On Mar 28, 2019, at 17:17, Maia McCormick via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: Ah, more specific questions! - have you found on-the-floor demos doable at techno, or should I not even try? - techno no-walk-through's: do they work? _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/

... Live or mixed recordings? If live then it should be perfectly square AABB. If mixed, the only thing you can count on is 8-beat phrases. ...

I mix lots of genres of music for contras. The only track I’ve ever called without mixing was the first release of Mika’s “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)” on Cartoon Motion. It goes 7x through so it was a real short dance but a nice filler with a no-walkthrough dance. Everything else needs work. I only pick tracks that have clear 8-beat phrasing most of the time. If I can I move the parts with indistinguishable phrases towards the end of the mix once the dancers know the dance well. Alternatively I add a beat track to enhance the beats and phrasing. I rarely mix by simple copy and paste, which allows me to do creative stuff to ensure phrases are spot on. (“This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas was true to its name, a nightmare with a few slipped phrases of 9 or 7 beats, but I *made* it to work.) So it’s being selective, doing often heavy editing, and many other bits n bobs that are in my secret sauce. I rarely try for AABB squaring since that can wreck the original music too much. One still must count (I cheat: I perform from my mixing app which has the phrase markings for me.) \Bob callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: AABB. If mixed, the only thing you can count on is 8-beat phrases. ... knowledgeable DJ, hasn't vetted the tracks? genres that aren't made for phrased dancing will not necessarily follow strict 8-beat phrasing. For instance ... few bars of guitar strums--and not always the same number--while trying to remember the first line of the next verse. While I haven't gone looking for examples, I'd be surprised if such variable inter-verse vamping didn't sometimes appear even on studio recordings. straight tunes and wildly crooked tunes, there are also tunes that are mostly straight but have an occasional odd phrase. Even medleys of straight tunes can sometimes have some extra beats at the transitions between tunes, as heard around 0:59 in this video: beats, but exceptions are hardly unusual. Also, in order to fit recordings that were made for listening and not specifically for dance routines, line-dance step sheets may prescribe various irregularities in the routines. Here are just a few of the examples a little searching turned up: https://www.learn2dance4fun.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Boot-Scootin-Boo… > Boot Scootin’ Boogie > 38 count, 4 wall, beginner line dance https://www.copperknob.co.uk/stepsheets/every-little-honky-tonk-ID132260.as… Tags 24... chunks of 8 beats (or eight bars of triple meter), try listening to any of these while tapping your foot or fingers and counting along: techno music than I am: If you play a random track not already "vetted" for phrasing, if you find a place where there's sufficiently discernible phrasing to establish a starting point for your "mental metronome of 8 counts" (to quote Donna Hunt), if you use that mental metronome to carry you through a part where phrasing is less evident, and if you then get to another part with findable phrasing, how reliably (or not) can you expect that the phrases will still line up with your mental eight-counts? _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/

Ah, more specific questions! - have you found on-the-floor demos doable at techno, or should I not even try? - techno no-walk-through's: do they work? On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 5:13 PM Maia McCormick <maiamcc(a)gmail.com> wrote:

(And if anyone wants to refer back to this, it's up on my blog <http://contra.maiamccormick.com/blog/2019/03/31/techno-reflections/>!) On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 4:27 PM Maia McCormick &lt;maiamcc(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > Thanks for the advice, all! While it's fresh in my mind, wanted to report > back and call out a few pieces of advice from this thread that were > particularly helpful (or that I ignored to my own detriment). Just my > observations--hope this is helpful to someone! > > *1. Demos are indeed hard* > I agree with everyone who warned me away from demos at a techno -- it's > dark and hard to see, and dancers just want to groove. "If you need a demo > for it, the dance is probably too hard" was a great yardstick for my > programming, thanks Chuck! > > *2. Keep calling* > Jonathan nailed it -- if the phrasing is at all hard to follow, dancers > will tend to swing too long. I definitely found myself calling more than I > would in a non-techno contra (by the end of the dances, my calls were all > one beat, but I was often still calling at least some moves). Knowing to > look out for over-long swings in particular was super helpful, thanks! > > *3. Choose easy dances* > I got cocky in the second half and programmed some stuff that was above > the level of the crowd, and had to fall back to Hey in the Barn when a > weird box circulate dance fell apart. The advice that many people gave is > super sound -- it's harder to see and harder to focus, dancers probably > just want to groove etc., and so easier dances are the way to go. > > I want to add one more thing I noticed, which is that *I as a caller > couldn't get a read on the hall because it was so dark*. If I'd been > better able to see how ropy the previous dance had been, or that a lot of > the experienced people had left at the break, I would have been better able > to adjust my program. So there's another point in favor of calling easier > dances -- not so much that they dancers can't handle it, as a rule, but > rather that you as a caller can't tell as easily whether the dancers can > handle it. > > *4. If you can, listen to the tracks in advance!* > I worked with Mark Moore (DJ Flourish) from Philly--he's great! Among > other things, he sent me his tracks in advance, which meant that I could > get extra precise with the dance/track pairing--super helpful because it's > much harder to request specific track features to go with a dance when > working with a DJ than with a band. Also, I knew how many potatoes to > expect for each track, if they were at all fake-out-y, etc. > > On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 5:17 PM Maia McCormick &lt;maiamcc(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > >> Ah, more specific questions! >> >> - have you found on-the-floor demos doable at techno, or should I not >> even try? >> - techno no-walk-through's: do they work? >> >> On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 5:13 PM Maia McCormick &lt;maiamcc(a)gmail.com&gt; >> wrote: >> >>> Hey folks, >>> >>> I haven't called all that many techno contras, and I'm slated to do so >>> this weekend. Any tips or things to keep in mind about how techno differs >>> from your standard contra evening? (Particularly curious about anything >>> relating to dance choice and dance length.) >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Maia >>> >>

On Mar 28, 2019, at 7:17 PM, Sivier, Jonathan E via Callers &lt;callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: Keep calling. My experience has been that techo music has plenty of beat and no phrasing. So dancers don't know when to stop the current figure and start the next one. Some figures like circles, stars and lines forward and back have a kind of natural timing so dances with those figures work well. Some other figures such as heys, chains and swings are less well defined as far as timing goes, and dancers tend to rush heys and chains and go long on swings. So the dancers will all take different amount of time for them. This means that if you stop calling the various parts of the lines will start to diverge in where they are in the dance and soon there will be parts of the room dancing the A1 part while others places in the room they are dancing the A2 or even B1 part. I think swings may be the biggest issue. Everyone likes to swing and many dancers will go long on each swing, but they'll all go long by a different amount. Choose dances with figures that have really well-defined timing and don't stop calling and you will be OK. You may be able to reduce the amount of calling, but you will probably need to say something from time to time to re-synchronize the dancers. Jonathan On 3/28/2019 4:13 PM, Maia McCormick via Callers wrote: > Hey folks, > > I haven't called all that many techno contras, and I'm slated to do so > this weekend. Any tips or things to keep in mind about how techno > differs from your standard contra evening? (Particularly curious about > anything relating to dance choice and dance length.) > > Cheers, > Maia