La cita de los amigos 2014
Jens-Ingo Brodesser
Mobile: +32.486575797
Mail: jens-ingo@all2all.org
Skype: jibrod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jensingo
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jensingo
Please find here my current DJ statement which can be used for your event presentation. For more photos, please check this page: http://jens-ingo.all2all.org/photos
DJ statement
Fashions come and go! At a DJ-set I try to catch the mood of the moment by observing the dancers and translate this feedback into the tanda. Diversity and changing impulses are the keywords. I like to think of colours and shapes like when you paint a picture. You start at a certain point and let the whole thing evolve. Maybe you tell a story, maybe you are abstract but the most important is that you express something through the music you play and that you make the people dance!
DJ statement for vinyl sets
On special occasions I do DJ-sets from my vinyl collection, without using a computer but with the same high standards as if I would. The pure analog sound has a magical effect on the dancers. This is related to how the music was recorded during the Golden Age: direct-to-disc. Direct-to-disc means to record audio directly, in one single take onto analog disc masters without any cosmetics, mixing or post-production steps. No multi-track recorders like nowadays were used and every musician had to be at the same time around the microphone. Thereby creating an authentic report of a past moment. A great deal of the emotions we feel while dancing to these recordings derives from this circumstance! Many of the vinyl records are among the best shellac transfers I know, being very close to the original recording sessions with the same dynamics, some are of a lesser quality and yet others, are original pressings from more recent times directly cut onto vinyl. Sanju Chiba puts it best: ‘For me, listening to analog music makes me peaceful and relaxed. Digital sound quality is haunted to try to come close to analog music. But it will never be better than analog music because sound is a natural thing.’
DJ statement for vinyl sets (short version)
On special occasions I do DJ-sets from my vinyl collection, without using a computer but with the same high standards as if I would. The pure analog sound has a magical effect on the dancers. This is related to how the music was recorded during the Golden Age: direct-to-disc. A great deal of the emotions we feel while dancing to these recordings derives from this circumstance! Sanju Chiba puts it best: ‘For me, listening to analog music makes me peaceful and relaxed.’
Festival experience
See here for an up-to-date listing of my participation in international tango festivals
DJ Jens-Ingo interviewed by DJ Supersabino
“I like to think of colours and shapes like when you paint a picture. You start at a certain point and let the whole thing evolve. Maybe you tell a story, maybe you are abstract but the most important is that you express something through the music you play” Read the whole interview here: http://supersabinotango.blogspot.it/2013/05/jens-ingo-brodesseri-like-to-think-of.html
Jens,
I have tried to contact you all. Internet isn’t my forte. I came across this so decided to try it. Hope all is well for you and your family. Please give regards to Frederic.
Nice photo buddy!
larry
Jens,
I am writing an article about the tango recording Gillespie did with Fresedo. Can I have yout permision to reproduce the photo of them that you have in your page?
Thank you.
Jens–I sometimes turn on my tablet and when I do, I enjoy reading you. And whatever you say, stays in my mind for a long time. I have been thinking about your concern with the pitch of some recordings. The matter is quite easy to understand, after having lived un Argentina for 37 years. This country is, technologically, strangely backwards. So whatever is common elsewhere, is extraordinary here. For récord collectors it is fun, for in argentina, beatles records were being sold in the mid-sixties. But returning to pitch, nowhere un the world recordings are madre as sloppily as un argentina. The terrible thing is that misleading labeling and packaging is not accidental, but meant for profit. Estéreo records that are NOT stereo, even stereo phonographs with ONE speaker only….. But back to pitch…….rca is a company with a long history of faking records. Let me explain. Since acoustic times Víctor records have been recorrer at speeds different from the playback expected speed. Systematically Víctor records are recorded slower than normal so that upon playback the sound is `more brilliant` or the playing seems more virtuosistic. You have pianists and violinists and guitarists that play at breakneck speeds, and shimmering cymbals that never existed. You have child singing wonders and girl choirs that are just speeded-up adults and you have tango orchestras with strange tonal balances all due to that speeding manía of rca. So be brave, find a Lenco turntable, wipe off the speed indicators and tune your discos BY EAR, to a nice reasonable timbre and then, only then, bring it to the nearest true tonality, with a pitch pipe or the nearest piano. It is not the least easy to tune, or detune a bandoneon, but it is known that at rca they had detuned instruments for their recording cheating. Now I am suffering this letter with a tablet that ‘corrects’. the spelling of every word I write, insisting on turning them into spanish. Argentinian tablet. Imposible to defeat the auto-correct feature! I promise to write more with a notebook, and send you some pics of my DeSarli peruvian mini-lps and 12 inchers. By the way, argentinian engineers NEVER understood the difference between CCIR, NAB, BBC, magnetophon and so many other tape equalization curves, so sonic differences when patching together an álbum are only natural……
I missed parte of a sentence……beatles records were sold in the mid-sixties, yes, ON 78 RPM SHELLAC!!!!!!!!
