a caller to decide which
tunes to play when, usually back and forth over email, but generally only
for unusual events: a short festival slot, medley, etc. And we both
understand that this may need to be changed on the fly based on what's
happening in the hall.
With the second situation you're describing, it's very hard to say what was
going wrong without hearing how this particular band plays that tune, and
which sorts of dances you were trying to pair with it.
Jeff
On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 5:54 PM Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers <
contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hello from Halifax!
I will preface this by saying that I consider myself a relatively
"beginner" caller. I have been working on it for about 15 years now and I
think I've become somewhat proficient at calling a very beginner-friendly
sequence of dances at our monthly beginner-friendly dances here in Halifax
- but that is about the extent of what I do.
And we rarely ever dance anything as involved as a Hey, here :)
One area where I definitely lack skill is communicating to our bands (we
have 4-5 groups who play for us regularly), in a succinct manner that
doesn't ruffle their feathers, about what sort of a tune I want for each
dance.
This task is made more difficult by the fact that I write (or heavily
modify) pretty much all our dances, so I can't look online to find
recommendations or videos of tunes that fit.
As far as I know, I am a polite and caring human who never sets out to put
anyone down or show them that I know better. I try to be humble about the
fact that i'm just learning and doing the best I can. For example, last
month, with apologies, I asked the band if they would mind quickly going
through their planned tunes for the evening, so I could run through my
dance program and try to assign a dance to each tune.
Because I lack the vocabulary and experience to tell a band "for this
dance, I need a tune with characteristics X and Y" - having them play the
tune one time through (sometimes even just half of it!) is so far the most
effective method i've found to get a tune that works for each dance. It's
also worth mentioning that our bands are not experienced contra bands -
since we are the only contra group they work with - and most have limited
sets to offer us - for example the last band came with 8 sets of tunes, to
match up with the 8 dances I had planned.... so when I found one or two
that weren't an ideal fit for anything, I did have to work quite hard
rearrange things a few times to slot everything in!
Anyhow it took about 7 minutes to do this, and I thanked them profusely,
and the dance-tune meld went well! I thanked them again after. But still,
the lead musician told me after the event that she "didn't really
appreciate being told which tune to play when" . And that deflated me for
sure :(
Anyhow, I welcome any grains of wisdom on this process generally (and/or a
link if one exists to this amazing cdss online workshop I took years ago on
matching tunes to dances/communicating with bands)....
but my specific question is this:
A *different* band - the one whose feathers I most often seem to ruffle
haha - has always played a tune set somewhere in the evening, the past few
times they've played for us, that no matter which dance I called to it, I
felt it was always a really bad fit.
I never said anything bad about it, to be clear!! But after a few dances
where it bummed me out every single time, I finally asked the lead musician
via email (as politely as I could, putting all the blame on myself: "I just
can't seem to find a dance that i'm able to call to this tune, would you
mind leaving it out in the future?" ).
I got this response:
"The Queteux Pomerleau set that you are quoting can be removed - the speed
of the dancers never gets up to a level to make that set effective. They
are Quebecois tunes that we learned from Sue, but in Quebec they are danced
to quite fast."
(This refers to Sue Songer who came as part of an amazing week-long
workshop CDSS blessed us with about 8 years ago.)
Anyhow I was curious if anyone knows of this set, and could suggest some
simple contra dances that would go well with it.
I confess I am not a fan of the feel of the tune for the context in which
I call - most of the east-coasty jigs and reels that this band and our
other bands play really get all the dancers cheering and stomping their
feet, and this one never does....
But I want to be open minded about it :)
thanks!
Kat K in Halifax
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