Stories to think about, meanings to absorb; a different story or meaning radiating out of each and every individual stone. - Lao Tzu, “The earth has music for those who listen.” - George Santayana, “Music heard so deeply that it is not heard [1][2], Ned Lagin was born in New York City and raised on Long Island in Roslyn Heights, New York. And with a few changes, and a source of energy, circuits of these same or similar components could be used to create oscillations; amplify, filter, mix or otherwise combine signals; and generate and transmit signals as electromagnetic fields. At all, but you are the music.” - T. S. Eliot. When Each stone a little fragment of another place and time. On Cat Dreams, Lagin plays electric piano, keyboard synths (including vocals, cello, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, and others), Native American flutes, and softsynths: Ableton Live and Max for Live, Reason, Reaktor. For this release, Seastones has been re-mixed and re-mastered in stereo, and includes most of the original 1970-1974 studio (core) forms (almost all have never been heard before), as well as the parts of my concurrent composition L that are shared with Seastones (L remains unfinished), and some of the moment forms generated and accreted into the composition from live performances (1973 - early 1975). A listener can choose one or more, or all, of the eighty-three moment forms (tracks) in any desired order to make a set, a personal individual listening experience. I suspect he is also the world’s leading expert on/appreciator of the Phil Lesh/Ned Lagin “Seastones” project from the mid-1970s, which contributes to this remix album. As a kid, electricity and electronics, nature and natural history, chemistry and minerals, sound and music, and electromagnetic fields were all connected. Seastones release presents most but not all of composition as originally composed. processes, mathematics, physics and quantum mechanics, language and linguistic structure, and different forms and perspectives from pictorial (and abstract) visual art He completed a symphony, a string quartet, jazz big band pieces, and electronic pieces before dropping out and permanently relocating to the Bay Area. [4][5], He is known for his electronic music composition Seastones, for performing with the Grateful Dead, and for his photography and art. Ned Lagin's Seastones is a groundbreaking electronic work which features musicians Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, David Crosby, Grace Slick, David Freiberg, Mickey Hart, and Spencer Dryden. Copyright and (P) 1975, 1990, 2017 Ned Lagin A time characterized by cultural metaphors of creation and synthesis associated with We are biology, and geology, chemistry, physics, cosmology. As is the music we play and sing, the pictures we make, the words we write. Ned Lagin is legendary. Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist. **Black Vinyl** Ned Lagin's Seastones is a pioneering electronic composition interweaving metaphors from nature, science, art and music and the origins of music. SEASTONES written, composed, and produced by Ned Lagin The physicality and sensuality of sound vibrations - sensory fields with harmonics of feelings and meanings. dorm room to jam and would encompass contributions to American Beauty and Wake of the Flood, nearly 20 onstage appearances with the band between 1970 and 1975, and Lagin’s own Seastones project, … Ned Lagin: Cat Dreams Jesse Jarnow on August 31, 2017 Whether one has been waiting 40 years for Ned Lagin to follow up his 1975 debut or not, … Each stone calling out and insisting on being picked up, to be held and experienced. [11][12][13], During many 1974 Grateful Dead concerts over several tours, including Europe, he performed a middle set of electronic music, including parts of his composition Seastones, on computer-controlled analog synthesizers with Phil Lesh on electronically processed bass. Words with reverberations, with harmonics of feelings, meaning(s). Imprints that could be used to further process their own audio, and imprints that could be used to modulate or otherwise control audio signal processing and synthesis of other musicians’ sound. into the composition. Originally composed and planned for a two CD release, Cat Dreams is the first of the two CDs that comprise the full suite of compositions. Reviewer: samson - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 16, 2004 Subject: Eyes . Charged with the wildness of billions of nights and days, an immense "timescape" (time "landscape", time spatialized), under the ocean or buried in the sand amongst countless other stones. In the autumn of 1971, Lagin began graduate study in composition as an Irving Fine Fellow at Brandeis University, where he studied with Josh Rifkin and Seymour Shifrin. This eighty-three moment form edition comprises most but not all of the complete Seastones, following the original intent of creating a musical composition whose constituent moment forms were not meant to be listened to (or performed) as one fixed linear progression. I sometimes replaced the galena crystal with different minerals. All becoming part of the imagination of the composer, all becoming present in new forms, processes, and means of expression. Mostly my own words but having literary and music influences from many sources. His piano teachers included Dean Earl, a Charlie Parker sideman, and he studied jazz improvisation with Lee Konitz. 