Interview with Daniel Goode on Gamelan Music (Part 1); Wasted Vinyl

The occasion I used to. I'm not doing that any anymore. I did that because when I started in radio I had a certain group of actors and improvisational actors who were wonderfully talented and still are and I would go back in order to work with them because they really understood what my programmes were about. They understood the sensibility and they really knew how to do what I wanted them to do. And I haven't been able to find people like that here. But now I'm doing monologues so I'm not really I don't need actors the way I did then. And I also don't want to again it's you don't want your program to stay in the same place. I've used those people we've done the same kinds of programs enough and I want to move on to new territory. Just briefly if you could just tell me what you're doing in terms of the film and the stage show. Well there was a stage show that was in April of 19. Eighty nine for a couple of months it was it was years of the witches of museums theater downtown L.A. and then. But that was it. I haven't done any other shows since then have a contract to write a

film for Ivan Reitman and another film offer from Warner Brothers if I wanted to do that. I'm writing a book for William Morrow which is and I just finished doing three films from the Playboy Channel. Taking three stories from my radio programs and adapting them for film and I wrote them and performed in them and well one of them is called the perfect woman it's about an escort service. It's about calling up an escort service and someone showing up and and what happens and how things get very complicated. Another one is called the hitchhiker about seeing a very beautiful woman standing by the side of the road pulling up asking her for a ride and being refused and then. And in a very odd way by her saying Well where would I go and. Why should I get in you. I would never get into a car with a stranger. And then I'm somewhat perturbed and then I drive around and I park at some distance and start watching her wondering what is she up to and

notice one car observes one car after another after another stop and she turns everybody down but she stands there at the side of the road with her leg up on a cardboard suitcase dressed very provocatively. And then the story ends by develops when I following her to her apartment building and then going into a hotel across the street and renting some by an ocular hers or buying some binoculars and observing her in her apartment sitting at her computer entering information about the day's events how many men stopped and what their attitudes were and how they responded then finally she goes to the window and she takes a plunger. Oh and while I'm watching her from my balcony I look around and I suddenly realize that every window in this hotel and every balcony has a man on it with a with a video camera telescope by knock years and I was stunned. And then she goes to the window and she blows up the hotel with all these men who followed her there to observer. And that's the story of another when there's a there's a third

shorts shorts on. So in those in those films they all have a kind of an erotic content. And I'm always the fool and I'm the one who ends up being humiliated and embarrassed and destroyed in some cases. I'm out of questions. Thank you very much for the conversation. And you are going to continue to produce programs for Radio One way or the other. That's right. Yes I trust and I hope I'm sure a lot of listeners hope as well. Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to an interview with Jill for a work in progress.

This interview was recorded at KCR W. Santa Monica California. In January 1991. The interview was conducted and edited by Irwin she said WFMU the star and New Jersey Special thanks to Jerry Summers of KC RW and to Irene true Del WFMU for engineering assistance and the special thanks as well to Joe thing. And did you Frank work in progress will you back with a full one hour program next Monday night from 6:00 to 7:00 here into the FM you if you'd like information about the schedule of programs or about how you can receive cassettes of certain Joe Frank's programs you can write to us here write to Joe Frank care of WFMU Upsala

College East Orange NJ 0 7 0 1 9 that's Joe Frank care of WFMU Upsala College East Orange New Jersey 0 7 0 1 9 this is WFMU Upsala College East Orange New Jersey ninety one point one FM. I'm Robert. This is waste of vinyl and our special guest today is Daniel good. He was a member of a contemporary gamelan ensemble called Milan son of Lyon a group that's been around for quite a while we'll hear some of their music and also some other contemporary gamelan music from North America and from. Were Ganelon comes from to talk about all of that. DANIEL. I'm here. How you doing just fine. So let's start from the beginning. As in what what what what is get what is going to come from traditionally and what is it for and what is it really. Well oh it come from Indonesia. Many of the different islands of

Indonesia by the way where I've never been so i can admit that I'm a New Yorker and I don't crowd Indonesia every day but it's been around since some would say prehistoric times there stone Gammel and so must go back to the Stone Age. You can find a camel in ensembles in Thailand and other things like animal and all over that part of the. The east of Asia but mainly it's been corked and you might say court and village and religious and art music for you know hundreds of years thousands of years and you know it's worked its way west there was the famous exposition in Paris that they B.C. went to and her Japanese ensemble for the first time and he was influenced in there but he's been influenced to some degree and their music has been on the world scene a long time you know and we become interested in these things at certain points like

