"Churchy La Femme: ALL RIGHT NOW, I ASSUMES YOU IS A ROOKIE...BUT IF, AS YOU SAYS, YOU CAN PUT TOGETHER A HUNDERD STRIKEOUTS AS A BATTER, WHOM KNOWS WHAT YOU CAN DO AS A PITCHER?
Rookie (a bug): WHOM INDEED?
C: THIS HERE NOW IS A BASEBALL...
R: THAT!? WELL, THAT FIGGERS
C: THERE YONDER LIES THE PLATE CALLED HOME...IN THIS GAME YOU GOTTA BE ON THE BALL!
R: (standing on the ball) ON IT I IS...
C: SNEAKILY, THE PITCHER GROSP THE BALL...HE BALEFUL STARES AT THE BATTER...
R: SNEAKILY BALEFUL, IT IS...
C: THEN, CLOSIN' HIS EYEBONES HE CHUNKS THE BALL!
Beauregard: (swings the bat): WHOO! LUCKY TO HIT THAT ONE!
MAN, YOU HAD A LI'L' SOMETHIN' EXTRA ON THE BALL THAT TIME, CHURCHY!
R: (from off-panel skyward) I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW
B: DO YOU HEAR VOICES FROM ON HIGH?
C: WHERE'S THAT ROOKIE?"
Walt Kelly - from "Hijinks from the Horn of Plenty, The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 8"
Texts
August 31, 2023
Alia Swersky, Hannah Rice, and Tom Baker Quartet
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
enacted intent to enact
(prochorea on the front steps)
the dancers close the hall doors and bells ring from all corners
preparing space as enacted intent
sounds push pull draw surround
now there are crows grating
the gulls soar off shore
Recorded
August 26, 2023
Shackled and Drawn - Bruce Springsteen [from Wrecking Ball]
heroic worker/slave song
manly muscular
shovel at the ready
Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded November 14, 2019]
chorale tune extends over the void
on solid pillars
angled to the
shifting pulls of contentious forces
Totem 43 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Totem IV]
subterranean tunnel tracks and conduits
wicked winds
deep
mid-ocean
massive Kaiju on the march
ear to the magmatic motions
below
Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 4 #1 - Robert Schumann - Eric Le Sage
music for an intermission
written on spec
its being
tied up
in betweenness
interval
being
the Randallian gap
Largo in E-flat Major, KKIVb/5 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
homophony clarifies the durational/metrical patterning of melody
a
chorale all plain to the ear
Antimony (fourth encore to Dynamic Motion) - Henry Cowell - Henry Cowell
a material synthesized aurally
industry production
factory
assembly line
A Song for Anything - Charles Ives - William Sharp, Steven Blier
a song in several seasons
a triptych
Hotter Than That - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
one of those cuts that appears in all the relevant compilations
fun with
the hand-offs
an old suit with current fashion flash and pizzazz
takes his tune out for
a dance on the town
Whatever I Am (You Made Me) - Nina Simone [from Sings The Blues]
the thrust of the stanza lands at the end
space is ample at first
crowded as it goes along
to heap up at the bottom
Hands of Time (Brian's Song) - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan with Michel LeGrand]
the french horn was in a room by themself
but so are they all
songs in films
as credits roll
an entertainment
In The Name of Love - Carole King [from Simple Things]
in the name of
for the sake of
imply
not
in one's own
independent self-service
The Lady In My Life - Michael Jackson [from Thriller]
seduction talking points
some of those lines could be grounds for breach
of promise
Symphony in A Major, Op. 90 (first movement) - Felix Mendelssohn [from 100 Greatest Classics]
the orchestration is lively and effective
but essentially follows the
Haydn/Beethoven model
of treating instruments as families or groups
winds strings brass
mixed only in approved ways
at core
it is a string orchestra
with families of added color and power
There Was An Old Frog - Mike, Peggy, and Penny Seeger [from Animal Folk Songs For Children]
quite the string of nonsense syllables and words to teach the kiddos
Music of The Night - Glenn Tate [from Some of My Favorite Love Songs]
