So, how should you play each tune in a three-tune set for a contradance? Plan on six.
A dozen-and-a-half seems to be about the number of times a caller will call through each dance. If there are eighteen couples, they'll take the head couple up and down once. Really long lines? They'll call a symmetrical contra and just get the head couple down to the bottom.
Some callers run shorter, and you'll have just switched to your third tune when the caller holds up a finger to say, "Last time." Some run way longer and you play your third tune for so long that your hand gets tired. A couple of back-to-back short sets, and you adjust and play each tune fewer times. A couple of really long ones and I'll actually ask the caller to shorten them. Long sets will exhaust the band before the end of the night.
Squares are often single-tune affairs. First, they're shorter than contras. Second, they're typically in a single key, both because the fiddlers are often cross-tuned, and because it helps a patter-caller to pitch his voice to the key. Larry Edelman will ask for single-tune sets in particular keys.
But for contras, six times through each of the tunes is my rule of thumb.
How about waltzes? Again, six times. Shorter and the dancers don't get enough time to talk; longer and they'll wish the band would stop.
So contras are dozens. A quarter dozen tunes per set, half a dozen times through each tune, a dozen sets. Each half of those are capped with a waltz played half a dozen times through
This gives "Playing the Dozens" a different connotation from the one it might have in Brooklyn.
"You wanna play the Dozens?/Well the Dozens is a game/But the way I fuck your mother/Is a goddamned shame." -- George Carlin
