I will write from time to time about how much goes into this tango DJ thing.
When I first started listening to tango music everything seemed pretty straight forward, if I heard a song I liked, I would either buy it from an on line store, a person selling Cd's at some tango event or go to a record store and buy it personally. I would import the Cd to my computer and now, I have the songs at my beckoning for whenever I wanted to play them. I could keep doing this forever, no sweat right?
Then I would buy a Cd that had maybe 3 songs that I didn't have and only copy those that I didn't have into my computer, ignore the rest and go on with my glamorous DJ life.
But then I noticed something, I had made a huge assumption, that all recordings where of the same quality and hence, once I found the song I was looking for I need not look any further. Wrong! Quality of sound varies from record label to record label. So, I started comparing different record labels vs private collectors and boy did the sound vary in so many different ways. Not only the clarity but also the pitch, the amount of "scratchiness" and even the volume. I started looking for the best quality sound that I could find for every particular song that I enjoyed. I started collecting tango "albums" and not just songs and found out a lot about tango music along the way. Later on we can talk about why's about how this happened and a lot of other digital mumbo jumbo but for now I hope to share some of the things to watch out for when purchasing tango music. Remember, tango music is not like regular music today, most of it has been converted from vinyl since a lot of the magnetic master recordings have either been lost or destroyed and when the transference of the music goes to a digital format, a lot could happen. Here are are a few things to look out for.
First rule, be careful of what you buy on line, especially the big music distributors because they could care less about tango and will sell whatever lousy, scratchy copy they have.
Second rule, be careful of buying purchasing so called digitally remastered collections, these can sometimes be worse than the originals.
Also, just be aware that when you purchase a Cd it is no guarantee that the sound will be of high quality. You either have to hunt by trial and error or talk to someone that has already gone through the trial and error process.
Lastly, a lot of the high quality Cd's are now out print and either are impossible to find or come at a very high price.
Wow! What a time consuming and painstaking process and I wouldn't trade any of it for the world for it has brought me closer to the reason that I began dancing tango, because I love the music so much.
When you buy one of my particular tango music collections I try to bring you the best quality sound based on over 10 years of collecting music. When I DJ at a milonga, I try to play the best quality recordings that I have found, if it doesn't have a great sound, then I won't play it. I believe it is not only important the music collection a DJ has when he shows up to play at a milonga but also the sound quality.
As an example, lets compare two Cd's and start with the following Cd, "Cuatro Compases" (EBCD-48), from Ricardo Tanturi from the "El Bandoneon" label which covers some of his best work with the great Alberto Castillo and has one of my favorite tangos, "Al Compas De Un Tango".
Now let's listen to the "Tanturi-Castillo" (BMG 71371) Cd from the Solo Tango Catalogue on the BMG/Solo Tango (RCA) label which has basically the same songs as the "Cuatro Compases" Cd.
On this Cd every song is of high quality with minimal hissing and distortion, a lot of the songs that I play at a milonga from Tanturi with Castillo come from this Cd. Unfortunately, as of 2009, this Cd as well as others from this high quality series have been discontinued, so if you are interested in starting your Tanturi collection with this Cd or just want it, then your either going to have to come talk to me or find it somewhere on line for a pretty penny.. I have also listened to digitally remastered tracks of the songs on this album from private collectors and so far, the quality of a lot of songs on this Cd are superior to many that I have heard, privately digitized or other. Now this doesn't mean that every song on this Cd is the best in comparison to others but overall, the Cd has a very high quality sound. This also does not mean that privately digitally remastered tango songs are not good, I have a super clean digitally remastered version of "Poema" by Francisco Canaro that I purchased from a musical engineer who doesn't even dance tango and it is spectacular. Once again, one has to compare and judge for oneself. So get out there and start collecting and don't ever say those words again, "Oh, that song, I already have a copy of that one.", for you just might just have a bad version.
