Catching Up

[bjarvis]

The demands of my pager, e-mail and telephone are much lighter so far this morning. There was a flurry of minor activity but those tasks are done and I can take a small break.

I've finished transcribing the 30 square dance recordings I made during the ACDC weekend nearly two weeks ago. In all, it's probably about 40 pages of square dance calls, mostly C1 with some A2.

My next step is to carefully read each call with a highlighting marker in hand, looking for interesting formations, novel sequences of calls or unusual uses of calls. After that, it's analysis & pushing of checkers to see how the highlighted calls work. Finally, I'll write some of my own material to see if I can use the ideas in a similar or related fashion; past experience tells me the first 50% of what I compose will be lame and/or bad, but the latter 50% will have promise. After more time passes, I can revisit that 50% to polish it further.

I was hoping to be able to incorporate some new ideas into my C1 material for the dance tonight and for Ettseteras on Monday, but that timeline overly ambitious right now.

Comments

[cuyahogarvr.livejournal.com]

Are you calling tonight, or just dancing ...... or both?

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Tonight is dancing with the possibility of calling a tip. Our next Wednesday session (March 5), I'm calling the entire night.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Wow, this sounds like a lot of work. Now I feel guilty for not just handing you the written stuff for anything I didn't sight!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Nah, the act of listening carefully & transcribing the text is an important step for me in understanding & visualizing the flow on the floor. The background sounds --cheers or yelps of pain from the dancers, occasional prodding/cuing by the caller-- also give important clues to what is good or problematic. I'm also paying a lot of attention to the caller's speaking flow, the inflection on particular calls and interaction with the floor.

I only wish I could have videotaped the lot instead of just making audio recordings. :-)

BTW, I can type & transcribe as quickly as nearly every caller I've recorded to date (29 of them), with one exception: Dave Wilson. It was driving me nuts having to type, pause, type, restart, pause, type, restart... :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you for graciously assuaging my feelings of guilt! :-)

I am intrigued that the one exception for your ability to keep up with typing is Dave Wilson's calling. Me, I can't transcribe Lynnette without pauses.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I've never heard Lynnette call before. We've booked her for the 2009 IAGSDC convention so I'll have a chance there, but I'll likely be up to my ears in convention-running that I won't have a chance to record *anyone*.

Nothing like knowing how impossible one's schedule is going to be 14 months in advance... *sigh*

[ann0625.livejournal.com]

Keith Rubow sells tons of A/C dance recordings on his website krubow.com and at dirt-cheap prices. The best feature is that you don’t have to buy the recording from a whole weekend. You can pick and choose which caller and how many tips you want, and he will mail the tape or MP3 to you within a week.

As for interesting formations and unusual uses of calls at Advanced and low C levels, the best source that I’ve seen is the Trailblazor A/C Club’s online Dance Review archive at http://www.trailblazers-socal.org.