My daughter Katrina Sol Warren is a student at Rhode Island School of Design, and until now a self-taught artist.
“¡En Tus Sueños!” features original animation by Katrina. This was a project for one of her RISD courses. The music is "La Catira" by Antonio Lauro (1917–1986), a lovely piece from this Venezuelan composer which I recorded on classical guitar.
Katrina’s beautiful, hand-made stop-motion animation is made from approximately 1,500 individual frames, and features eight different handmade sets. She used all recycled materials.
The sound of a steel-string acoustic or classical guitar, played on the couch, strummed around a campfire, or performed in a concert hall, is perhaps unparalleled in beauty and harmonic richness, as most readers of this magazine can attest. Efforts to amplify acoustic and classical guitar for performance often focus on projecting a natural, uncolored sound. Nevertheless, creative breakthroughs and new approaches to your acoustic guitar playing can be found through experimentation with effects pedals, or stompboxes, that are often associated with electric guitar and bass.
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Before the whole world went all upside down, I had hoped to go back into the studio to do some recording this summer or fall. In the "turn lemons into lemonade" department, I decided instead to work on my home recording skills and set up. I invested in a few decent mics (Rode NT2A, matched pair of Rode NT5, and a Sennheiser e906). Taking advantage of the rest of the family going on a road trip during the first week of July, I spent the week turning the living room into a home recording studio.
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The Winter 2016 issue of Classical Guitar magazine includes a brief review of my CD, Serenata de la Sirena, excerpted below:
"This American guitarist-composer, who traditionally has specialized in playing works by Latin and South American composers, has self-produced a CD of nine homespun pieces mixed with five other works. Warren’s title track is warm and Latin in style, with a nice melody and harmonies. Leo Brouwer’s arrangement of “Drume Negrita” follows, with a new interlude composed by Warren, and a couple of other moments where he deviates, in an improvisatory way, from the printed score… Antonio Lauro’s short “La Catira” is a rarity that Warren plays very well. There are also two pieces by Baden Powell: “Berceuse a Jussara” is a work I had not heard before—Warren dispatches it with an almost jazz-like touch that suits the piece nicely; and “Afro Sambas” is complex and highly rhythmic through-out… The rest of the works are Warren’s. “Nisene” is a complex, patterned, arpeggiated, piece…"
—Classical Guitar magazine, Winter 2016
Mastering is both a communication process as well as a technical one. The final step in the recording process, where the final mixes are sweetened and balanced, the flow and sequencing of the album is perfected, the space between tracks is determined and the relative volume levels between songs is made consistent.
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The recording studio is where creativity and work meet, aspiring for a magical outcome.
In the midst of holiday craziness (the holidaze!) I spent some time recording at Airshow’s Takoma Park Studios.
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