Playlist

 Preface

"A score is a stimulus. to specific expressive events. to, that is, experientially realized creative activity.

There are primary and secondary creative activities. depending on the depth of expression elicited from you.

A stimulus to creative activity you value for its specificity. The greater its specificity as a stimulus the more potent its capacity to engender and participate in an episode of creative activity associated with it.

Stimulus specificity. which, liberates ideas in direct ratio to its distinctness. is easily confused with coercive specificity as to literal detail. If a stimulus has the effect in a given episode of creative activity of being coercive as to literal detail to some extent: to that extent, its stimulation is specific, but of something other than primary creative activity. at most of some form of secondary creative activity.

To the extent that a quest for 'correctness' ('compliance') replaces a quest for the maximum awareness of specificity of stimulus in the interest of specificity of response: primary creative activity is unavailable."

- Benjamin Boretz "(1/81)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

October 28, 2020

Jazz: The Second Century - Night Two - Watch Party
Earshot Jazz

Cha - Carol J Levin, Heather Bentley, and Solvej Noa (Amelia Love Clearheart)

Ray Larsen

EarthtoneSkytone - Kelsey Mines, Carlos Snaider

Rae - Abbey Blackwell, Ronan Delisle, Evan Woodle

the river
is wide and level 

smooth
up to the brush
that crowds the banks 

the ancient bed
is unknowable
its depth unspecifiable 

bright sky
bright water 

equidistant

Recorded

October 25, 2020

Variation, Fvb 7 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo  [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the running notes
float weightless
among
the pillars of homophony 

I want
to refocus
my attention
to the pillars 

one could think of Chopin's C Major Etude as being similarly configured - running notes and slower melodic/contrapuntal spine - but not as gracefully accomplished

Bransle de la Torche - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

these old courtly dances
I presume they are courtly
else why would they have been kept at all
are derived
from even older courtly dances
(we presume or I do) 

the act of writing down
or transcribing
music  
from the demotic
to the aristocratic
becomes composing
it throws cultural grit into the machinery of demotic, unwrit, tradition  

Suite in E minor, BuxWV 237 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

moves in all directions at once
all the time 

a devious cabinetry

Huitième ordre (si mineur) -  François Couperin - Rafael Puyana

voices playing peekaboo games among the keys
hiding in the tetrachords 

spider silk macramé 

a flattering portraiture
each of his subjects is dressed
in all the fancy gewgaws
and latest doodads

those are some ferocious chords down there Frank! 

keep to the straight way
of manly virtue
and rejoicing shall be yours

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

a lovely duet
the prelude is 

ingenious
sequences of  
multiply chromatic
approaches to the structurally penultimate
threshold 

Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

is this about scales
I think so
then tonguing

Sonata in A Major, Wq. 48/6 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi

tiny monkey hands
taking music apart from the inside 

no dramatic necessity here
necessity here
is geometric

Adagio in F Major, Hob.XVII.9 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

he flings flowers
in a down the wedding aisle flower flingy way

Sonata in D Major, K. 381 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Keith Eisenbrey, Chris Vincent [recorded during service at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, September 30, 2018]

Mozart is alive here
to the theater
of the mechanism
that two people making this happen
make happen

Sonata in C Major, Op. 20 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

charming and full of tricks
fully engaged entertainment
he's showing all this to us 

now see what you can do

Sonata in G minor, Op. 49#1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

a sonata for playing in tempo never veering 

how many times has this been rescued from vinyl?
presumably some or all of:
from 78 rpm dubplate to 78 rpm master
from 78 rpm master to 78 rpm production
from 78 rpm production to 33 1/3 rpm master
from 33 1/3 rpm master to 33 1/3 rpm production
from 33 1/3 rpm to indexed memory locations

and more intermediate steps than that no doubt

October 26, 2020

Symphony in B minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert - The Met Orchestra, James Levine

a quicker tempo than to which I am accustomed
it misses something important
vastness 

sounds great
but the moments don't sink in 

now appropriate for the small screen
Il Commendatore

October 27, 2020

Etude in C Major, Op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded in 1942]

there is a quartzy hardness about this music
it wants to sing
but is only capable
of etching the surface
on rare moments
when it glances
at just the right angle
so that the light
might just catch it
at it

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41#3 - Robert Schumann - Quatuor Via Nova

melodies spill off the ends of melodies into the framework
the opening section
exposition to those who insist on music appreciation lingo
has no stable metrical locations
anywhere 

advantage counterpoint 

statements are answered by forked tongue questions 

poly-chambered in that
the walls hold them in space
they don't always agree
where they are
all at the same time

Elijah, Part I (beginning) - Felix Mendelssohn - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney, Henriette Schellenberg, Florence Quivar, Marietta Simpson, Jerry Hadley, Richard Clement, Thomas Paul, Reid Barteleme

what stands for piety?
oratorical structures developed for the stages and orchestras and choirs of a previous century
in bloated Romantic modernization 

Elijah champion of the old order 

reasonable expressions
appropriate for the occasion
gussied up Enlightenment fan fiction

