THE LEICESTER BRANCH MUSIC STORY.

It all began with a wee black book measuring 7” x 4”into which Dick Noden painstakingly copied the details of every single recording of every single Scottish Country Dance in the Leicester branch Music Library. They were all in alphabetical order and gave details thus e.g.

AIRDRIE LASSIES 15A 4X48 (TWICE) 120-183, 185-241

15A. THE NUMBER OF THE CASSETTE TAPE AND ALSO THE SIDE.

AND THE OTHER NOS. showed WHERE YOU WOULD FIND IT ON THE TAPE.

On the cassettes themselves there were other colour coded numbers which referred to either the Hitachi equipment numbers or the Coombers.

Dick INVENTED THE CODE, RED FOR REEL, GREEN FOR STRATHSPEY, BLUE FOR JIG AND BLACK FOR MISCELLANEOUS TAPES WHICH WERE COMPILATIONS.

EACH WEEK THE CLASS PROGRAMMES WERE WRITTEN BY HAND IN THESE COLOURS AND ALL TEACHERS HAD A LIST OF THE DANCES THEY WERE TEACHING ALSO WRITTEN BY HAND. OF COURSE DICK ALSO PREPARED ALL THE CASSETTES.

Along with the wee black book was a large brown book which cross referenced all the dances into reels, jigs and strathspeys and was a source for finding 2x32 reels, 6x40 jigs and all possible combinations.

All this must have taken hours and hours of Dick’s time to first establish and then to maintain the wee black book writing up each new recording bought. As a matter of interest, “S” was the busiest letter and dances beginning with “S” took up most pages. “S” was the first letter to fade out on the finger finders at the sides of the page, so after Dick these finger finders had to be cleverly and carefully laminated to preserve them!.

So the wee black book and the big brown book were duly maintained and updated right through until well after CDs had arrived. Finally, cassettes were phased out but not before programmes consisted of both tapes and CDs and the little switch which changed the equipment from one to the other proved just as much fun as the A and B sides of the old cassettes!

Then began the marathon of putting on to CD ALL THE TAPES, plus many old vinyls. All the Branch Music met the computer and a large red file held everything still cross referenced as per Dick. No, wee black and big brown were by no means obsolete and came/come to Thursday classes most weeks as a handy reference.

Eventually, the music library was housed in 6 slotted carry bags each holding 30 CDs. The 3 boxes of tape cassettes retired after years of strenuous labour during which NOT ONE OF THEM EVER FAILED! They now live in the Cupboard in Holy Cross having moved from a loft in Narborough.

So, the library played on but then, disaster struck….. some copy CDs failed followed by an original. Alarm bells rang and it was decided that a back up was needed. Some 6 months of Dedicated experimentation with an MP3 player followed and it has to be said that it worked bearing in mind that you can’t please all of the folk all of the time!

Talk about the cat among the pigeons……..and that is where we are today…….

WATCH THIS SPACE for further developments.!