Contra Dance Instrumentation |
March 30th, 2014 |
contra, music |
Using the same data as last time, six months of a weekly dance plus a year of dance weekend bookings, I looked up the instrumentations for each band. Here's the data as an ugly table:
Fiddle, Flute, Guitar | 33 |
Fiddle, Guitar | 18 |
Fiddle, Guitar, Piano | 16 |
Fiddle, Mandolin, Piano | 15 |
Fiddle, Clarinet, Trumpet, Trombone, Guitar | 8 |
Fiddle, Mandolin, Piano, Drums | 7 |
Fiddle, Clarinet, Piano, Bass | 6 |
Fiddle, Banjo, Piano, Bass, Drums | 5 |
Fiddle, Flute, Guitar, Bass | 6 |
Fiddle, Guitar, Bass | 6 |
Fiddle, Accordion, Piano, Bass | 5 |
Fiddle, Cello, Guitar, Piano, Drums | 4 |
Fiddle, Mandolin, Guitar, Bass | 4 |
Fiddle, Fiddle, Piano, Bass | 4 |
Fiddle, Mandolin, Guitar, Drums | 3 |
Fiddle, Banjo, Guitar | 3 |
Fiddle, Accordion, Guitar | 3 |
Fiddle, Piano, Drums | 3 |
Fiddle, Accordion, Trombone, Trombone, Piano, Drums | 3 |
Fiddle, Flute, Accordion, Piano, Bass, Drums | 2 |
Fiddle, Flute, Accordion, Hammered Dulcimer, Piano | 2 |
Fiddle, Guitar, Drums | 2 |
Fiddle, Banjo, Guitar, Bass | 2 |
Fiddle, Guitar, Piano, Drums | 2 |
Fiddle, Whistle, Guitar, Piano | 2 |
Fiddle, Fiddle, Guitar | 2 |
Fiddle, Accordion, Guitar, Bass | 1 |
Fiddle, Fiddle, Piano | 1 |
Fiddle, Piano, Bass, Drums | 1 |
Fiddle, Fiddle, Mandolin, Guitar | 1 |
Fiddle, Flute, Piano, Bass | 1 |
Fiddle, Clarinet, Guitar | 1 |
You can tell there's a lot of overlap between entries, though, and a table doesn't represent this well. It's easy to see that all the bands have fiddles, but is it more common to have a piano or a guitar? Or both? I played around with ways of visualizing this, and while I'm not completely satisfied with it, I do have something:
Fiddle 172 Guitar 117 Perpetual e-Motion, Uncle Farmer Flute 39 The Mean Lids, Crowfoot, Maivish Bass 6 Wild Asparagus Piano 24 Great Bear Trio Drums 6 Relative Harmony Cello 4 Gallimaufry Whistle 2 Wild Hair Bass 13 The Stringrays, The Gaslight Tinkers Mandolin 4 The Contrarians, On the Fly Banjo 2 Euphor Accordion 1 T-Acadie Clarinet 9 The Figments Trumpet, Trombone 8 Elixir Drums 5 Contraforce Mandolin 3 Notorius (quartet) Fiddle 3 The Dead Sea Squirrels, The Cosmic Otters Mandolin 1 Atlantic Crossing Banjo 3 Sassafras Stomp Accordion 3 Anadama Piano 55 Bass 24 Drums 8 Arigana Highway Banjo 5 Hotpoint String Band Flute, Accordion The Clayfoot Strutters Clarinet 6 The Latter Day Lizards Accordion 5 Tidal Wave Fiddle 4 Flute 1 Spare Parts Mandolin 22 Nor'easter, The Free Raisins Drums 7 Lift Ticket, The Syncopaths Drums 6 Party of Three, The Coffee Zombies Trombones, Accordion 3 Giant Robot Dance Hammered Dulcimer, Flute, Accordion 2 Swallowtail Fiddle 1
This shows that once you've got a fiddle 117 of 172 times you find a guitar and the remaining 55 times you find a piano. Then if you got a guitar, the most common additional instrument is flute, followed by piano, and the bass. I've put in examples of bands in each category, but there are of course many others.
(One thing I don't like about this categorization is that it's not very stable. Imagine about a third of bands have guitar and piano, a third have just piano, and a third have just guitar. If guitar is slightly more common than piano this chart will put all the guitar+piano bands under guitar, exagerating its frequency, while if the piano is slightly more common we get the reverse.)
Another way of looking at this is as an approximation for "given instruments A and B, what are the candidates for C, and how popular are they?" Or possibly "given A and B, how much do each of the candidates for C add?"
Update 2014-04-02: At Mac's suggestion I've added a chart:
[1] For example, while the Free
Raisins play some as Fiddle/Trumpet/Piano or
Fiddle/Accordion/Mandolin, we're primarily Fiddle/Mandolin/Piano.
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