Stars in the Rafters
Brattleboro, VT
Creating a podcast to provide comfort and community connections through traditional music, song, and poetry
Madison Contra Collective
Madison, WI
Hosting an open band workshop for the Madison Contra Collective Band
Funded by the Mary Kay Friday Leadership Training Fund
New England Carousel Museum
Bristol, CT
Hosting a family dance
Funded by the May Gadd/Phil Merrill Fund
Starring Your Recorder is a free educational video series from GEMS NY. The recorder has been an important instrument worldwide for hundreds of years. It has often been played along with other beautiful instruments that are still played today. With these six videos, students can experience playing easy tunes on recorder accompanied by a Renaissance band.
From Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc.
Reference Contra Dance Sound System
In this series of blog posts, Jeff Kaufman describes various aspects of sound engineering at a contra dance, from the system itself to mic placement and more.
How Should BIDA Finance a Sound System?
Contra Dance Sound: Microphones
Simple Contra Speaker Placement
Fiddle Clip-on Microphone Placement
This resource outlines some basic considerations for doing sound at a dance event.
From CDSS
All Mixed Up: A Guide to Sound Production for Folk and Dance Music
All Mixed Up is a comprehensive guide to doing sound for both traditional dance and folk music events. Bob’s guide covers a wide range of topics that are useful to both beginner and experienced sound technicians. The printed version of All Mixed Up is available for sale through CDSS’s online store.
From Bob Mills
TradSound is a listserv (email group) that exists to share information, experiences, techniques about people using intelligence, acoustics and audio equipment to optimally reinforce voices and instruments at community trad music events including dances, concerts and festivals. Most of our group members are audio techs, though we also welcome interested musicians, singers, callers, organizers, dancers and listeners. TradSound is a great way to talk to those passionate about sound at trad events. Join the discussion! Special Note: As a member of the group, you can also search the extensive list archives.
In this post, Jeff explores some of his thinking behind musician booking for the BIDA dance series. Community discussion follows.
From Jeff Kaufman
Example of a performer info sheet that can be sent to people hired for a dance to clarify any confusion beforehand!
From Nancy Turner, Queen City Contra, Puttin’ On The Dance, 2011
Thanks to the Massachusetts Cultural Council for their generous support.