20th century art and individualism and modernism, science and technology, satellites and space travel and moon landings, transistors, miniature electronics, new chemistry and physics, and new ecological world views combining environmental and spiritual consciousness. creating a set or collection, a listener can mix the selection of moment forms from either or both CDs; the two CDs do not represent any preferred orderings, and CD 1 Seastones is an album by American composer and musician Ned Lagin.. The Eu analog system was large enough to input audio and control signals from the other musician's instruments, and vocal and percussion microphones. "A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought." Reflecting the technology, science, modern art, new ecolog For this release, Seastones was re-mixed and re-mastered in stereo. The moment form selection process can be by personal preference, or some numerical, chance, or other process. The technology used for this release, with the exception of software noise removal, was limited to that available at the time of the original recording, or software versions emulating the studio processing capabilities of the time available to me. For both recorded and live performances of Seastones musicians instruments and voices (audio) were each routed into the Eu analog synthesizer or other electronic signal processing circuitry so that amplitude envelopes, threshold gating signals and triggers (events and rhythms) could be extracted or derived from each individual musician's audio. "Seastones" is the only album that has been released from electronic music composer Ned Lagin. Some of the moment form compositions are an individual, some are related. [12], During the 1974 tours, he played through the vocal system of the Wall of Sound PA, in quad, with 9600 watts going through over two hundred speakers. "The earth has music for those who listen." Seastones 59 clip (1:52) A new, two-CD album of Seastones was released on March 8, 2018. For this two CD release, Seastones has been re-mixed and re-mastered in stereo from the surviving original 16 track, 4 track, and 2 track magnetic tape masters. "True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time." A surprising and wide-ranging conversation with Ned Lagin, the pioneering jazz-trained electronic composer whose friendship with the Grateful Dead began when the band crowded into his M.I.T. Sung and spoken words and lyrics performed through a network of synthesis and processing hardware modulated by the instruments and the voices of others musicians (both heard and unheard). "Your head is a living forest full of songbirds." Possibly there's a date mixup. From his Notes: "when you look at a picture circuitry made from some of these components one could receive (be in tune, syntonic with) signals within a sea of electromagnetic fields. [3][10] His first performances with the Grateful Dead were on November 5 and November 8, 1970 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York; his first complete concert was at Boston University's Sargent Gym on November 21, 1970. Copyright 2017 Ned Lagin. OFFICIAL RSD 2020 release. [2], From 1970 to 1975, Lagin sat in on Hammond B3 organ, electric piano, and clavichord during long instrumental passages at several Grateful Dead concerts. Composing started on paper (written graphical and musical scores and notes); over some time multitrack recording tape (audio “scores”) replaced most but not all paper for me. And each charged with its own storied experience of presence and absence, of the ever changing conditions of ancient oceans and atmosphere, of ancient rain and heat and cold and wind, of sunlight and darkness, of the passage of individual living beings and of entire species. With electronic Ned Lagin has an official website Spiritcats.com where he writes extensively about his photography, art, and music, and, has several galleries of wonderful images to explore. Restoration included using digital audio tools for noise removal layer by layer, track by track. Words as fields. 343–389. Most of my written and recorded music, on paper and on tape, was either stolen (1975) or destroyed by the massive storm and flooding on January 2, 1982 in Northern California. The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Volume I: An In-Depth Guide to the Music of the Grateful Dead on Tape, 1959–1974 – by Michael M. Getz, John R. Dwork, Henry Holt and Company, New York; 1st edition (May 15, 1998). Interweaving musical technologies with sound art, science, linguistics, philosophy, and early music, Seastones is comprised of pieces that are dynamic, rich and deep. Eleanor Lagin, David Lagin, Mary Ann Steinruck, Adah Cain and Ilya Bluvshteyn, and many others are family members and associates of Ned. The Altair was used for rhythm synthesis and sequencing, and to generate digital sequences and noise, and simple tone synthesis. Interweaving musical technologies with sound art, science, linguistics, philosophy, and early music, Seastones is comprised of pieces that are dynamic, rich and deep. – Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Language is fossil poetry. Seastones 57 clip (2:35) Podcast 341: Ned Lagin (Part II) In this second of two interview sessions, we talk with Ned Lagin about the compositional process behind his work (including echoes of Renaissance music), his Seastones collaborators, the ups and downs of the Seastones release(s) and his subsequent technical career. There is a continuum from star dust to chemistry and minerals, to the creation of life forms (biology), to semiconductors (man-made minerals) and transistors, to computers and software, to symbolic consciousness. Ned Lagin's Seastones is a groundbreaking electronic work which features musicians Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, David Crosby, Grace Slick, David Freiberg, Mickey Hart, and Spencer Dryden. Like real seastones, the Seastones moment forms are each a placetime, a time island, a droplet of time. Whether one has been waiting 40 years for Ned Lagin to follow up his 1975 debut or not, his long-time-coming Cat Dreams is bound to surprise. Here are a few recently found survivors: Seastones moment form compositions are individual, independent forms. (paintings - cubism, pointillism, impressionism, expressionism, color field). 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