strathspey@strathspey.org:44866

Anselm Lingnau

Re: Two chords

March 24, 2006, 12:41 p.m. (Message 44866, in reply to message 44865)

Bryan McAlister wrote:

> Your first concern is that the CD tracks are musically of a high
> standard and each track stands on its own one that basis.

This is precisely the point. If the music sucks but has two chords you can bet 
that people will be looking for better music even if it has just one chord. 
(Not that I want to imply that your CD tracks would in fact suck. I'm sure 
they're going to be great.)

I wouldn't bother about putting extra chords in their own tracks, either, 
which is to be sure technically feasible but probably not worth the trouble. 
This is just going to confuse people. If I were you I would record the dances 
in question with one chord and let it go at that. Put a note in the liner 
saying that people should arrange themselves so as to be able to start right 
off after the first chord. The advantages of this are:

  - Chances are that the CD will mostly be used in class, anyway. In class,
    you walk through dances before you dance them, so people will be in the
    correct position to start the actual dance already.

  - It will be easier to re-use the music for other dances if they do not
    need to be of the couples-cross-over-on-the-second-chord variety. This
    may not be the first thing you have in mind when you are recording
    music for a specific book, but there are much fewer recorded tracks
    around than there are dances, and if the music is great it may inspire
    other people to come up with their own dances, especially if it is
    sort-of generic (rather than Mairi's Wedding). This even makes commercial
    sense since people might then buy your CD even if they are not *that*
    interested in the actual dances from your book, or they might get the
    CD because the music is so nice and also order the book just for
    completeness (I know I would). Then they might also try your dances
    which they otherwise might not have, and might even like them :^)
    Voilà, instant fame.

  - At live events, people who insist on having two chords can ask their
    musician/band to play two. Sticklers for two chords with recorded
    music can still get out ye olde WAV editor and duplicate the chord
    for themselves.

  - Not recording the second chord will make you popular with Simon Scott
    and his followers who want to nudge the world towards not having second
    chords. This will be another example to point to when convincing even
    more people that a second chord is in fact not needed, an abomination,
    ... etc. etc. On the other hand, at least from what has been said on
    Strathspey, the rest of the world does not really seem passionate enough
    about the issue to forego buying a nice CD just because there's a chord
    missing here and there that nobody *really* needs, anyway, and that even
    tends to get in the way every so often.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson
afterwards.                                                      -- Vernon Law