[SCA-Dance] review - Playford dance instructions

[yves.de.fortanier at comcast.net]

Hail Dafydd, thanks for your kind words. 


Though my own years in our grand Society do not go quite as far back as yours, I too remember the elder days before people took iPods and CDs for music at events. It was cassette tape, live music, or nothing for quite a while, eh? 


I salute your ummm, cyber-alchemical efforts in producing usable melodies for the dances. 8-) 


Oh I did INDEED check out your ECD page(s) many, many times and honored your efforts with top billing in the Dance Reconstructions section in my Sources and References. Your pages were certainly part of the inspiration for this project -- how could I make it even better? (One of the tools I use to make people's jobs easier in both the modern world and the SCA is tech writing.) 


Yves 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John White" <white at drexel.edu> 
To: sca-dance at sca-dance.org 
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:26:45 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: [SCA-Dance] review - Playford dance instructions 

> 
> On the selection of dances - Do I have a suitable digital recording for 
> it? Would I want to dance it in the SCA? ( I omit some dances because I 
> find them too repetitive - details by request.) 
> 
> 
> Yves 
> 
In terms of having/using digital recordings (for, at the very least, practices), 
the advances of the modern age make available to us things we didn't have back 
in the days when I started (32 years ago). 

For example, I have managed to find (often by accident) at least a single repeat 
of the melody of all but (I believe) 7 of the 1st edition Playford dances. Once 
ripped into my computer, I then use software to create usable versions from these 
tracks by splicing and patching and, in the case of "as many as will" dances, using 
iTunes playlists and building blocks of tunes to create versions for 3, 4, or 5 
couples without having to actually splice these together (and thus giving me the 
ability to create a playlist on the fly for any number of couples). While some of 
the "as many as will" dances are somewhat dull, there are others that have some 
great patterns (including the "reel" figure, a la Virginia Reel) that are great fun 
to do, which makes the effort of creating these building blocks and playlists quite 
worth it. 

Naturally, being able to provide music for live performances is also definitely to 
be desired - why learn the dances if you can't do them at events? Fortunately, there 
are resources locally that mean that we can get sheet music for whatever we need. 

And as for the document - very nice! 

\\Dafydd Cyhoeddwr, Barony Bhakail (East Kingdom) 
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~white/ddance.html - please check out my ECD page, which includes 
sources of the music I have, though not music files; also, note my Italian dance pages ... 
________________________________________________________________