this music is entirely comfortable in its social role
no waves sought to
be made or ridden
The Creek Has Run Dry - Head For The Hills [from Robbers Roost]
idyl of youthful freedom
now turned bad
so sad
rural
nostalgia
everybody sways in unison at their tables
Summer Night Sounds - Steve Layton, Bruce Hamilton, Jim Goodin, Diego Monroy, Fabio Keiner [from Summer Mirages]
muggy buggy bog frogs
Five Minutes to Midnight - Star Anna [from Soundtrack]
strong-boned melody:
the act of writing down such a tune as this one
could
either
attempt to transcribe Star's journey through it
as the tune itself
or
one could attempt
to evoke the
bones
of the map behind Star's journey
so that
one could
then take the journey
in your own footsteps
neither is the journey
{or: the act of writing is its own journey}
Key of Life - Mikey and Matty - [from And It Came To Pass/Not To Stay]
nostalgia for the now
in its idyllic fragility
Caprice en forme de Valse in A-flat Major, Op. 2 #4 - Clara Schumann - Susanne Grützmann
the figure games she is playing
are both charming and alarmingly
sophisticated
Ready Teddy (takes 2 and 3) - Little Richard [from Here's Little Richard]
the verses are packed with words
nonstop readiness
I Don't Hurt Anymore - Bob Dylan [from A Tree with Roots]
has a cowpoke pokiness to it
Louise - Bonnie Raitt [from Sweet Forgiveness]
the melody's breath-group sized pitch profile
is composed
so as to
give the words a specific attitude
that particular ironic attitude
in singing a sad song
so that
the song is sad
and the
singer disappears within it
Messetschinko lio Grelivko - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir, Philip Koutev [from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares]
grace-notes
blues notes
scoops
melismas
extralinguistic
(or extra-lexical or extra-referential)
pronunciation details
You Had Your Chance - Mariah Carey [from Charmbracelet]
forming a rounded sense of the event
about which the poems' words
concern themselves
an internal discussion
Gradus 131 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 17, 2007]
let's try that again
a discussion is had
concerning our place in
the greater scheme of Gradus
the cards must be kept in order
sequence matters
but only within limits of diverse designs
the particulars of which designs
are
or might be
crucial to the determinate facts of a music's clockwork of construction
if not always
to the determinate feel of the image experienced
as in cooking
sequence of the steps matter to the result
but
within the experience of eating
we don't necessarily experience
the sequence of steps
as such
upon our palates
a set
of pitches
can be described and presented
in a particular order
exempli gratia
0 4 7
with the 0 on one extreme of register
and 7 at the other with 4 between them
the sequence of intervals being 4
3
now if up/down is variable compositionally
at any moment
then
an equivalent pitch set could be 0 4 1 (4 up 3 down)
(rather than 4 up 3 up)
permutations then
can be a means of
transformation
broadening the scope of set equivalence
in
designable ways
determinate cracking of the code
is immaterial to
the determinate feel of the experienced image
A Thousand Years - Ian Bell, John Teske [from Embers of Discontent (final mix)]
twisting voices wringing dry
August 29, 2023
Banned Rehearsal 946 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 6, 2017]
listen to what one does
and what
what one does
does
and you're on your way
follow a sound
until it finds another
this becomes a low key constant texture
a bit like the rhythm of neighborhood lawn mowers
on a suburban summer Saturday morning
except that some crazy hobbyist
is in his man-bunker
fiddling with his short-wave radio
to make sci-fi sounds
it lingers on the ear's tongue
Awareness - Nat Evans [from My Old Friend Death]
sounds as they sound from the sky and the earth
what creature
heard the first sound heard?
