Marian Rose provides some fantastic calling tips as well as suggestions for dances to do when accommodating young children as part of your dancing community
From the CDSS News
Shared Weight: Dance Musicians Discussion List
This mailing list welcomes dance musicians and those interested in dance music for any form of traditional social dance. This includes contra, English country, traditional squares (e.g., Appalachian, New England, Quebecois, Cape Breton, etc), community/family/barn, ceili, bal folk, and more. Dance musicians ask/answer questions, discuss issues that come up for them, and share helpful resources. This is a great way to talk to dance musicians from throughout North America and beyond. Join the discussion!
Mickie Zekley has scanned many of Cecil Sharp’s piano arrangements of country dance tunes, originally published in 1912, and made them available online in PDF format. These scores provide ideas for piano players about how to accompany many popular English country dance tunes. Note that the key signatures of some of the tunes differ from those most commonly used by contemporary musicians.
From Mendocino ECD
Jeremy Child explores positional calling as a way to expand the boundaries of choreography.
Improving the ECD Open Band Experience
Robert Reichert provides some suggestions on how to improve the experience of playing with, and the quality of music from an ECD open band.
From the CDSS News
How to Play Contra Dance Percussion
Melissa Kacalanos explains how to play percussion for reels and jigs, using Middle Eastern rhythm notation.
How to make your own footboard, including a piezo contact microphone, from Jeff Kaufman.
In this blog post, Jeff Kaufman (Free Raisins) gives research-based suggestions for how to mic a mandolin.
In this blog post, Jeff Kaufman (Free Raisins) explains and gives audio examples of percussive mandolin playing for contra dances.
A series of videos from Jeff Kaufman (Free Raisins) about how he plays mandolin for contra dances.
Thanks to the Massachusetts Cultural Council for their generous support.