good evening– I am quite inexperienced in these computerial matters, but I can see some comments dissapear! then, again, it could be that it never reached you. yesterday I could not resist writing something about pitch, record speed and other matters. Now, with a reasonable keyboard under the fingers it is possible to express thoughts without the hinderance of the tablet´s virtual keyboard. It is funny how things come and go, as you say with fads, and one that strikes me deeply is the following. As a small boy, I used to play with my father´s slate. Let me explain…… A slate is a slab of slate, with a wooden frame, meant for writing on it, with a small slate pencil. No doubt, if you are old enough (I am 63) you might have seen one, or ask your parents. I am pretty sure that in europe slates were used, as they were in the usa, mexico and possibly other countries, in order to avoid waste of paper (and its cost) by people desiring to write things for a moment only. Sort of a clipboard, in computerian talk. The slate was wiped with the hand, and ready to receive more information. Nothing was used up, for the writing was in the form of slate dust coming from the pencil and the slate, which practically never wore out. The striking thing is that the slate resembles my tablet so much as to have confused my friends, bringing out the slate and pretending it was a new tablet, more “nature friendly” having the wooden frame………it really looks like a tablet. So, things have this habit of coming back from time to time, sometimes in a different guise……..like vinyl records, too. let us not involve ourselves in the idle discussion of digital versus analog. Much as I like analog, and enjoy my records as much as I have always did, digital has its advantages. The hard drive of this notebook, 250 dollars at Walmart, has some two hundred and sixty thousand tunes, and a similar amount of photos in its insides………besides allowing me to write to you!
To compare digital with analog, one must take similar material…… Ever since the first recording by edison on tinfoil, it is only natural and quite logical that, once a meaningful reproduction was obtained, the speaker changed his voice quite intuitively to counteract the deficiencies of the recording. If the playback was squeaky, the speaker would try to deepen his tone, for example. As soon as the recording industry was in its way, around 1890 to set a date, everyone noticed that brass bands reproduced rather well, and pianos were impossible. The net result, most records were brass band records, at least if they were to yield reasonable pleasure upon listening to them. The female voice was horrible, many instruments impossible, and the recording horns and diaphragms, were tweaked this way and that, to try to overcome their deficiencies. Around 1915 recordings were rather acceptable, and even symphony orchestras were tried. You, who live in Europe, might find some recordings made by Wanda Landowska, on the acoustic system, of a harpsichord. It calls for more than good will and imagination to find, among the various noises, the sound of the harpsichord. The good thing, it was tried. In Argentina, recordings were made at the beginning of the century, and they are average, technically-wise. Casa America, one of the Walmarts or Ikeas of the times, sold recordings under their label, which was pasted over the original labels of the records. Favorite, originally. They even ordered the discs labeled with their labels, which the german factory gladly provided. Columbia also recorded extensively and the Juan Maglio (pacho) records are legendary. The Homokord, homocord, homophon and similar labels were also present, and some odeon-fonotipia also exist. I think, all of them belonging to the Lindstrom company. The tango discs all are labeled Orquesta Criolla, and that means guitar, bandoneon,flute and violin. Victor appears later on, with the orquesta criolla meaning two bandoneons, violin or violins, piano and double bass, thus meaning what Sexteto Tipico meant in electric days. The general sound of those records is rather pleasant, recorded extremely up front, so the guitar provides an abnormally strong bass upon playback. you must surely have some “pachos” in your collection. What nobody has ever explained and you might know about, is when the Tango Criollo, as represented by the early pachos, tano genaro, and similar quartets suddenly became the usual orquesta tipica with its definitely modern sound. In whatever I have been able to listen, and as I said, that means almost 40 years of listening, looking and hunting records and books, and collecting stories and tales from everyone, the first modern tango sounding group is the fresedo orchestra as can be heard in his recordings of 1920. So I call the ancient cuarteto style “tango milonga” and the modern fresedo style “tango”. I do not dance, but surely they are two absolutely different things. Tango milonga is absolutely non-existant in argentina, and tango is non existant too. That means that in 40 years of meeting people, i have only found ONE that appreciates and likes and enjoys listening to tango music. Reasons are manifold, but one of the most noticeable is the following: In movie, soap operas, theater and general scene, whenever an air of decadence, poverty, vileness, dirtyness or scum is desired, the background music is tango.) So, around 1926 electrical recording began to be used, western electric system by victor and columbia, lindstrom by odeon and even the “light ray” by brunswick. These are horrible! Victor had a very large factory in buenos aires, and columbia had one in brazil. In those days argentina was highly industrialized and was, technically-wise a rather modern country. at any rate, it was the most developed country south of the rio grande. Argentinian politicians took care in the following 50 years to take argentina to some of the last places in the list, though. Speaking of pitch, as I said, victor had the habit of recording slower than normal, to gain brilliance upon playback. After reading your concerns, I have spent some afternoons (rainy ones. Needle scratch does not bother on rainy days!!) listening to some D´Arienzo 78s. It is not the ribbon mic which causes the distinct sound