Finding music
Square dancing is danced to the music: the music sets the pace, the phrases, and the moment the figure has to come home. So the music has to fit the dance, and not every record does. This page is for whoever puts the record on — and for a dancer who wants something to practise to between classes.
Nobody publishes a list of approved records. What follows is what to look for, and where callers get their music.
What "compatible" means
Four of the six things below are about the shape of the music, and the rest of the book explains that shape from the dancer's side: Timing and music is the page for beats, phrases and why 64 beats matters.
| What to check | Why it decides whether the music works |
|---|---|
| A beat you can walk to, about 128 a minute | That is the tempo the program is written at — every call's timing in this book assumes it. Plenty of commercial recordings do not hold one tempo from beginning to end: a chorus pushes, a bridge pulls back, the last thirty seconds fade. If the beat moves, the square drifts, and no amount of calling brings it back |
| Even 8-beat phrases | Calls are fitted into phrases, not into whatever is left over. Music that adds or drops a bar every so often cannot be called to, because there is no longer a place where a figure lands |
| A downbeat you can hear | Beat one has to be audible under everything else — a bass line, or a drum. If it is buried, the dancers are counting instead of dancing, and only the caller is holding the square together |
| Room for the caller's voice | Somebody is talking over this music. A vocal sitting in the same range as the caller, or a busy mix with the melody in the middle, fights the thing that makes the dance work. This is why patter music is instrumental, and why a singing call is written to leave gaps |
| Long enough for a tip | A tip is ten minutes or so of dancing: an opener, a figure, a break and a get-out on the patter side, then the singing call. One two-minute record cannot cover it, so what you are choosing is a set of music rather than a song |
| A repeating 64-beat shape, for singing calls | The figure is danced four times, once with each couple leading. The music has to give you that shape — and it should end deliberately, with a proper ending, rather than fade out under the last figure |
Two kinds of music
Made for square dancing. Music produced for callers: instrumental hoedowns for patter, and singing calls with a sung melody and a figure's worth of structure built in. It is recorded at a usable tempo, it is in phrases, and it is sold to be called to. It costs money, and it is the safe choice — particularly for a class, where the music is doing half the teaching.
Alternative music. Ordinary commercial recordings that happen to fit: a folk tune, a country song, an instrumental, a backing track. It is cheap and there is an ocean of it. There is nothing wrong with it — callers have used it for as long as there have been records — but the work is yours: you have to check the tempo, count the phrases, and find out whether the thing holds together for three minutes. Most records do not, and the ones that do are worth writing down.
Where to get it
CALLERLAB keeps the list of sources, in a Finding Music article on its knowledge base. Its producer side is the one to start from, because these sell square dance music as square dance music:
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| MusicForCallers | an aggregate page for many square dance music producers: it searches across their catalogues, and each producer sells MP3 downloads |
| Dosado Music | a distribution service carrying music from many producers |
| SquareDanceMusic.com | gathers a number of labels in one place, with an emphasis on the labels that have stopped trading — useful when you are looking for something older than you are |
That same article lists the alternative route — karaoke and backing-track sites, and the ordinary download stores — as sources of music that was not made for square dancing.
A newer caller does not have to buy a library to start: the CALLERLAB Music Producers Starter Playlist is put together by the association's Music Producers Committee to sell digital square dance music to new callers at a reduced price.
Before you dance to a record
- Tap along for half a minute. If your finger and the music disagree by the end, the record is out.
- Count to eight, four times. You are checking that every phrase is the same length. If the count goes wrong, so will the figure.
- Time it. Long enough for the tip you are planning, with an ending rather than a fade.
- Read the terms it came with. Music made for square dancing is sold to be called to; a record bought for listening is not. What you may then do with it in front of a room is a second question, and it is the one the warning below is about.
- Then try it on the floor. If the class is fighting the music, the music is usually the problem. Slower is better than faster, and slow music is better than none.
Playing music where the public can hear it is licensed, and buying the music is not the licence. Every recording carries two separate rights: the composition (the song) and the recording (the performance of it). Buying a record, or subscribing to a streaming service, buys you the right to listen to it. It does not buy the right to play it to a room — a club night, a hired hall, a party that is open to anyone who turns up. In most countries that is a licensed activity, and the licence is usually held by the venue or by the club, because the same one already covers whatever is played in the bar before the dancing starts.
So ask before the evening, not after it. In the United Kingdom the two bodies are PPL (for the recordings) and PRS for Music (for the compositions), which license venues jointly through TheMusicLicence; in the United States the equivalents are the performing rights organisations — ASCAP, BMI and SESAC — and other countries have their own. A club night in a hall is not your front room, so assume a licence is needed and find out who holds it.
Two cautions. This is not legal advice, and it is no substitute for asking the people who know: the licensing body, or whoever books the hall. And what the music was sold to you for is a separate question again — a record sold for calling is sold for a purpose, which is not automatically the same thing as permission to perform it in public. Read both.
Next
- what the beats and phrases mean → Timing and music
- running an evening → Caller and teacher notes
- what a whole tip feels like → Dancing a tip