Indian music became interesting to Americans in the 60s and of course it's much older than that so in Indonesian music is maybe having its day now. There are several hundred Gamelin ensembles. In this country alone or North America I would say and most of them play traditional. And some play a mixture of traditional experimental and demo and some of the line is one of the ones that program has more experimental and some traditional Now Ganelon. Now talk about get a lot of sort of a formal type of music. Yeah it's like saying orchestra it's like a saying you know that's the orchestra play this in Indonesia they play it for court music you played for the nobility or ruler or what and yeah in the old days of course you know it's now not a monarchy anymore. He's not the same. And it's it's generally notated music. Well not generally No it's usually learned orally and most Indonesian

musicians still learn it that way. But when the Dutch were colonizers. Indonesia Dutch I believe religious people decide to use you know Western our idea of Western numbers Roman numerals to notate the keys you know one or set number of keys. You might think of a like a xylophone or marimba vibraphone type thing. The keyboards of small are not as big in most cases when they are middle Keys and they are played with mallets and you simply number the keys in the notation would be the order of the numbers to make melody in the other counter melodies. And they have been sort of ingenious little rhythmic notation. But I think that was really the Dutch column this was the first time it was noted except there are very old notations the kind of scroll notations that were kept in the court but they were sort of like documents that you. Yeah I guess a scholar would look game too but players didn't learn from those they learned from Master Gammon Blair.

Now the gamma lined the instruments themselves tend to be what would come what would make up a traditional gamma line ensemble. Well you might think of it just simply like a soprano alto tend her basement marimbas or something like that Hyde middle middle and low. But they're actually more octaves than that and then they would be drums which are the drummer is very often the leader and singers may be within the ensemble or from without the ensemble solo string instruments solo wind for example a flute called the SU Lang and this and the sole spring the ribbon. And sometimes you even find a case in all western instruments creeping in like the trumpets have been found with Gamelin orchestras and so that the you know it and they know the clarinets I don't own the gambling but there certainly is western wind instrument playing there so you could find anything in village Gemmell inns are often made of you know iron keys and the CT gamma lens and the big

expensive ones that you know you can find in institutional settings in museums even in the West are bronze with very ornate soundboards and beautiful decorations and so on but damn one son of wine has been called the garbage Gemmell since it was built in New Jersey. My barber been Aryan ethnomusicologist. Who knows a lot and traveled in Indonesia and used very basic carpentry and tuning system you know electronic tuners simply to tune the keys to the original tunings and build a whole set here in this part of the world as a teaching tool way back at the beginning again once on the line when she was teaching at Rutgers and that and then she took the gamble in with her later when she left Rutgers and it's been a New York ensemble so many people have built Gammel And you know you could say it's a method of making write music and you could inherit 100 or buy one and I just want to gamble on it. Ganelon refers to this set of instruments they write play the music exactly not the people

and so the Galland all have names but they're really the groups of instruments that have very poetic names and actually Gemmell and so on of line is a somewhat as you might say almost an in-group joke because it's a it's the English of BB in Ariz Hebrew name Ben-Ari Y and so that's where Let's hear our first little bit of the music of Gamelin son of a lion. This will be. Let's see what it would be. It will rain heatwaves by Denise Wright Meyer woman's door. One of the most played for her numbers was appeared on the hit. This is a hit it's appeared on rival radio stations. OK is there anything that we can say to sort of you know back on this. Yeah it's got really in two parts it's about a departed friend who was killed in an auto accident and so the first part is a rather energetic and somber piece and then the way the composer explains it you know it's his spirit was let let out after his death and so

there's a sort of very quiet ending which you can hear sort of different form of existence. OK so this is Keith raves from the group Gamelin son of Lyon. 0.

