Ned Lagin

Ned Lagin
Born	June 11, 1949 (1949-06-11) (age 62)
Origin	San Francisco, United States
Genres	Avant-garde, space music
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Keyboard instruments, synthesizer
Labels	Round RX, Rykodisc
Associated acts	Grateful Dead

Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1949) is an American avant-garde keyboardist.

Lagin is considered a pioneer in the development and use of minicomputers in real-time stage and studio performance.^{[citation needed]} This included running analogue to digital converters and doing digital signal processing to generate music in the era before digital synthesizers appeared on the market. Lagin has attended Berklee School of Music and also holds degrees in the humanities and molecular biology at MIT.^[1]

Biography

Performer with the Grateful Dead

Lagin was a friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. During some of the tours of 1974, his synthesizer performances were featured in a separate set between the Grateful Dead's first and second sets. Drummer Bill Kreutzman and bassist Phil Lesh often jammed with Ned Lagin during these synthesizer space interludes, at sometimes Jerry Garcia played along; with his guitar heavily processed through effects processors. Lagin also appears on the song "Candyman" from the 1970 album American Beauty.^[2]

Recording artist

In 1975 Lagin released an album of experimental space music entitled Seastones on Round Records; he described the recording as "Electronic Cybernetic biomusic." He composed this experimental ambient composition over the course of 4 years. It was recorded in just as many studios, mixed at a fifth, and mastered at a sixth-and that's not even counting the additional studios in 1990 where it was mixed and remastered further for CD release. Much of the album consists of traditional instruments (bass, guitar, and voice) and a cadre of synthesizers (the E Modular Synthesizer, or E-mu, various ARPs, and the Buchla Modular System or Buchla digital-polyphonic synthesizer.^[1]) processed through then-cutting-edge computer technology, with software and interfacing by Lagin. Said computer technology includes such esoterica as the Interdata 7/16 computer with high speed arithmetic logic unit, a bioelectronic microprocessor system, and the Altair 8800 (which had a whopping 256 bytes of RAM and BASIC by Bill Gates and Paul Allen). The album was one of the first commercially released recordings to feature the use of digital computers. The album was recorded in stereo quadraphonic sound and featured guest performances by members of the Grateful Dead, including Jerry Garcia playing treated guitar and Phil Lesh playing electronic Alembic bass. Members of Jefferson Airplane and CSNY also appear on the album. Seastones was re-released in stereo on CD by Rykodisc in 1991. The CD version includes the original nine-section "Sea Stones" (42:34) from February 1975, and a live, previously unreleased, six-section version (31:05) from December 1975.

Seastones Credits

Credits from original vinyl release

Side One

1. I – 3:30
2. II (Vocals) – 4:02
3. III A – 4:38
4. III B – 5:36
5. IV A (Vocals) – 0:18
6. IV B (Vocals) – 2:08
7. V A – 0:38

Side Two

1. V B – 4:40
2. VI (Vocals) – 5:36
3. VII – 13:34

Personnel

• Ned Lagin – piano, percussion, computers, synthesizers, keyboards
• Phil Lesh – bass
• Jerry Garcia – electric guitar, vocals
• David Crosby – vocals, 12-string guitar
• Grace Slick – vocals
• David Freiberg – vocals
• Mickey Hart – gongs
• Spencer Dryden – cymbals

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} Prendrergast, Mark (2000). The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance - the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 244. ISBN 1582341346. 
2. ^ Ned Lagin interview with David Gans on KPFA, February 3, 2001

Persondata
Name	Lagin, Ned
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Date of birth	June 11, 1949
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