Convert Audiotape to Digital

Lifehacker has a post on how to digitize cassette tapes.

July 4 Folkdancer's Party

Tuesday, July 4, 2006
At the Wake"s House
3:00 - 9?
Rain or Shine

WHO IS INVITED? Folkdancers, their families, their friends who might be potential folkdancers.

SWIM: Bring swimsuit, towels, water toys, sunscreen, bugspray.

POTLUCK: Bring food or drinks to share.

DANCE: If we want to dance in the house I suggest a dry change of clothes and comfy shoes.

IF YOU HAVE MUSIC OR EQUIPMENT WE NEED, AND YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO COME, PLEASE CALL SOMEONE NEAR YOU TO BRING IT ALONG.

EXCHANGE:

Bring Folkdance Clothing you'd like to swap or loan. Something you no longer wear? Rotate the stuff in your closet! Full skirts, folksy tops, dance shoes, ethnic accessories.

Thinning your garden? Bring some plants to swap or give away.

RSVP: mwarch7@yahoo.com


Here are a few photos of a past summer celebration, thanks to Neil Culpepper.

Performance at Intermission of Arms and the Man

Organizational Meeting

Organizational Meeting of the People's Task Force on the Re-Animation and Preservation of International Folk Dancing in the Greater Casco Bay Bioregion (PTFR-APIFDGCBB, pronounced the way it's spelled*), will meet Sunday December 18 at the home of Comrade Fellow FolkDancer Mary Beth. 4 p.m., potluck, of course, and followed by dancing at 7 at the Swedenborgian Church.

We'll be discussing changes to the music system, demoing the software, and possibly other stuff.

*shamelssly swiped from Calvin Trillin.

Links

Calendar of Bulgarian holidays
Nestinarsko - Great site about the firedance - with music.
Bulgarian proverbs.

Marie & Oma

Should we just use a laptop?

PineTree FolkDance* Cabal -
Steve and I (Mary Beth) have investigated the use of a computer and software for our sound system. Here's the story:

A folkdancer in Albany, NY has digitized (to MP3) over 3,000 International dance tunes. He has made his DVDs available to us to copy, at a cost of $10 for shipping. I spent $20 on blank CDs and DVDs to make copies, and will ship the originals back to Don in Albany. I'll make master copies for Steve&Marie, Allison and a set to use.

This music is playable on equipment that can read MP3s. It is not playable on a standard music cd player. It can be made playable on standard cd, but it would take a fair amount of work. It is playable on computers and MP3 players like iPods.

There are 2 recommended software packages. Winamp has a freeware version that has the ability to show what's playing, create playlists, and can be slowed down without changing pitch. It has a slick nifty interface.

An MIT folkdancer created software that will track what dances were taught and danced and will track all sorts of additional information, as well as create Folkdance-specific playlists. It will also slow the music without changing pitch. It has a homemade interface that is not slick, but is functional.

Steve and I are agreed that we can use a laptop for all our music. It will play standard music cds, as well as the mp3s.

This project will require:

* a laptop. Mary Beth has a donor from work that we could use for now. It's a boatanchor, but will run what we need. We should probably hustle up a better laptop.

* an external powered speaker for better volume. MB has spare pc speakers, but the sound quality and volume are not ideal.

* a hard drive - there's @ 15 gig of data. A 60 gig+ drive would meet our needs for a while.
* a USB hard drive enclosure to make the music collection and software portable - @ $25
Circuit City has an 80 gig external hard drive for $100. I didn't search hard; there are likely to be good deals.

I went ahead and got the music collection and blank discs, but I think we need a committee meeting / party to proceed further. (Wow, you know you're Not A Kid Anymore when you need a committee meeting to have a party.)

There are likely to be other agenda items.
We have dancing in Portland on Dec. 18th and January 15 and in Pownal Jan 1, with a New Year's Day party at Chez GruverWendt, and Jan. 15 - MLKing holiday weekend. We'll need a couple hours at least.

If we are unable to schedule a meeting, I would like the group to approve further expenses towards a music system.

Mary Beth

*note how cleverly I promote my preferred name.