NED LAGIN
UNBROKEN CHAIN NOTES
In the last year (2023) or so there has been some mention of my Arp Odyssey synthesizer tracks on the studio recording of the (Grateful Dead) song Unbroken Chain. Particularly a gratifying mention about slowing down the recording to hear inside the notes on my tracks. So while still fresh in memory here’s a little more about the recording of my synthesizer tracks, the song itself, and Bobby Peterson, the poet who wrote the lyrics.
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I first met Bobby Peterson when he came a few times to visit Phil at his house in Fairfax, passing through a few times during summers (1970-1973) while I was staying at Phil’s. Bobby and Phil were very close from the their experiences together (youthful Phil). Phil and Bobby talked for hours about others they knew, times they shared, while I listened. Sometimes I would be at Phil’s alone and Bobby would appear; we would talk, waiting for Phil to return home, about music and presence and art and language (including what about language was innate), and even a little about my current composition of Seastones.
Bobby was a part of the “beat” SF culture. Poets, artists, and musicians were “beatniks.” Jerry once told me privately about his self-identify: “I’m not a hippie, I’m a beatnik.” Hearing that helped in understanding the roots and evolutionary artistic musical genesis of Phil and Jerry, and of the Grateful Dead, as they still thought of it in the early 1970’s.
Bobby Peterson lived as a poet, a poetic life; at that time he seemingly moved around a lot. Every one of his poems had a postscript by him stating the location of its writing.
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Unbroken Chain was recorded at CBS Studios in San Francisco. The engineer was Roy Segal; the Grateful Dead were the producers. My tracks were done in the studio control room, with me setup in front of, and next to, the mix console and between the console and the glass window of the main studio room. Recording my tracks was done with no rehearsal and no edits, and with both Jerry and Phil observing and listening. The tracks were imagined, constructed and played on the fly by me, and were not first played/recorded at a slower speed and then sped-up for the mix.
Done after a few passes for tuning the Arp to the existing tracks (Phil’s ears approving the tuning), and for setting the recording levels. All done pretty quickly. Then listening to the rough mix recording, hearing the rest of the band and Jerry’s solo (even if maybe not his final track?), and for my thinking and patch creation. My recording headphone mix was set-up thinner, less than the final mix with all the tracks.
My tracks were recorded as I played continuously through the song, but I knew would probably not be used as continuous tracks in the song’s final mix, edited to be heard only with certain words and/or phrases, or sections of the song.
What my tracks would be was left to my creativity, imagination, and response to the song, the music, and the poetry.
I had only a short review of the words on a hand-written page as well as the recorded vocals. My musical responses were based on first impressions, but I was familiar with Bobby (and Phil of course). There was no discussion or explanation of the song’s lyrics. I was left to my own reading/understanding/intuitions/interpretation of the poem - the “unbroken chain” of nature and life, of existence - all left unsaid, unspoken by Phil and Bobby. And no mention or guidance about the intention/functionality/content of my parts themselves and their relationship to the composition, and to the later mix (tapestry) and how my parts would relate to the final mix.
I was not thinking of a physical object or sound but abstract musical and visual metaphors (nature, life, time, connectivity - and what I knew and felt from Bobby). Layers, harmonics, resonances of poetic images, of metaphors, of feeling, of meaning.
It took just a very few minutes for me to build each track’s patch, with Phil and Jerry quietly watching.
One track was created as a sustained long complex note (not a drone but called a “drone” by some), and for the second track I played a complex tonal rhythm part. Each track separately played on my synthesizer keyboard.
These tracks/notes characteristic of much of my composed electronic music, as well as my photography and art pictures - layers/layering (in this case musical sound) of feeling and meaning crafted into each note.
Creating a complex sound/note(s) is micro-waveform synthesis and (timbre) composition and orchestration - the creation and synthesis of patches within patches, of music within music.
Each track/note(s) “time full” - containing multiple music time(s) within the song’s “real” music time, on multiple different time scales, but meant to be heard as a composite, perceived and felt in the “real time” song flow.
Slowing down the song (1/4 speed) to listen to the tracks can reveal the “insides” of each track, and by exploring their anatomy expanding the real time listening perception and feeling of the music (and understanding the contextual musical gravitational affects of the synthesizer tracks). Layering of time, and of feeling and meaning, was already at work for the composition of Seastones (1970-1975), and also true (decades later) for my Cat Dreams recordings.
After recording only just two takes I was stopped by both Phil and Jerry. They were excited and happy with what I had done (both agreed “it’s perfect”). As I was unplugging and packing up my Arp, we talked about adding a subsequent Leslie rotary speaker/effect recording, to be done in a later recording setup for the mix.
It was Phil’s idea, and by his request, that I played/added tracks to Unbroken Chain, and both his and Jerry’s judgement (as producers) about the track's goodness for the song and for the Mars Hotel album.
Bobby Peterson told me he liked what I had played. By saying so and by eye contact.
Online someone (last year) called my tracks “what sunshine sounds like.”