ELIZABETHAN & JACOBEAN LUTE MUSIC - Stanley Buetens, lute

While not a review - this was a comment from our YouTube channel, a video featuring a performance of Stanley Buetens...I recorded and produced this album at a small (resonant) cottage at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA., around 1972, using four microphones that, if memory serves, were probably owned by Stanley (two in a coincident pair direct on the instrument, and two for ambience and enhanced spatiality, mixed at a low amplitude.) Stanley edited the original master tapes (15 ips non-Dolby on an Ampex PR10) which had so many tape splices that we feared it would not survive shipping; so it was - with a bit of added 'sweetening' equalization accomplished by me - dubbed by Robert Orban at his home studio, at 30 ips on 10" reels of Scotch 201, using Dolby A, and thus shipped to NY to Musical Heritage Society. I always felt proud of the collaboration as it's a charming, entertaining album with splendidly memorable and entertaining selections, taken down in sound quality that I think is quite realistic (though not by today's digital standards, done in a rich and reverberant "church" acoustic like so many other lute recital albums.) This has more of a simpler, intimate 'chamber' presentation. - S. Waldee