RE: NYC 6/8/96: Lamonte Young and the Fo

James Jeude wrote:

>Lamonte started out with an extended keyboard part, using what I guess in
>General Midi would be a "celeste" or maybe "detuned guitar" sound that was
>percussive enough to shake the room yet had clean decay that allowed the
>beat interactions between the notes to come through. I'm not sure what key

>or specific tuning system he was using, but the minor third that dominated
>the first 20 minutes of the 2:45 set seemed to be "flat" compared to 12tet.

> After another 20 minutes or so of densely packed notes, perhaps best
>described as frantic arpeggios, the bass joined in and some time later the
>guitar and drummer joined the flight.

Funny, I thought the keyboard sound was a very accurate emulation of an
acoustic piano. Maybe James was sitting in an acoustically unfortunate
location (I was in the rear alcove). The "Dorian" scale sounded to me like
1/1 9/8 7/6 4/3 3/2 5/3 7/4 2/1, with a flatted fifth of some sort thrown
in. However, I could be wrong because there was a distinctly out-of-tune
fifth in there somewhere (although maybe that was just the interval between
the 7/4 and the 8/3). The frantic arpeggios seemed to be a means of
projecting the pure, resonant coinciding overtones that resulted from the
pure tuning. I suppose the faster the arpeggios are, the less variation is
heard in the intensity of these overtones, as all the phase-cancellation and
reinforcement would average out, but I was surprised at how the overtones
did not seem to be subject to the attack or inevitable release (how many
notes can the Korg sustain at once? infinity?) of the notes. Anyone know how
LaMonte does it? I think I read that he claimed to have such a fine control
of timing that he could make a certain overtone resonate by repeatedly
striking a key ar keys just at the crest of its cycle. Is this really
humanly possible?



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