I call many events with recorded music. There are advantages to using recorded music. The advantage is that you can pick exactly what music you will use for a given piece. It's especially great for novelty dances that would be difficult to do with most contra dance bands, but which are awesome for a one night stand. Things like the Bunny Hop or getting just the right music for singing calls or Cumberland Square. While live music is usually best, recorded music can be great for private parties.
As David says, if you call squares (which are better for one night stands than duple-minor contra dances) you may know how long the dance is and can fit it to the music. And there is nothing wrong with simply turning off the piece. As long as you do it at the end of the phrase, while you are calling, the dancers won't notice it wasn't the end of the piece. HTH, Beth > -----Original Message----- > Tina Fields > Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 12:21 PM > Subject: [Callers] Calling without a band? > Have any of you called for a dance without a band? I've gotten a query about > calling a barn dance, but their budget is teeny tiny, so they asked if I > could call > to CDs. I know this is quite possible; my dad used to call square dances to > records, but those records were specifically made for dancing to. Most contra > music tracks I have only last at most ~3 minutes. I could theoretically splice > the tracks together to make a repeating loop, but this is a lot of time > investment and also, how would you know when the music would stop, in > order to go out? Would you try to guess, or just unceremoniously turn the > thing off, or do the "mood fade?" (And no, sadly, I'm not like Alan Furth or > Erik Hoffmann, folks who can call and play guitar/fiddle/banjo//etc. well at > the same time.)