0. 0. 0. 0. 0 0. 0. 0. And that was keep the rays from Gemmell on son of a lion. Our guest

is Daniel good on bribes and to BFM you way to violence we're talking about contemporary gamelan music. Now what makes this maybe kind of a jerky question I mean it's kind of a broad question but what makes a piece a gamble on peace. What are the things that remain consistent or does anything have to be consistent to that traditional core form of gambling music from Indonesia. Robert think that's the $64 question because we haven't really found any limit you know to what makes a good gambling piece. You do have to try it out on the instruments and finally you know you'll find out if it can't be played on the game when that would be the best thing but stylistically really I think being Americans mostly have really moved. In every conceivable direction stylistically and you know even electronics and computers have been used with Gamelin or even simply a case of practical usurping gambling or sampling Gemmell and so I don't know what the answer to your question is.

I think people very often are influenced by traditional pieces Gamelin music but the one you heard just now by Denise Wright Meyer once out of line I don't really think is you could say is influence to come from a different place. She might disagree but the idea of fast moving high parts that's one of the traditional textures and slower moving lower parts like gongs and bass type instruments and the punctuation with regular rhythmic cycles. That's sort of a very standard texture and gamma one. And I think you can find certain number pieces that do it but there are people who really want to stick to that kind of texture and other things and there are those who really don't at least it seems to me in the end the whole what you call the that which we call the American gamble and it's a movement that is everybody who's composing and paying attention to

these instruments. But I think the Indonesians have to have of course it was their music and they still have a huge influence and they have an experimental side to themselves too in which they try and things and they're influenced by the west so it's very very complicated. And I pass on that. That well that last dance didn't have the had the rhythmic sort of cyclical rhythm going that there were there were some aspects to it yeah yeah if you listen to it very careful you could find that there are slow moving lower parts also. Yeah I think that you could get into it but because of that sort of rapid introduction and so on where where you see here kind of chaotic scale it's played everybody going faster and faster. That strikes me as coming really from more of the you know American new music tradition of some kind recently. Now the next thing we're going to listen to I guess is the first thing of yours that you composed. So tell us a little bit about how you got how you became interested in it in the gamelan.

Well I just heard it. It was actually playing around the corner from me where I was teaching at Livingston college and in the late 70s with this ensemble and I simply couldn't believe my ears that there was one right. You know like next door. And I listened and the director as I said Ruben Ari invited me to be in it too. You can compose for it were all working together then and I just I didn't really know where to start I never thought about that before I really didn't know what to do. And so some of my earliest pieces are experimental and in every sense of the word I wanted to see what could happen if I did such and such and. Some of them like like this one I'm the kind of gal and music turned out to be really important I think for the group because it involved some improvisation. It also involved very rather tricky rhythmic patterns and just sort of a question of taste and how to how to work with the structure which is basically just a rhythmic cycle that's repeated with many many different orchestrations

and you can decide when to play that cycle and when to play it or when to lay out for a segment. And that I think is both liberating and hugely scarify and because once you're in you're in and you know either you can do it and make something out of it or you can't. So you know it's a put up or shut up in one way it's it's very hard to kind of expose music and it's got a big groups of situation that that makes it flow. But we played this piece. I can't remember exactly when that started that when I introduced it we played it many many times and of course it's always different because of the reform of choice. So I'm inclined to gamble on music was supposed to you know obviously it related to. Reference to Mozart who's dead this year. Again very particularly good. And it was sort of a diverter Mendo type piece like some of his pieces and I definitely wanted to play with the idea of a light piece you know a sort of quality

piece something that could be foreground or background and fun. OK so let's listen now to this piece composed by our guest Daniel good. I declined a gallon of. And that is composed by our guest Daniel good for Gamelin

son of law and I know clan of Gamelin music music. Oh fine. It was obviously music. I know but I lost you Lute you lose the wood the plan they're not the plan you know I'm the play on words. Young man we gotta do better. OK so and you played on that you played clarinet I played clarinet I realized that I didn't identify some of the strange sounding instruments besides the gamelan played sometimes with different kinds of sticks wooden sticks to give that sort of mentally sound. There was a Chinese fiddle the air who with Ruth being played by Barbara been Ari and. Though all kinds of little things symbols and someone on their way do you. We're a composer I suppose you probably were before you discovered gambling music. Yeah I was an absolutely straight unmitigated Western composer at one time. You know with orchestration chops and all the usual things I played clarinet as a kid and played professionally. And

