Notes from learning to be a square dance caller.
Music
Go to one of the established square dance music producers and buy some patter music and a few easy singing calls.
Patter Music
Don't try to get all fancy here. For the sake of caller school you want some straight ahead heavy beat 126BPM music. Yes, you've got some karaoke music that you think sounds better. It probably does, but it's missing the melody line, so it's flat, and it'll be a while before you're good enough to fill that with your voice.
Singing Music
Same thing applies here. If you can chant it, that's better than singing it. I thought "I like modern music, I'll get the square dance version of the Scissor Sisters' song I Don't Feel Like Dancin', but that's a vocally difficult song.
Think You Are My Sunshine.
Choreography
Yes, you've had the call to calling; you're a dancer who learned fast and likes difficult and tricky stuff. Don't. You are not like most dancers. They'll love you for The Chicken Plucker if you can call it rhythmically on the beat.
Chicken Plucker
Download a copy of "sd", and follow-along. Start SD, tell it "no session", and "mainstream", then type in "heads start", press enter, and then "square thru 4":
4B> 3G< 3B> 2G< 4G> 1B< 1G> 2B<
This is your "get-in" to a "corner box" or "zero box". "1/2 a chicken plucker" used to be "right and left thru, dive thru, centers pass thru", but a modern version is "right and left thru, pass thru, trade by":
4B> 1G< 1B> 2G< 4G> 3B< 3G> 2B<
Do it again ("right and left thru, pass thru, trade by") you're back to a corner box, and you can call "Allemande left" and the dancers are at home.
Fire up your patter music and call this over and over again, feeling your accents on the beat:
"Heads square thru 4 hands around"
[beat] [beat] [beat] [beat]
"right and left thru"
[beat] [beat]
"pass thru, trade by"
[beat] [beat]
etc.
Memorize Some Singing Figures
You may have noticed