Toby Rider said: > Don't get me wrong, those sterile types of recordings have their place > (for Scottish Country Dance Teachers to rehearse their dancers), but > they certainly aren't musically interesting.
Wearing my dancer's hat (as well as fiddling for dancers, I do performance and social dancing in the San Francisco Branch of the RSCDS), it's my experience that any warmth and energy the musicians can impart to their recordings helps to energize the dancers, which makes for much better dancing! You're right that there are a lot of sterile SCD recordings out there (particularly some of the ones accompanying the Society publications) but they're usually as little fun to dance to as they are to listen to. There are certain ones my SCD teacher uses, typically because there isn't anything else available, that we always groan at; we might as well just be dancing to a metronome! Although Scottish dance recordings obviously need to be in strict tempo, and tend to be fairly repetitive by nature, I don't think that necessarily precludes being musically interesting; I have a few dance CDs at home that I enjoy just listening to (e.g. John Taylor/Andy Imbrie "Live", Green Ginger "Miss Ogilvie's Fancy"). So really, I'd go further than you and argue that sterile recordings DON'T have their place (at least, not in SCD)! -Steve -- Steve Wyrick - Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
