HoeDown

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/18/00 9:45:39 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
RMcDonald at wireone.com writes:

<< Please elaborate on this...see below
 I assume you are talking about the ELP version of Copland's HOEDOWN,
 but am trying to think of what specific part you are referring to- it has
 been a long time since I have listened to that piece. >>

He is talking about the intro to the piece, where keith plays a Moog chord 
(VCO's tuned in fifths) that starts on a midrange chord and then jumps up one 
octave.  It simulates what the second and third violins and violas do in the 
original Copland piece.  The first note is played on beat one of the bar and 
the octave jump occurs roughly on beat two of the bar.  This sound and intro 
is a good example of the grand over-the-top bombast that most of us came to 
love and expect from ELP.  (It doesn't sound nearly as bombastic when the 
part is played by violins!)

Note however, that a simple pitch-envelope modulated VCO patch will not 
really get this exact effect.  There also must be a delayed attack, so that 
the pitch glide does not start at the onset of the note, but rather about a 
beat later.  Keith probably used a trigger delay to achieve this.  Of course, 
this same effect could also be approximated by simply playing a note, then 
playing the note one octave above, and having portamento turned on.  The down 
side of doing it this way is that in this particular piece, the intro figure 
needs to be repeated over and over.  So if he had portamento turned on, the 
note would also glide back down every time he repeated the figure (low note 
to high note, low note to high note, etc.).  Emerson's sound only glides 
going up, which suggests that he used an envelope to create the octave jump.  
Also, the tming of the jump is not an exact quarter note, but a kind of loose 
quarter note, probably because it was hard to get an envelope to always be 
rhythmically precise.  (this looseness adds to the flavor, anyway)

Michael Bacich