in fact I still do a certain amount of work as a solo clarinetist and in the ensemble for Western musical the downtown ensemble which is a New York based group does do new music. So there was a whole history before I met up with the gamelan and I did all kinds of things including electronic music which I still do I haven't given up any of that I've just simply decided that it was really important as a person and as a musician to devote a certain portion of my life to this it really has been you know it's like a really. It's an important commitment Musically I think and personally it's very very fulfilling and it's going to be going on for a long time. One thing I wonder about Camelot I know that in the old days I mean I don't know how the old days are but say before the era of electronic music inside it was or even I guess in the beginning of electronic music it was didn't it did necessarily have to guarantee that your piece would be performed and I guess it was also sort of unusual for you to perform your own piece as a

composer in art music and gamelan with Ganelon you write a piece and then you would participate in its realization. Was that something new for you that idea you know since I was never a rock musician I never had the you know the fun of being in a group that rehearsed regularly and continually added you know new repertory and then when the new repertory was ready it would be played in public. Having a you know regular out led to a concert season every year a certain amount of touring. It means that you continue to produce and the repertory just grows I mean we have hundreds of pieces if we could even keep some of them going from year to year it's a big effort plus commissioning new pieces or asking for new pieces and there's just an endless stream and with our Indonesian connections we're starting to learn pieces by Indonesian composers later on will pull out some of those. So there's just it's nobles I mean we could be three gamma ones now and have enough to play

probably have little children gamble and something own office. Right. There are actually there are several there are several have been a couple of little spin offs. There's one in New Jersey a set of instruments that I don't know if it's made be defunct now but the instruments still exist and there's one that was made for people in New Mexico. So you know and there's no and so now the next thing we're going to hear called hot rolled steel where does that come from. Well that's Barbra binaries most recent long piece I think you could call it several years old but we just recorded it for a small label within the last I guess two years or so. And hot roll still refers to the method of making steel you know where you make the steel bars and then you roll them out and cut them and you tune them. But for Barbara she had things says in her program note she was also

influenced by a particular very hot group called Steely Dan and something about the way they use their guitars the spacious Lee used their guitars and when I listened I guess I understood that little bit too innocent and some Steely Dan recently and I heard open fifths and clanging around in gorgeous ways and that's when hot rolled steel is about at least you can hear these sort of wonderful instruments clanging in sort of very. I don't know magisterial patterns. Then of course Barbara does wrinkles on these things. She uses an ancient Bell change. Scheme English have this funny way of numerically ringing their bells and becomes kind of permutation No and that's and it's an amazing thing that you finally in English churches and we've learned about some of these things US minimalists and other people interest and process music and learned that there are a lot of processes out there that people have been using for hundreds of years maybe

and every once in a while they sort of appeal to you so which means we're talking about process as means of composing systems and yeah systems of structuring things and overarching and then maybe sometimes even getting interested in the systems themselves because the English belt changers certainly got interested in crazy numerical permutations I mean it's just amazing mathematically but you just get back hot rolled steel. Some of us on Gammel always interested in these kinds of structures and how bells were rung and so on and some of us investigated this and Barbara used an ancient pattern here called grandsire doubles ancient meaning several hundred years old probably from the English village changes and so that's added and then there's an overlay of percussion that I think is basically from the east not west and really and just sort of a luscious sound to it so I think this is like one of Barbara's most wonderful pieces I think it's really hot really hot.

OK and this is played OK. Our guest Daniel good if you have any questions you can give us a buzz here at 2 0 1 6 7 8 7 7 or read it. Oh.

A.

And that was a piece called hot rolled steel. Written by Barbara

been aerie that not her name right. Yes. Close anyway and who created the gallon a gallon sort of line plays on the sheet as she update as she continued to make. Oh yeah oh yeah. Repair and maintenance and new instruments constantly as needed. Be a mechanic and a tuner as being a cat you are going to point out didn't you. Planes and hub caps their ride mechanics rightly read the hubcaps doors all over New Jersey and did anyway and elsewhere for finely tuned hub caps actually. Seems to me was it the Buick 50 Oldsmobile 56 with one of our world's one of our favorite brands because they had these raised. Knobs on them that that made beautiful sound sometimes have to be altered a little bit to tune in but so we tune hubcaps because a bronze gongs are actually rather expensive and these have their own charms too and I hate going into sort of plastic and horrible sounding metals now with today's

