Hi all,
Anyone else find the metronomic clapping of the SCD audience throughout the band arrangements intrusive? It quite gets up my nose. I mean, why bother with a rhythm section.
Cheers!
Kj

Give them a break!

The BBC see this programme as a direct competitor to the X-Factor, with it's over-active audience screaming their support for some pretty indifferent performers.

They in their turn encourage all the "exuberance" from a relatively small audience.

Drives me nuts.

Don't mind a bit of clapping for a lively dance like a cha cha or jive. All to the good. But it's all the time, even in dances that don't lend themselves to it, or where the music should be left to be heard by itself. They seem to have really turned the sound up loud on the audience during the dances this year as well (presumably as a nod to the X factor). One of the examples that grated with me the most was Natalie and Vincent's Foxtrot which would have been gentle and flowing but had a moronic clapped beat - you can barely hear the subtle percussion over the din:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zbO_qnbM4

Grrr.

very very annoying but it seems to have got less as the series has gone on or I have managed to tune it out one or the other

I've genuinely never noticed it. It's such a standard feature of this kind of programme that I think I must just automatically tune it out.

I hate the clapping along to the music. It's so "ITV". Especially as audiences always clap slightly out of time (usually too slow). Must be quite off-putting for the dancers.

Other posters have mentioned that during the live shows, annoying researchers come round and get cross with the audience if they're NOT clapping.

It really doesn't bother me to hear it on the show, but it would definitely bother me if some 21-year-old skinny Minnie in Uggs came round and forced me to clap while smiling at me maniacally

That's an excellent example. Far louder than in previous years imo. More suited to a fast latin, as you say.


Surely the researchers would only do that if you hadn't already been shunted to a back row to make way for a D-list celebrity (as has been mentioned on this forum by people who attended the live shows).

I'd rather put up with a bit of clapping rather than suffer the incessant racket of DOI & XF

The clapping is actively encouraged by the producers during the pre-show warm up, and as half (if not more) of the audience is made up of invited celebs, I guess they are there to "do as they are told".

Have to say, I wouldn't mind the clapping so much, if whoever leads it had some knowledge of timing and got the audience to clap in time to the music and not against it. The worst time was when they were clapping 4 beats to a bar during someone's waltz!

I must admit that I really enjoy the audiences' random clapping like seals trying to catch a fish As a musician I get a smug sense of superiority watching so many people with no idea of where the beat actually is It must be a bit off-putting to the dancers though...

Last night I had to record the show and I replayed some parts. There is something odd about the clapping. It's far too crisp. Also just before the dansers do a nice move the clapping suddenly stops and a fraction of a second later you hear spontaneous clapping and jeering after which the metronomic clapping starts again.
To me it sounds as if the BBC is overlaying the audience with a claptrack.
Anyone else noticed this, or is it time for me get some aluminium foil and start folding?