With this CD I was lucky enough to get Pelle and Mariliis from Sotapota to work on my CD’s artwork. It was obvious that the artwork had to be connected to the dance topic but it took some time to get the final idea that we used. First we started with a photo session and… Continue reading
Editing and mastering the material
Mostly the people in radio that do the editing are different from those who take the music up. In some cases it can be the same person as it was with our guitar duo cd. The main principles in the radio are to use as little after editing as possible. The sound should be the… Continue reading
Recording The Dance Album
So we had chosen a church about 40 km from Tallinn to record the album. Now I think I would do it in a studio on the carpet. It scares me that everything must be done on the spot. The same crew had recorded a harpsichord CD in the same church recently and my editor… Continue reading
Practicing for the recording session
Once again I thought that summer is long 🙂 In Estonia the summer is just about 2-3 months but once its here it feels that it is going to stay forever. September has always been an important change in everybody’s life here – most of the people have to go back to schools and their… Continue reading
Guillem Alonso and TapOlé
I think it was the spring of 2007 when the “world champion of step dance” Guillem Alonso visited the annual step dance event in Tallinn. I knew nothing about him and about the event, too. But appeared that the organizers were forced to find a guitarist that would perform the Asturias by Albeniz as Guillem… Continue reading
Formation of the idea of the dance album
For 2007 I had recorded a classical guitar duo CD and some occasional tracks with modern music for the Estonian Public Broadcast Corp and for some young composers. Also, I had played in some guitar parts for some bands’ albums, we’d recorded our guitar quartet and so on, so I had plenty of recording experience… Continue reading
Musicians of The Dance Album
So I needed somebody to play the early music percussion, to clap hands and play castagnets, somebody who could get a samba groove out of the guitar and a cellist. To find somebody that is good with early percussion is easy in Estonia – you have just two choices. I chose both but started with… Continue reading
Got the recording contract!
Recording a classical music CD takes a professional crew and the only place to find such is the National Broadcast Company. In my case it is the Estonian Public Broadcast. Nowadays the waiting list can be long but that’s the way it goes – you write a project and it competes with others and a… Continue reading
Choice of the dances for the album
There are so many dances that classical guitarists perform every day! Minuets, waltzes and mazurkas in music schools, allemandes, courantes, gigues and all Baroque dances at the academies and not to tell about the world of the Spanish music! Sometimes you don’t even realize that you are actually playing dance music! My approach to the… Continue reading
How to get the rhythm?
Get a drummer! Or two. When I had realized that most of the interpretations of the enormous amount of dances written for the guitar are lacking the rhytmic flow I tried to find a way how I could fix it in my own playing. It is clear that solid playing techniques and proper arrangements and… Continue reading