[Tango-L] Some questions answered on "Some live tango music tips..."

[anfractuoso x2]

Hi all,

Well, some interesting discussions here that I managed to miss
completely by not visiting the list often..

One thing I find in developing tango bands is that some keep playing
in a pre-1920 style, i.e. with the habanera rhythm pattern. Of course
if they just saw some old piano scores, and the composition happened
to be from before 1920 or so, this is exactly how it is written, with
the habanera pattern.

I find it not trivial to approach what typically are classically
trained professional musicians, and go through the tango music
(hi)story, and of how and why one should play the scores 'straight' -
as a straight-4 (el cuatro) or straight-2 - even if the scores have
the habanera pattern.

The result I have observed is that dancers are somewhat confused as to
why the live band playing does not sound quite like the typical
recordings (since nowadays we rarely seem to listen to pre-1920 style
of tango interpretation on record, at milongas). Some try to dance it
as a slow modern (post-1930) milonga which sort of makes sense since
the rudimentary beats could follow in the same pattern, even if the
progression and other details are somewhat different in a milonga.
Some other dancers put their best canyenge on.

As to the excerpt below, I am curious, Bob, which recordings on your
2005 CD are copies of arrangements of  D'Arienzo, Canaro, Di Sarli or
Troilo, if any. Of course your band does not seem the size of those
orchestras so there must have been some changes still?

With best regards,
Anfractuoso


On 5/29/07, Barnes, Bob <BBarnes at mpr.org> wrote:
>
> >Second, in developing your skill in arranging, was listening to old
> >recordings important?
>
> Yes!  About half of my arrangments are straight transcriptions of the
> masters: mostly D'Arienzo, Canaros DiSarli and Troilo.  The other half
> are "original" arrangments (if there can be such a thing) where I
> arrange a standard to my liking.  The act of listening and transcribing
> each note is the best way to learn the internal logic of a tango.