cars of the old ones really sound very good. So you can play we were trying to get at something to define what makes gavel to gavel on which we could really do and because you can sort of make your gamelan out of anything a listener called up awhile ago to mention that he had heard of this group which would bicycle across the country and play take off whenever they would stop somewhere they take their bicycle wheels off and play the spokes for that to make up their gambling right. Well I guess with a certain point the metal instruments being plucked played the hammered at. Shades off into other things you know like whatever garage bands of some kind or whatever or percussion things that people like John Cage of and Lou Harrison have been doing for years and many younger composers. So I guess you know to say that it's Gammel and maybe you somehow have to relate it to some tradition that comes from Indonesia as well. And it seems also there are certain particular veins of of sort of new music in that gap that that is attracts people and

people are attracted to the javelin for instance or the homemade instrument idea the idea of making your own instruments right now. Americans specially on the West Coast and even on the East Coast like us all over like to make homemade instruments and so they may gamble and as part of that too you know and the fact that they might or might not be influenced by the Indonesian kind of music that ancient tradition. Was up to them. That's why I say sometimes hard to tell when it shades off into various kinds of percussion bands but there's a kind of back and forth interplay that I think you know people have been in music for a while have noticed is happening and being influenced by new music by experimental music by Cage kind of aesthetics or being influenced from you know other parts of the world and other traditions and the two are always getting connected and there's just no way I feel like I'm a purist about it. I do I'm

very interested in all the tendencies and. And then another thing we probably I said to you while one was playing it was a very strong movement aesthetic movement in this country called minimalism which saw a certain similarity to some of the structures in Indonesian music not to mention other kinds of traditional music and folk music. But some of the modular kind of way in which things are put together as and as rhythmic units and things are sort of. Layered in rhythmic patterns and slows and fasts and cycles all that was part of you know the so-called American minimalist movement and then to find that there actually are traditional musics that have some of that guts to them. I mean talking about the internal guts. It was you know amazing and very fruitful. So again I feel that we've been alive and by knowing that music

but also having developed their own modern music tradition. OK. Daniel good is I guess the next thing we're going to go to is a piece called javelin Adagio. Yeah let me mention that that is written by Philip Koerner another composer in the group and one of the also original members along with O'Brien myself and several other people. But what's interesting about this piece right away is the sound. It's being done on what are called Hong Kong rattles and arm clung is a special subgroup of gamma 1 for no gamma 1 and you can find keyed instruments like as on of one type instrument with four notes on them. But also this kind of style of music was connected with tuned rattles and they are shake and then each one is pitched to a particular note and. We're going to hear two pieces of one segue right into another the first minute is Philip corners Gamelin adagio which is actually a ritual piece in which people walk with their rattles and rearrange themselves and they

rearrangement causes a permutation of the notes and that after about a minute will segue into peace for peace in the Middle East. By Laura leven. Another player and composer with Gaiman. And that's also being using those rattles and it's taking rhythms from a specific Middle East. Rhythmic patterns for musicians to play on and improvise on. So Gammon adagio will go into peace for peace in the Middle East all with the unclogging rattles. What.

Her. And

what. And that was called gavel on the last peace peace for peace in the Middle East. Yeah when I don't jam on the adagio but I feel cornered to peace for peace in the Middle East by Laura leven. Those are rotten pieces. Oh I agree with you on a lot of the pieces rock in one form or another. You know Daniel good or guessed I'm gallants out of line and the next thing we have this is through the looking glass. What can we say about them yeah. This is Peter Griggs who was a member of the Gemmell I'm sort of in the late 70s or early 80s who the composer has other on. Bowls and works when he works with them. And this was I think a fairly early

piece for Dan when he was also fascinated by numbers and by the sales patterns between numbers and this piece particularly as pinning to rhythmic cycles against each other and if I remember correctly where they interlock is a gong or move to a new pattern or something like that. And. This is also very uptempo piece and it uses I think to some degree the Indonesian structure of fast moving higher parts and lower parts and very often punctuating and gongs particularly marking with a rhythmic cycle. So it was through the looking glass upon Peter Griggs. Oh. And that was through the looking glass by Peter Griggs by