Lovin' Up A Storm (take 5) - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Rare and Rockin']
nicely economical use of the instruments
a solid and serviceable
arrangement
Coventry Carol - The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble [from Festival of Carols in Brass]
and a well-behaved and dour carol it is too
Red Hill Mining Town - U2 [from The Joshua Tree]
is America or Ireland
in need of being romanticized
further than
our own self-inflictions
The Missionary Story/Baptizing the Deer (told in Samish) - Johnny Moses [from When The Humans Thought They Were People]
Samish spoken with a Cambridge accent for laughs
Summer's Gone - Rachel Harrington [from The Bootlegger's Daughter]
rural has its nostalgia
urban has its
each makes legends of its troubles
and loves its legends
Label Me - Cowgirls, The
recorded from the drummer's ear
guitar gets its licks in
Ball - Waxahatchee [from Out In The Storm]
dealing with life by making it song
5-~-~--~--~~---~~--~~---~-~-~--(Rojahn Remix) - Lost Chocalate Lab [from (Previously) Clean]
playing with filters and processors
moving parts of his guitar into
different invented spaces
Alfie - Bill Evans [from California, Here I Come]
it is a sad song indeed
that invents a new sad
that plane
where swing slides off and floats free
drummer's graces
In dulci jubilo - Tielman Susato Krummhorn Gesellschaft [from The Glory of the Krummhorn]
on recorders
with their too precise intonations
I Would Be Your Slave - David Bowie [from Heathen]
in a similar voice as Wild Is The Wind
but much older
playful bursts set free
a data set
raise your hand when you hear a
sound
the washboard says SunnyLand on it
and here I sit again
listening
to nothing to hear
here
this music doesn't stop
it just leaves
Song 2 - Peterman [recorded live at The Blue Moon Tavern, Seattle, October 4, 2012]
such enthusiasm
Bill & Ted would be proud
Focus (with fade) - St. Rage [recorded at The Tintinabulary, Seattle, October 12, 2017]
insurrection
guitar voices tambourine drums
fictional band takes
over
kinda like the fade
Spade Oddity - Star Anna [from Live at Fiddlers Inn, March 7, 2022]
songs travel under covers
buskered in on street corners
Don't Deceive Me (Please Don't Go) - Little Richard [from The Explosive Little Richard]
pop songs
don't get better than this
play the blues
play the blues
Oh Holy Night - London Symphony Orchestra [from Songs For The Holidays]
singer not credited
just as well
rather a dreary tempo throughout
heroic high note
Bog Dogs - Dubious Duo [from Children of Siberia]
down with the plumbing
trumpet plays bubbles
banjo doesn't
fun use of reverb
I Hear This Music - The Tripwires [from Makes You Look Around]
a girl group song type
in a new land
Song 2 (God What A Mess) - Andrew James Robison [recorded live at The Blue Moon Tavern, Seattle, October 4, 2012]
or
we are the sons of no one
road houses
and dive bars
A Pretty Brick Story - Merchant Mariner [from Merchant Mariner]
baritone comes in through an unexpected spot in the sound
Pt. IV - Alex Anthony Faide [from Particles of the Infinite]
full spectrum parallel motion
quite the earful
I'm Sorry - The Platters [a Rescued Record]
full of excuses
Rael 2 - The Who [from The Who Sell Out]
the singer is just not up the task
Set Me Free (Rosa Lee) - Los Lobos [from By the Light of the Moon]
sax solo sets up the key change
Thick As Thieves - The Jam [from The Sound of The Jam]
like the perfect {X}
a swingless dance
steady beat
with a
hitch toward the end of each cycle to mark it
Zither Film 5 - Keith Eisenbrey [December 30, 2007]
one of the more packed iterations
and even at that gets thin
goal:
gather enough shuffled sound bit files
and then mix them
together
for maximal apparent shuffling of the original source
but
a structured shuffling
Your Old Clothes - Red Ribbon [recorded live at The Blue Moon Tavern, Seattle, October 4, 2012]
epistle to the passed away
parts of a dive bar song
pasted on
collage-like
Rain Traffic Crabby Crows - Keith Eisenbrey [November 12, 2017]
says it all
Touch - Doug Kolmar [from So Said Life]
report from it
after a quantity of it
I Should Care - Thelonious Monk [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
so let's sit down and think hard about this
no rushing past details
