Notes on Digital Music for Square Dancing
Andy Shore

Rhythm Records’ Callers School – July 2001

 

The best, most up-to-date information can always be found online.

Some good sources are:

Vic & Debbie Ceder’s home page http://www.ceder.net/ MP3 info page http://www.ceder.net/mp3.php4
Supreme Audio’s http://www.supremeaudio.com/ “Basics of MP3”
DoSaDo.COM http://www.dosado.com/   specifically http://www.dosado.com/callers/mdisk.htm
This document will be available on http://www.moveto.com/sd/

Creating MP3 files from 45s:
You’ll need:

  1. A computer (highly recommend getting a CD-R/RW drive)
  2. Hilton turntable or other turntable/amp combination
  3. Appropriate cabling to plug line-out to line-in or Hilton’s tape record out to PC microphone input.
  4. Software to digitize music, such as:

·        Cool Edit 2000 from Syntrillium http://www.syntrillium.com/

·        GoldWave from http://www.goldwave.com/

·        Sound Forge from Sonic Foundry http://www.sonicfoundry.com/

·        Musicmatch Jukebox http://www.musicmatch.com/ can also be used to digitize CDs and analog audio input

·        Total Recorder from High Criteria http://www.highcriteria.com/ can capture anything going through your sound card.

  1. Record at 44100 Hz, 16-bit, Mono
  2. When done, edit out leading/trailing noise, etc. You may wish to use a click&pop filter on noise records.
  3. Save the “.wav” file for archival purposes. Typical SD records are 20MB as .wave files.
    Use a consistent file naming convention.  Vic Ceder recommends  SongTitle-LabelName-number.wav (and .mp3)
  4. Convert the .wav file into an MP3 file (most of the tools above allow you to “Save As” MP3
  5. Back up your data.  Keep the WAV files and MP3 files on separate CD-R media.  If you ever need to go back and edit the music (e.g., pitch shift or speed up/slow down), use the WAV file as your source data.

Vic Ceder has more detailed information on his site.

 

Also – newer square dance music may be available directly in MP3 format.  Check out Supreme Audio / Hanhurst’s http://www.supremeaudio.com/ or Palamino Records, http://www.palominorecords.com/, among others, for record samples and purchasable/downloadable MP3s.

 

OK, I’ve got all these MP3 files, how do I use them?

  • Download them to a portable MP3 player and use it like a minidisk player at dances.
    Advantages:  lightweight, portable, infinitely re-recordable
    Disadvantages:  relatively low capacity may be hard to loop, index, find the right track, etc.
    Great as a back-up strategy.
  • Keep them on a laptop computer and play music from you PC.
    Advantages:  100s (or 1000s) of records will fit on a modern laptop in MP3 format. Can create/use detailed record database, have lyric sheets online, can do looping, etc.
    Disadvantages:  traveling with a PC can be risky, calling thru a reboot!

    MP3 players for your PC include: Windows Media Player from http://www.microsoft.com/  and WinAMP from http://www.winamp.com/ and Musicmatch Jukebox (see above) also Vic Ceder’s CSDS http://www.ceder.net/. Both Vic’s program and Musicmatch can display lyrics or cuesheets when you are playing a particular MP3.  Vic has many singing call lyric sheets available for downloading already – check his site before you start typing or scanning.  Many of the players allow you to create “playlists” which you could organize for a specific dance, by label, by type (ballad, love song, rocker, etc.).

    Another idea might be to create your own “playable cuesheets” – here’s an example using a plugin to play a local MP3 file.  Warning – you’d need to know some HTML to create such pages.

 

Copyright Issues

You should own and retain the original media (vinyl, CD) for the music that you convert to digital form (MP3, Minidisk).  “Sharing” MP3 files for music you do not own is a copyright violation and is property theft.

 

Support square dance music producers and pay for the music you use.

 

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