My class for this morning was cancelled, and so I decided to take the time to reflect on the technological advances that have taken place in the Scottish dance world, particularly for us lowly teachers.
In The Beginning….this would be before RSCDS, classes were conducted only semi-regularly. Teachers, known as “dancies”, would travel between villages holding classes. Often, the dancies would play a fiddle or recorder for their own classes, or conscript one of the village musicians to play.
When the SCDS (we did not become “Royal,” and thus add the “R” until the 50’s) was formed in 1923, the serious task of collecting and publishing began. Dance and music books were compiled; until recently one of the perks of membership was a new book of dances every year. One of the missions of RSCDS is to “preserve” the dance form, and publication is one such way to do this. Recordings also began to become readily available (to teachers anyway).
When I first started teaching, my dad, who digitalizes 78 recordings, gave me a CD of two popular dances that had been recording onto a 78. Both are from (R)SCDS Book 1: Petronella and Strip the Willow. They are so ungodly fast (I suspect because of the time limitations for a side – a maximum of 4 minutes, which is barely enough time for 8 rounds of a jig or reel) that in order to even think about using them I have to use my modern methods to slow them down. Strathspeys, clocking in at 8 minutes for 8 rounds were an impossibility. I have no idea how they were used for classes, or even informal dance parties.
Not too long ago (I have a dancing parent who vividly remembers this time), teachers used records. Each side would have 5-6 dances on it and they would have to drop the needle onto the appropriate groove. There was a certain amount of speed manipulation (depending on the quality of the player), but for the most part, the recording was danced to as is.
Tapes provided an easy fix to this. Variable speed tape players soon became less expensive (and more compact) than record players, particularly once the karaoke craze started. My first Scottish dance teachers (so, we’re now merely 13 years ago) would either buy albums on tape or record the dances they were planning to teach off their records onto individual tapes. These tapes didn’t last very long (partly because the individual song tapes were crap and partly because the constant slowing and speeding up created extraordinary stress on the tape).
When I started teaching, variable speed CD players were just coming en vogue. More and more recordings were being released on onto CD; the RSCDS began the slow and massive process of re-releasing the thirty-something books worth of music onto the new media. The problem was, commercially made variable speed CD players were quite hard to find. My first machine (purchased by my mom) was actually a boom box into which someone had installed the variable speed device. The problem with these machines were many: they were not used to be lugged over hill and dale, and their warranty was instantly voided by the third party addition.
Through all this, musicians were still being used for classes, but it was definitely not the norm. You will see them in larger branches, or for workshops. When I was training for my certificate, I learned how to work with musicians for my class. I was actually tested on how well I could work with them, count them in, request tunes. I did all this, fully aware that I would probably never use these skills in my actual teaching career. In fact, seven years later, I still find the idea of having musicians in my class incredibly intimidating. I would much rather walk over to a machine and press play.
I have not, by the way, bothered to discuss the amount of crap the above sound systems require that we lug: sound machine, Cd’s, something that lists our databases of dances (Excel works great for this). For a given class, I would drag with me: CD player, Cd’s, computer, book bag, shoe bag.
Over the past couple years, my fellow teachers have begun to move away from these methods and started loading their Cd’s directly onto their laptop computers. They would then either play it directly from the computer, or load their songs onto and iPod, and plug that into a docking station. There are now wide variety of software programs easily and cheaply available to allow us to adjust speeds. I had already started using one of these programs to make Cd’s for performances; variable speed players are almost never part of sound systems.
So, when my CD player died last summer, I decided to follow the pack and started to load my music onto my computer. I create play-lists for each of my classes, and if I have to slow a dance down, I run it through the software and save it under a new name. Discussing this with my mom (who was also fishing for Christmas ideas) I said, “I’d really like to do what Peggy does: she uses her older Mac-book for music for classes and has a newer one that is her `computer.’ That way she’s not dragging a machine that has all her functioning software to classes every week. And, I also like the idea of only taking an iPod to games and plugging it into the sound system: that way I’m not exposing the more expensive computer to dust and grit.”
Her reply, “So, a second laptop that you can use exclusively for music would be great, but ideally you’d like both a computer and an iPod.”
How far we’ve come.