allowed
Pow R. Toc H. - Pink Floyd [from The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (digital)]
keys dance in a trapped circle
song comes loose into another cage
pulled to display the captives
It's The End Of The World As We Know It - REM [from Document]
reading the signs
white man's patter rap
Make Over - Christina Aguilera [from Stripped]
alternate vocals
alternate reading
in a similar filter
to
the guitar
hommage à Sleater-Kinney
Blue Train - Back Burner [from Simmer On]
the rose colored past
safely beyond transcendency
Psalm X - Ask The Ages [from Ask The Ages]
getting a rumble on
an articulate melody rides it
the rumble
the which has been gotten on
unperturbed
melody by breath
echoes song formation
guitar
then
wallows in the said
rumble
we fade back
to hear the rumble
alone now
one
wonders
and marvels
at just how many thousand times
the
drummer strikes something
in the midst of this
back to our breath
articulated melody
(sax)
bumps to a rumbly stop
what came with the power was unforeseeable
all the good things and more
Taos - Steve Peters [from With My Back to the Wind]
arpeggiation figure
articulation
quiet mind mood
Agon - Igor Stravinsky - London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas]
sounds of instruments
figure profiles
groups of sounds of
instruments
groups of figure profiles
pitches
groups of
pitches
each informing each in turn
across rhetorical
divisions
brief episodes
distilled back into its opening moments
Correspondences - Milton Babbitt [from Eric Carlson's Slowly Expanding Milton Babbitt Album]
a critique of Babbitt's music
pertains to its constant aggregate
completion
all the notes all the time
but
each moment is
unique and clear
(and I can't count pitch classes that quickly
anyway)
his procedure seems to be
more
that he has set himself a challenge
to compose
so that
even though
all the pitch classes
are always all in close proximity
the result is never uniform or gray
through imaginative use
of register
instrumentation
and
yes
complex arrays of derived forms
he invented a
way to think about pitches
that he failed to exhaust
it worked for
him
Sleep Talk - Ornette Coleman [from Of Human Feelings]
got some funk
an urban crowded life
works its material
Broken Basket - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Refreshments]
drum breaks
in machine gun bursts
Track 11 - The Humidiflyers [from Humidiflyers 2002]
a family favorite
a million little kids all dressed to look like Ian
up up up and away!
{cuts off partial track}
Zither Film 6 - Keith Eisenbrey [December 30, 2007]
is a time-point string
as a part of music
random sounding enough
as music
if
the process by which it was generated
can't be immediately determined
without recourse to analysis of
the wave-form
as an image of a time-point string
and/or
without a key (explanation)
this sound-file's time-point string
for example
sounds random in
any short-term stretch
but can be experienced as a gradually thinning
texture of them
more and more sheer
as time moves us along
a
large scale ordering
of small scale disorder
as an image
chaos with a slope
I write the music that tries the patience of my peers
there he goes again
roaring like a vid game boss
a power roar
stand back
do they hold roaring contests anywhere?
big conventions of roarers and
roar enthusiasts?
they could hold it in the early summer
and call it
The What Is So
Roar As A Day In June Festival
or
Roaring Man
In Session at The Tintinabulary
August 27, 2023
St. Peters - Keith Eisenbrey
Sunday between breakfast and church
arrange a shape-note melody in three
part polyphony
August 28, 2023
Banned Rehearsal 1083 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
possibly our last session on the patio this Summer
but I hope not
August 30, 2023
Sinfonia 5 (clavichord) - Keith Eisenbrey
August 31, 2023
Sinfonia 5 (piano) - Keith Eisenbrey
Postscripts
Releases
Keith Eisenbrey 1: 1979-1981
I decided to start sharing collections of my compositions in albums on Bandcamp. These are the keyboard works I composed while an undergrad at the University of Washington. It is free for download.
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
listening journal doodles from 2008
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