Peter Griggs who like most members of gamma instead of light and virtually everybody in the group is a composer to some degree. Well we tried it. I think everybody is given a stab at it some people are repeaters repeat offenders and I think sleep writing is wonderful. Some people just can't bear not to try it at least once and sometimes this was a really good that fabulous results and the person even then becomes a repeater. It's true that we report we sort of talk talk about this before but the participatory element is in Ganelon didn't sort of just the same way that you would revolutionize drug pop music with rock music. The fact that sort of an. But he can take a stab at playing in the gallon. And as I guess in many gallons also composing I suppose that would depend. Yeah I actually and I mean no more rock bands I wonder how I you know get into one if I wanted to so I don't play guitar or grams. But if it's true that Gamelin even in Indonesia. I've been told you know anybody can

start out by holding the gong and flea can count to eight and keep your rhythm at least to count to eight. They could play the gong part and the number of pieces and then of course you can progressive you can handle it who are playing more and more complex instruments some of them involve special techniques of the mallet holding and hitting and damping of the notes. So there's a like a staircase a spiral staircase too. But I mean I haven't even learned some of the most complicated embellishing instruments in the Gemmell and I'm completely busy playing many different ones anyway so it's like you can consider yourself a student for life I guess. Do they have virtue Osos in any of the instruments in India needed you know. Well I think I don't know if it would really apply in the same sense there hardish nal singers and that you know thats like any traditional art. it is basically virtuosic you have to really train for

years and years and do it exactly the way it's supposed to be done and has been done. There's that kind of virtuosity and you can define it and sort of like hard number of notes per minute kind of thing but there are certainly these traditions you know are deep and they take a long time to learn. There are also just plain fiendishly difficult things to play you know that it's a we have in our percussion orchestras or percussion sections and bands and so on that and we would take you years to get to a certain level in which to play some of those patterns. But I still think that's not what it's all about it's really about a large structure you know where different strands fit in and do their different things and it really isn't what to make of Gamelin you have to have all those trends present and some of them you could describe as more virtuosic than others but mainly it's the ability to play together. You know that's a a group effort to do like in any band. So you guys play periodically perform gabble and sort of lie and

does and we just wanted to sort of point out some opportunities for the listeners to check out some live gambling music. Right. The next New York City performance is June 12th and I believe it's an evening date that would probably be eight o'clock at the NYU theater. Thirty five West 4th Street just east of Washington Square Park that's where they have their drama productions the NYU theater. And it's part of the American microtonal Festival which is directed by Johnny Reinhardt and gamma was playing a short stint a theater piece by Barbara Nari based on the Mahabharata will be premiered then. And saluted they'll be some theatrical element to that our next performance. Then there's a spate of concerts in Rockland County and I don't have them I'll give you a phone number later if you want to get some

more information about those who can reach into Rockland County for live performance and then there's a performance. July 27. At a place called the craft barn in Florida New York about and sort of hour into the summer. Some cats Kili I guess area. And that I think you can find out simply by looking in the information calling craftsman to get details I think it's an afternoon performance I'm 27. That should be fun actually. Yeah there are a lot of it's a can only craft but many of the instruments are for sale there I'm not gamelan. There are Indian and African and looks of things that you can be tempted to buy. Yeah yeah. So if I buy them and make a field trip myself at some point if you know I can't do it than some other time but you know what. You mentioned something else I was curious yeah I'm just doing a microtonal festival and speaking of things the gamut are associated with. That's wrong is

that another common. Yeah I should've mentioned that simply because the scales that Gamelin use aren't used. Are not Western tempered tunings like you find on the piano. You know to take a standard kind of keyboard that people are familiar with which has half steps and every half step is the same as every other and it's just a collection of those notes. Gammon tunings are strange like many tunings around the world they don't really fit into a an equal tempered equal pattern of every and interval exactly the same distance from every other and interval in fact they have rather complex things that are developed over time and have their particular sound so this whole area of alternate scales and alternate tunings is you know a big one and takes you immediately outside of the standard orchestra and then and the fixed tuning instruments that we're so used to and I'm sure you know listeners who are hearing it for the first time noticed that the intervals might have sounded

