Tuesday, March 22, 2016

A neat way to have your own music on-ice

The only real beef I have with the younger generation is that I'm no longer a part of it.  Young people constantly teach me new things.  Along with teaching me pattern dances Coach A. has also taught me a great way to have ice dance music which both partners can hear without the complication of earphones or wires:  a wearable Bluetooth wireless speaker.  You're probably thinking " well, duh" as you read that last sentence.

Yes, I'll admit that I'm kinda a Neanderthal when it comes to new technology but I'm a fast adopter once I'm introduced to a gizmo that has obvious utility.  When I first started ice dancing the options were to either have the music played over the rink's sound system, a thing only done at our rink for competing skaters and only done one time per skater during a given Free-Style session--or alternatively, your coach could chase you around the rink with an MP-3 player in her hand or a boom box on her shoulder(!)--stylish coaches could do that with one hand, freeing up the other for handling the requisite over-priced cup of coffee.  A little later on, one could some how wear a smart phone around one's neck with the sound high enough so that both you and your partner could hear the music. I figured with my history of taking big swan dives on the ice that I'd be buying a new smart phone on a weekly basis.  Lastly, I've heard of people skating partnered with each combatant sharing one half of a pair of earbuds connected by wire to either an iPod or a smart phone.  I hope to never see that--sounds like a train wreck just waiting to happen.

Now, most wearable Bluetooth speakers that I've seen up until Coach A. showed me one her brother gave her for Christmas didn't look all that practical.  They dangled by carabiner clips or the like.  Her little speaker is a Mifa F20.  It is compacted and comes with a Velcro strap (however some Mifa speakers don't so it pays to check) that fits easily and snugly around one's arm.

The MiFA F20 Bluetooth Speaker
This little guy is available from a number of on-line marketers and comes in a variety of colors.  Just google it.  The volume is adjustable via push buttons on the speaker so once the smart phone is paired with the speaker the vulnerable phone can be placed in a safe pocket.  The range (i.e. distance of separation between the phone and the speaker) is at least the length of an ice rink.  Coach A. can be at the opposite end of the rink (with the phone) while I'm solo dancing (with the speaker on my arm) without loss of signal/music.  When partnered we both can hear the music.  The MiFA F20 weighs about 5 oz and costs less than $40.00 (shop around for the best price).  It has the typical USB port for recharging and I think (but don't quote me) that it may have a provision to accept a small SIM card.  If that is correct one could conceivably load the required music on the card and then skip the smart phone part of the story.

Anyway, if you're looking for an on-ice music solution, even if the SIM card thing is a misunderstanding on my part, the pairing of your smart phone with this little speaker just might be the answer you're looking for.

6 comments:

  1. Great solution! When I was competing in ice dance, my partner and I would both wear clip-on iPod nanos set to the same radio frequency. We would play our music from a third one that had a little radio transmitter (fairly inexpensive, too). This set-up is probably even better because it has a bigger range than our little radio arrangement, which fizzled as soon as we got more than an arm's length away. No separations allowed!

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    1. One of the young ice monitors that I'm friendly with commented to my coach that as I approached him from behind he could hear only the violin section of "Hernando's Hideaway" and said that was "creepy"! Ah, sigh, the classics get 'em every time...

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  2. I wonder if your coach could also issue orders/comments over the phone as well, such as 'bend your knees' and so on.If so, this would be a terrific solution for me.

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  3. Helene: I don't know the answer to your question but I suspect that one can have either music or communication but not both simultaneously. For example, like many Bluetooth devices, this speaker allows one to over-ride the music and take an in-coming call from the phone. In my case I get immediate coach comments when we're skating together. When skating solo, she watches me like a hawk and I get her feedback very soon after I complete a dance--while the mistake/correction is still fresh in both party's minds.

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    1. George - my issue is that I am completely deaf on my left side and wear a hearing aid on my right, which of course pulls in all the noise. When I dance with my coach, he's on my left and issues directions and I can't hear a thing. Yelling, of course does not help because what's coming in my right hand side is all the other noise, music, yelling from students and so on who are on the ice. I was thinking that perhaps I could wear this close to my right ear, or even put it on a headband and hear him. That would be great.

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  4. Helene: I think this speaker would be too large to wear on a headband but you could wear it on your right arm, close to the shoulder. For specific answers to your questions you could contact the manufacturer: www.mifalife.net/en/contact.html Let me know what you learn!

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