MandolinARTE- J. S. Weiss Concerto for guitar and orchestra

I recorded J. S. Weiss Concerto for guitar and orchestra during the summer of 2015. This should have been a demanding recording, but it took us only an afternoon, where most time was spent on setup. Having excellent musicians as part of your orchestra is what makes this possible!

Setup at the studio is crucial. In our case, we needed to setup six mandolins, two mandolas, two guitars, a cello and a double bass. This is not an easy task! It took us almost two hours from arrival to have everything ready to start recording.

The Concerto has a demanding part for the guitar, which was played masterfully by Kostas Bouropoulos, our guitarist, together with Doreen Laskaridoy at the second guitar. Both of them are professional classical guitarists and teachers, with many solo concerts adding to their experience.

Recording in a studio is so much different than playing live. It requires a lot of discipline and concentration. It is very common to record a part nicely and forget that you have to wait at the end for all instruments to fade out. You also need to wait an additional 2-3 seconds, as this will make mastering so much easier… Some many good takes can be lost if you forget that!

Mastering is also important. To my experience best thing to do is use the same studio for recording, where the sound engineer has ready “templates” for all instruments. This way setup is fast and also mastering is so much easier!

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