Sharing the music

K

KevinL

New Member
One of the issues with large ballroom dance floors is that only one song can be playing at a time, and if that song isn't the dance you are working on you have to ignore it, or dance to what is playing. If there are lots of couples practicing, or teachers teaching private lessons, and they are all sharing the music, most of the time you won't be able to have the music you want.

I think it would be very useful to have individual music playing, but how would such a thing be possible? I've seen people using portable cd players with two headphones jacked into one player, but that doesn't seem like the best choice for most open position dances. Years ago I heard about small headphones that would recieve a local radio(?) signal from a small transmitter that could be attached to a stereo/ record player/ cd player/ whatever. That might be a good choice, but given the prevalence of portable cd and mp3 players I expect the technology is mostly out of date.

What if you could build a system designed on this idea, though? The headphones could be small and light, with 10-12 "channels". The broadcast unit could be a computer device that broadcast different dance music on each of the "channels" from a library of songs. 20-30 songs for each dance, played randomly, would give lots of song variety. If each station played a specific kind of music, you could just tune into the channel you want to work on.

The advanced version might include more channels, with a remote control, so that the user could control when specific songs start and stop. This would be particularly useful for practicing routines to a set piece of music.

This technology could lead to a very surreal experience, though. Imagine walking into an almost-silent ballroom with lots of couples dancing to different music that no-one else could hear...

What do you think? Could it work? Would people use it? If anyone decides to build such a machine, feel free. I'm just an idea guy, I can't actually build anything.

Kevin
 
You can do this right now with off the shelf stuff. One approach is:

One Apple IPOD per music source;
One Griffin ITRIP FM transmitter (plugs into IPOD);
One or more headphone based FM receivers, typically a jogger's version.

The ITRIP can be set to any frequency in the FM band, pick one, and set your receivers to it (needs to be in a "quiet" part of your local FM band).

Set other ITRIP's / receivers to other frequencies so they don't "step" on each other.

The ITRIP does have a slightly annoying feature in that it conserves the IPOD's battery by shutting down 1 minute after the end of any audio. It takes a few seconds of audio to wake it up again, so you might miss the first few measures of a song if it needs to wake up.

There are other generic battery operated FM transmitters that will hook up to any audio output jack (ie your PDA / MP3 player). One example is at www.ccrane.com. The crane unit appears to be a bit more powerful than the iTrip (less interference), but you'll have 2 iPod size gizmo's to put on your belt instead of one.

Some PDA's can also transmit audio over a built in "BlueTooth" wireless link to Bluetooth enabled headphones, but I haven't tried this personally and don't know if you can set more than one headset to pick up the same thing, or how / if Bluetooth assigns its frequencies to avoid collisions.
 
my take is that the technology already exists - the headsets the military/police use would be ideal and work on changeable frequencies. you could simplify slightly by choosing tunes that can serve for multiple dances like combining foxtrot/lindy, chacha/wcs. however, it occurs to me that the capital expenditure & maintenance budget for such equipment would cause studio rental fees to skyrocket!
 
I've used the iPod with transmitter for over a year and it's a great solution for practicing. Each partner just has a very tiny FM receiver that clips to the waist or fits in a pocket. The only issue is that the earphone cords can get in the way as you dance. Also, I have an iTrip but the range is way too short. I switched to an Audiax transmitter and the range is now about 40 feet and it has much better audio fidelity as well.

It's still much better to connect directly to the sound system. In one of my studios I purchased the necessary cables and donated them, so that an mp3 player can be very quickly plugged into the audio system. I have a large variety of dance playlists on my iPod and some of them are designed to help all the practicing dancers by playing four songs of each dance type. Generally the others on the floor are quite happy when I come in and plug in my iPod because they know they'll get a chance to practice to some good music for their dance.

I should also mention that Popular Science featured an article about a year ago about a new sound technology that projects sound much like a laser beam focuses light. It allows sound to exist within a very specific "cone" of coverage. The people standing inside the cone can hear the sound very loudly but if they step even a foot away they hear nothing except some of the subtle effects of bass reflecting off surfaces like the floor. It could possibly have application for dance studios. The biggest problem would be Standard or Samba where you cannot contain your movements within a relatively small space, so you would quickly fall outside the sound coverage area.
 
You all are so high tech! I'm embarrassed to admit, living in the LAND of high-tech, that I just got a DVD player in January(and haven't even used it yet!!!). Don't like to create garbage, so I just waited for my 16-year-old video deck to break down, and it finally did!

But we have GROOVY cell phones- all with cameras, all the new ones have video cameras, internet access, which is why the iPod or other palm-pilots are virtually non-existent here!
 
Is sharing the music such a huge problem? Naive question, I know, but I've always taken lessons at off times, to there are two students in the studio at the most. Alternating songs between two students isn't that big of a problem for me. You can always work technqieu in between. I guess it could be a big problem if there were five or six student on the floor at once. Hmm.

I guess I've been lucky.

I've heard that some studios run a teaching track that plays 2 minutes of each dance, and you just have to wait until the dance you want cycles in. That sounds pretty bad.
 
A lower tech solution I've seen in one studio was to mount 2 pairs of speakers (these were ceiling mounted, and on independent amplifiers) over the center of the floor, pointing away from each other, and the walls opposite the speakers had curtains, not mirrors, so there was little sound reflection. So the floor had 2 independent "music zones". Not that you couldn't hear the other zone, but your own zone was louder, and there was no problem with cords, equipment, or headphones muffling out the teacher.

BTW, Kevin, thanks for the Audiax reference. My iTrip's range has been underwhelming, and the Audiax is smaller than the CCrane unit I had pinned my hopes on.

The iPod rocks as a "DJ in a box". I've set up playlists to organize my songs, by dance, and also to program entire dance-announced practice sessions. Hours of non-stop dancing without futzing with CD's. Also found a voice synthesizer on the net to make "announce" tracks: http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/ (easier than recording / editting my own voice).
 
What really bothers me is when we have a wedding couple, and they are on their last lesson, and they just keep playing their wedding sond over and over. On top of that, it might even be a new teacher who doesn't understand the thing about sharing, and has this emaotional bond to the students.
<end rant>

Other than that, we do well sharing the music.

<one more rant>
About one third of the time, there is a teacher who says she has a headache, and wants me to turn the music down to a whisper during my 30 person group class. I end up going along with it but not liking it too well.
 
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