of some recordings. The neumann or western electric condenser has its sound, of course, the western electric having a pronounced rise in the 3000 hz region, sometimes adding a resonance in the cutter and helping the music to sound screechier than normal. The neumann is notably flat, and the rca ribbon is a beauty. By 1933 every company had its own engineers, trying this and that mainly to avoid the western electric one-cent-per-disc royalty, but also to try to produce something better. Columbia practically dissappeared in the electric era, there existing extremely few columbia electrics with tango, mostly made in england. musically they are not worthy. After a late start, victor became an important tango source (fresedo, de caro) alongside odeon (canaro, gardel, firpo, corsini,) My opinion is that tango was instrumental music until 1917. If you are willing to consider No me tires con la tapa de la olla a tango, this does not hold, but for me, tango is dance. Nobody is even able to trace the origin of the word, but to say the truth, nobody is able to trace the origin of anything in argentina. I suggest the following: go get some records of Ernesto Nazare tangos. Piano, of course. Then, go get as many recordings as you can find of Le boeuf sur le Toit, by darius milhaud. It is convenient to have as many versions as possible, for depending on the orchestra, the conductor and the recording, the results of the experiment can vary. Unfortunately the version conducted by milhoud himself is the worst. He races through the piece, altough the recording is good. The best I have found is on Heliodor label, late fifties, perhaps a radio suisse recording. Give me an email adress and i can send you an mp3 of it. Listen to Le Boeuf two or three times and tell me, do not you find some tangos there? And an excellent milonga. This, and the Nazare, might be enough to state that tango is brazilian. But, then, go get some records of american ragtime. Piano. Good records, not honky-tonk. Then listen to Jelly Roll Morton playing piano. And now, go find as many Danzon discs as you can find. Mexican and Cuban. And now you will understand that it is true that tango stems from the habanera, the habanera being a mostly spanish form. The habanera is the seed of ragtime, danzon and tango. So it is true that tango has some black in it, as ragtime and danzon have. The problem is that there are no negroes in argentina, and there have never been. There are many tales that people repeat without thinking about them and the negro subject in argentina is one of them. Wherever there have been significant negro populations, two hundred years after, you will find negroid features, mainly on the hair and nose, when the color has dissapeared. You will find them in uruguay, and you will find negroes in brazil, of course, in cuba and in the usa, but not in mexico or argentina. There were significant quantities of negros in peru, and grab some records of valsecitos criollos and you will even hear it. so if you ask me, there is no negro in argentina, and there has never been. Another myth—– the street organ. Dutch know what a street organ is!!! wonderful things. As a small boy I met a dutch man, and he gave me some recordings of Der Arabier. For fifty years they have made me happy. But in argentina there is not a single street organ, although some tango lyrics speak of them, sometimes as organs and sometimes as street pianos. I suppose that street piano means those mechanical things somewhat common in switzerland. An enlightened music box. In my experience, wherever there have been more than 5 or 10 street organs, they are still there. Take mexico city, for instance. Street organs have played in the streets for more than a hundred years, and you still cannot walk more than three minutes in downtown Ciudad de Mexico, without crossing one. Grinding music. Very interesting to find some with the original barrel, playing the same tunes they played in 1900. Most have had the barrels changed, to play more modern tunes. Another source of history is the player piano. I have never seen one in argentina, and I have never seen anyone that has EVER seen one. Yes, there is a place in buenos aires that has a couple of organs and a player piano, it is a restaurant, but apart from there, NO player pianos. In fact, NO PIANOS. What you find is yamaha organs. And casio, kawai, lowrey baldwin and wurlitzer, most of them ruined and abandoned. In the eighties they were imported by the thousands and bought and never used. Another thing you did not find was record players or books. But most houses had records. Somewhere. Once people knew I liked records, they would give them to me, glad to recover the space. So now I have around 7000 discs from about two hundred houses, which gives me a clear panorama of what people bought, and what people liked. Many records were bought but not played and some records are played to death, for the main accesory of any record player is a stack of coins glued to the tonearm, to keep the stylus in groove. Change the stylus? it is cheaper to glue a couple of pesos in ten cent coins. The universal cartridge is the Ronette local clone, with a sapphire stylus and 30 grams of coins on top. In the 78 rpm era things were not much better, acoustic wind up gramophones being the usual thing up to the late fifties, in all argentina except two or three cities. As in India, the lack of electric power and the gratuity of the wind-up gramophone mantained the victrola supreme up to the cassette era. So, if you expect to come to argentina and reap many 78s for your use, forget it. They are killed, but it is part of its charm. It means they were enjoyed, and i like to listen to them and imagine people dancing, romancing, drinking and fighting to their tune. Send me an email adress, i would like to send you some photos of some records i harvested from an Almacen de Ramos Generales in the country. The records are broken and cracked, the edges of the records brought together under a candle flame to fuse the edges together and make them playable again……….the labels unreadable, the music nearly wiped off from the grooves. It is thrilling, to say the least. Of course, all Gardel. Well, this is a little long. Answer something!