Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Tanda of the Week 08 / 2014 - Milongas - De Angelis/Tanturi/Federico


1. Ricardo Tanturi / Enrique Campos - "Bien criolla y bien porteña" 1945
2. Alfredo De Angelis / Julio Martel, Néstor Rodi - "Buenos Aires de ayer" 1943
3. Domingo Federico / Carlos Vidal, Oscar Larroca - "Zapatos" 1945 - TangoTunes

http://open.spotify.com/user/anttiveikko/playlist/4UQJsnE7hvuzlHQSbGf3Kn
http://www.deezer.com/playlist/795236711Here's a new milonga tanda I played in the saturday afterparty of the 4th edition of Helsinki International Tango Festival - Tango Frostbite. I find that all of these songs, from three different orchestras, have a similar mid-40's sound, energy and danceability to them and go well together. When I played the tanda I left out the speech intro from the De Angelis milonga.

I played from 03:30 to 07:00 following Punto y Branca, who played the Grand Milonga of the festival just before. I had decided that since I have time for only two milonga tandas, the first one will be more uptempo, unknown and challenging, while the second one later into the morning hours will be slower, more known and less challenging (it was Canaro).

What do you think of this tanda? All comments are appreciated. Unfortunately the De Angelis milonga was not available on Deezer. ...and the version of Zapatos is too fast on Spotify/iTunes. Get it from TangoTunes.

Tanturi, Ricardo - TOTW - Todo Tangotango.info - TangoTunes - iTunes Store
De Angelis, Alfredo - TOTW - Todo Tango - tango.info - iTunes Store
Federico, Domingo - TOTW - tango.info -TodoTango - TangoTunes

Monday, February 10, 2014

Tanda of the Week 07 / 2014 - Ricardo Tanturi, Enrique Campos y TangoTunes



1. Ricardo Tanturi - "Mariposita" 1947 - TangoTunes
2. Ricardo Tanturi / Enrique Campos - "El corazón me decia" 1944 - TangoTunes
3. Ricardo Tanturi / Enrique Campos - "Encuentro" 1944 - TangoTunes
4. Ricardo Tanturi / Enrique Campos - "La abandoné y no sabía" 1944 - TangoTunes

http://open.spotify.com/user/anttiveikko/playlist/4fAl8mu8KzWEBMcUYK8CY6
http://www.deezer.com/playlist/781076415The TangoTunes store is offering also some digitized vinyl recordings on the side of their impressively growing collection of digitized shellacs. Here I've put up a tanda of Ricardo Tanturi from songs available on two of the albums available on the store "Que me quiten lo bailao!" and "Discos de Gardel (Serie Tangos de Oro)".

I was happy to find out that their version of "Mariposita" is a lot better than what I had from the "Grandes del Tango 33" compilation and a few other sources. Many Tanturi cd releases have had the problem of badly digitized recordings and a lot of added reverb. While I believe I can hear extra reverb on some of the songs of these vinyl collections, it is far from the horrendous levels of many cd releases. Some songs might have just a bit too much bass (Dj's, learn to use the EQ's!) or some distortion and record noise but I'll take that over reverb and too much filtering anytime. I recommend listening to the short samples of the songs that TangoTunes offers and comparing those to your previous copies of the songs and some other compilations like "Serie 78 RPM : Ricardo Tanturi Vol.2" and "Ricardo Tanturi y su orquesta tipica. Los Indios". I'm sure these releases by TangoTunes will satisfy some of your needs for Tanturi... while waiting for TangoTunes to release digitized shellacs of Tanturi hopefully sometime in the future.

Now... a few words about the tanda itself. First, I wanted to make a tanda of the songs available on these albums. Second, I wanted to feature the instrumental "Mariposita" even though it would mean playing it with vocal tangos. I do not personally mind this mixing of instrumentals and vocals, BUT... First, I will not play more than one or two of these tandas during a night (I still favor very classic set ups for tandas and think some Dj's over do the mixing of vocal and instumental songs). Second, I will follow the instrumental with songs that, in my opinion, have similar melodies, energy, mood and dynamics as well as tempo. This means I want to use songs that on top of the above qualities have the tempo around 62-63 beats per minute when "Mariposita" has a tempo of 63.85 beats per minute (according to my Traktor Pro 2 Dj software). This way the dancing to these songs remains similar (although there are of course more factors to this than simply just the tempo of the songs). Third, I wanted to choose somewhat popular songs but still songs that are not featured on the blog yet. Meaning that I might play in an actual milonga something else with "Mariposita". Nevertheless, I like this tanda and believe it works well. This just to explain more about the thought process behind creating another tanda. I hope you enjoy it!

Tanturi, Ricardo - TOTW - Todo Tangotango.info - TangoTunes - iTunes Store
Campos, Enrique - TOTW - Todo Tango - tango.info - TangoTunes - iTunes Store 
 

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Tanda of the Week 06 / 2014 - Federico Domingo and TangoTunes


1. Domingo Federico - "Saludos" 1944 - TangoTunes
2. Domingo FedericoCarlos Vidal - "Yuyo verde" 1944 - TangoTunes
3. Domingo FedericoCarlos Vidal - "Senda florida" 1945 - TangoTunes
4. Domingo FedericoCarlos Vidal - "Yo" 1944 - TangoTunes


http://open.spotify.com/user/anttiveikko/playlist/4p74zTimKRlDcNBMUIocw3
http://www.deezer.com/playlist/772994541TangoTunes delivers another great release with the Domingo Federico's "Futuro" compilation of 22 freshly digitized shellacs from 1944-1945. I know this is something many Dj's have been waiting for a long time since it has been difficult to find cd's of Federico and especially hard to find ones with good quality. For me
this TangoTunes release greatly upgrades the quality of all the featured songs compared to the previous versions I had, along with including some tracks I did not have yet. As you can hear from the short audio samples on TangoTunes, the songs available on Spotify/iTunes Store are far lesser quality.

Overall the compilation showcases the original style of Domingo Federico and surely many of these recordings will be heard more in the milongas in the future. Maybe even the milonga "Zapatos" which passed the dance-it-in-your-living-room-first-before-playing-it-in-a-milonga test with flying colors although the ending confused me quite a bit. Next time I'll get it right.

Before starting his orchestra Federico played bandoneon in the orchestra of Miguel Caló and he is also famous as the composer of many classic tangos like "Al compás del corazón", "Percal" and "Tristezas de la calles Corrientes".

Domingo Federico was featured on the blog earlier in the Tanda of the Week 27/2012.

Federico, Domingo - TOTW - tango.info -TodoTango - TangoTunes