June is upon us and with it should come the warmer sunnier climes of Summertime (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). Summertime and the living is easy - or so the song says - but for me it's the beginning of the final stretch of the "race-course" in another year's "new-music-production-event"!

I now have a final list of 14 new tunes to record in Nashville, this September. Having received the selections for this year from the Sting and Snow recording artists, I have secured the licences and have begun working on the musical "arrangements". There are just over twelve weeks until the studio session, during which my plan is fairly straight-forward - by mid-July finish all arrangements and send the details to our "band-leader" in Nashville; he can then "discuss" any points that need to be considered with me, using "Instant Messaging" on the Internet, then I will fly to Nashville "run" the session and walk away with the new music!

Of course looking at a tune, listening to the way it has been recorded, deciding what can be used (and what can not) in a Square Dance version, is time consuming. Then re-formatting the song into the Square Dance format - deciding which rhythm style to use, what instrumentation would give the best "flavour" of the original song and also be the most appropriate for dancing, is another aspect of the "creation" process. It is important to spend enough time on each song but - equally - it is important to not "over-cook" the recipe!

I use a simple "structure peg-board" as a template for each tune, on to which I can "hang" the parts of the song; i.e. the instruments to be used and the rhythmic style to be incorporated etc. Although sometimes the original structure will fit almost as it is, many songs need to be "re-built" to make a Square Dance. Occasionally it will be necessary to repeat a line of the song, or shorten it or extend it (or play it twice); everything must fit the 7 X 64 beat design, which has become the "norm". Do you remember the "older" tunes that used 4 X 96 or other variations? I do but I doubt that we could "sell" anything so "unusual" to today's callers, or to today's dancers, for that matter!

Another concern in choosing a tune is that - when you change the tempo to the 128 MBM (Metronome Beats per Minute) that we use, it could mean speeding up or slowing down the music and that can really change the way it feels! There has to be a limit as to how far you can vary the tempo, I usually go with (plus or minus) 20% as a maximum - but there are exceptions! Some songs just lose too much, whilst some seem to "gain" from the experience…

To be completely honest, I have already given thought to most of these concerns, with regard to this year's selection - and - hopefully, I have managed to "filter" out any tunes that can't be "changed" without being "destroyed". However, the real test will occur in the studio, at which point there is no going back - once it's recorded it WILL be released!

BEST SELLER LISTING:
I am very pleased that both of our records, released in April, achieved a good position in the new combined Hanhurst's/Palomino listing on the dosado.com web-site. These were "Catch A Falling Star", which came in at No.3 and "Lord Of The Dance", which came in at No.4.

INDIVIDUAL RECORD HISTORIES including ALL THE ADDITIONAL LYRICS:
The histories contain details about each original song, including it's production and provide the extra lyrics - as featured on the called side. You can access these by "clicking on the open-book picture, on the Catalogue, Latest Releases and Future Releases pages.

The seventh batch - featured this month - are:

• Feel
• People Like Me
• Trust Me
• My Girl Lollipop
• Whos Cheatin' Who?
• Little Bitty
• More Than a Friend To Me
• This Is My Life's Work
• He Was On To Something When He Made You
• Love On The Loose, Heart On The Run

For details of the titles featured in the previous three months, check out the News-Letter and - if there are any that you would particularly like to see added just let us know.

NEW RELEASES:
Our new vinyl releases for June are: - "Feel" (vocal by Thorsten Geppert), which is a version of the Robbie Williams hit song, that he also chsoe as the title of his autobiography". Also featured is "Jukebox Joe / Star Karta" (a double instrumental hoedown/patter record); this tune has a Traditional (although slightly "New Country") sound on side A, with a modern "Electro-Techno" sound on side B.

Our re-release for June will be "1:800 / 911" (a double instrumental hoedown/patter record).

Our MP3 releases will be "A Coin In The Fountain" (vocal by Marten Weijers) and "Here Comes The Night" (vocal by Tony Oxendine and Jerry Story); which were held over from last month.

FUTURE RELEASES:
(Please check out the Future Releases link for full details)

Now I have to think about the best way to make Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and The Kingston Trio sound acceptable to a Square Dance Crowd. Okay, let's see we need a twenty piece orchestra, the Abbey Road Studios engineering sound and a Calypso style instrumentation - NO PROBLEM - that's gon'na be EASY… Have a great month, talk to you again on the July News-Letter.

Go Squareful! - Paul Bristow (Owner and Producer Sting and Snow Records)