different exotic or something. EASTON And they do you know there are two there's a seven note scale called The Pillow going to five notes Gill called the slender row and that that's the sort of pentatonic sound that some some people identify with the black keys of the piano but you know they don't map one to one on any notes of the piano if you started any point they simply don't add except they do have octaves. And there are perfect fifths pretty much perfect if so there's there are some familiar sounds in intervals but they don't map one to one with our piano one. That's why we're on the microtonal festival because they do all kinds of non western tuned pieces. That's what microtonal the term refers to. I guess it does it sounds as though a ferocious but it just means something different from any different in the in the way intervals are made and calculated from the standard keyboard that we call equal temper tuning that we call equal timbre and that was that a pretty common thread that gallons are tuned to the Indonesian tuning

system where you think cell but people mention Lou Harrison for example as a West Coast now composer or you know a really senior important world famous composer who has written many gaveling pieces and has his own gamelan. And he and his collaborator Bill Colbert have their own grandma and. He uses a just intonation I believe or Anyway I shouldn't that be on record so I'm not absolutely sure but he's right I think you're right there was like I remember it and yeah so he's has a completely other eye you know it's and it's neither are tempered tuning. It's not an Eastern an Indonesian or Japanese or any kind it's one that's really theoretical. It comes from the overtone series and my play comes from sub-Saharan away simply thinking about how you can tune things. And he believes that music sounds better Many people believe that certain intervals sound better or better for certain kinds of music if you use those tunings and certainly

people who use those tunings then find the beautiful sounds that you can have with a particular tune regardless but I'm I again I'm very Kleck I think almost any tuning house has a kind of music that will sound beautiful in it and so I like you know I like them all I can't think of a single tuning that I really dislike because they all have some you know they all make music. You can make music with them including ours I mean orchestra orchestra music is gorgeous and that's you know. Equal tempered sort of speak for you. All right let's go to our next piece this is LIVE speaking of live performances of gallant son of lion recorded in the last month or so less than that. That's right it was May 1st at Washington Square Church where Gammel and son of wine did a big spring concert. And this piece is by one of our composer members David Def. and it's called Circle Line and he explains to the audience so they'll know but as soon as they hear they'll realize that it's using a club a pattern maybe Jamaica or Jamaican or Afro-Cuban cloud

or rhythmic pattern to structure the whole piece and then there are improvisational flights that people take in and a chorus that comes back in it all the whole thing you know sort of percolates on so. Yes that's all we need to say in that circle line. OK I guess it is a life live performance by the live performance by gallants one of our guest Daniel good from gallant kind of line here and a BFM you wasted vinyl Here's a circle line up. Wow.

Wow. Thank. Ye. Thank you. Thank you. And. Thank you.

Thank. You. Thank.

You. And that a live recording as you can tell of Gamelin sort of line from

this this past month right. Circle Line by Dave damn that. And he had to point out that he teaches special ed and he teaches music to learning disabled kids. Yeah very noble person. Daniel good I guessed from the group Gamelin sort of line I do want to mention that there is a benefit concert at town hall on Tuesday for your magazine featuring on the Ku Sui because it was so I could ensemble they a miserable Brass Band Dave anti-GM and some other people that's Tuesday the 21st at town hall a benefit for your magazine. This is WFMU waste of vinyl. Rob and Daniel good and the next thing we're going to hear from Ghana and sort of lion another live recording but this goes back a bit further in the group's long and illustrious history. Let's go to this next you know this is a piece by my so called random chords goes back to life. While early 80s at least the performance was 83 but the pieces older than that and I guess the next set of pieces I laid out for us are

might say by number freaks our floor number freaks we'll deal with the number patterns in some way or other and random chords pick random numbers from the phone book and translated them into chords on the Gemmell and keyboard. And there are a few other little items about how I got the rhythm and so on but basically it's a piece in which the harmony is controlled by by these random numbers it is on me Peleg scale so all the intervals will be from that scale. And also one playing clarinet in this very soft the clarinet crawl as a kind of line through the middle of the texture picking up on the. You might call it the tenor part if this were a chorus that sort of doubles those notes and it begins a sort of very very soft for the first half and then the process continues but it's quite a bit louder for the second half. So this is random chords played by Gammons on a line.

Do.