October 29, 2020

Ein Faust-Symphonie - Franz Liszt - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Beecham Choral Society, Thomas Beecham, Alexander Young

relay
baton pass
progression
traces the logic
brick upon brick
tissue upon tissue 

Faust opening and Gretchen opening
have similarities in procedure 

as in
how the batons pass

motives are sequences of ordered pitch intervals
slotted into segments of metrical and key function locations
all parts and slottings are malleable
linear melodic thinking
the melody is making this music as it goes
as a listener we are right in there with it in 3rd person audiential

Postscripts

will be years and a half and boughs and trunks

and stumps of possible brief open country

some bright lake or pool broad river so

open olive lakes

nascent arid tactics

everything cold

Playlist

Preface

"BUT: if our Spiritual Exercise strikes you as Unseemly, or Silly, or Mere Sentimental Wallow;

if nothing Clicked;

Then I'm Concerned For you:

Then it's You, above All, who Need it Bad.

Then it is You who should Not Engage in a wildlife issue Quite Yet:

You're Not Ready."

- J. K. Randall "Statement to the NJ State Assembly Environment Committee, 8/5/93" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.

- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

September 19, 2020

Dave Knott

Requia

a dial-twiddler, but a carefully listening and rewarding to listen to dial-twiddler 

testing a signal
looking at it with filters and lenses
better at
1 or 2
A or B
now with this set of
A or B
1 or 2 

writing language out by hand has a rhythm to it
and there it is 

a moment when a quiet out door sound with occasional splatter drops is jump cut to
an unending industrial sound cavern
 train brings us near the surface
a mass of ape mutterings
roadside sounds like rain and bowing a ukulele
bass ukulele
or a banjo guitar
what is that? 

patient transition processing

September 20, 2020

Amelia Love Clearheart

laying a music bed down
to stand on
and kick out from under 

loop procedure becomes looped 'form'
or having an idea on my end about how it is accomplished
 and knowing that
finding myself
surmising the kinds of thing it might produce
and what might be done with that 

cyclic pulsing overlapping
once established
 might be renewed
refreshed
or allowed to flow undisturbed 

but it isn't just that the notes repeat or loop
the signal loops
all of it
we put music in it
another way of thinking
about assembling something
from its sound out 

threading it through signal
each loop sample
once laid down
has potential for processing 

up to a point

Recorded

September 20, 2020

Variatio Fvb5 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the slow note tune
is bent gently by the running figures

Philou - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

plausible orchestration
or plausible enough to pass
where no instructions are to be had

Suite in C Major - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

focus has shifted to the singing tune
and its ornate accoutrements 

the slower tune remains
but is structural,
subservient 

opera did that

Sonata in C Major - George Frideric Handel - Michala Petri, Keith Jarrett

harpsichord splits time
between supporting and answering
the recorder 

this one is getting somewhere 

concerning a ceremonial family life
a place for amusement
and games
a place for careful thinking
and stiff decorum

Onzieme Ordre (do) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

a toymaker magic act
don't sit on a cadence
breathe quick and off you go 

 chirpy tunes 

we have been pulled into a longer story
wake up call at the end of it 

brutal keyboard toccata battles among the villagers

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

in being ultra clear about the details of the smaller meter
a much larger meter still
is revealed

a phalanx of stretto entrances

Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

straight flutes sure produce a lot of acoustic weirdness
they happen within hearing
but aren't heard as a sound 

floaters 

excellence in playing
please the king

Sonata in E minor Wq. 49/3 -  - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi

sonata form
as a type
a story frame
as incantation

September 22, 2020

Apollo et Hyacinthus, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Arleen Auger, Edith Mathis, Cornelia Wulkopf, Hanna Schwarz, Salzburger Kammerchor, Rupert Huber

recitative:

the continuo is a fascinating idea to have had
and it had such a long life in music
the naturalism of dialogic drama
held up by a few touches of notes
and sketchy harmony 

the duets, arias, choruses, etc.
among other things
allow the music as logic
to control
so drama holds still
for now
which supports which? 

in Latin no less

Symphony in E minor, Hob. I:44 "Trauersinfonie" - Franz Joseph Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

multiplicity of figures used
the tonal framework was necessary
or seemed necessary
to hold it together 

an actual fact based verifiable structure
invisible thread 

but does it actually hold it together?
really? 

nothing ever finishes
a thought about coherence being tested 

symphony: the music everybody plays together

Sonata in G minor, op. 7#2 - Muzio Clementi, Howard Shelley

pushing affective disjointure into attention
hints of Eroica figures in the 1st movement

September 23, 2020

Sonata in F Major, op. 10#2 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm Kempff

stubborn adherence to a thread
never loses track of what he's about 

the social space his music creates
in which it arises
is bigger than a piano can be 

Mass in A-flat Major (#5) - Franz Schubert - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek, Helga Terner, Kristine Rohr-Bach, Vladimir Dolezal, Klement Slowioczek, Prague Radio Chorus

thin ice above the dark places
it could go
but might not 

lots of contrapuntal busywork
(not his strongest suit) 

some presumably effective spatial effects for which a cathedral space is required

September 24, 2020

Etude in C Major, op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Cecile Licad

the bass line is a red herring
all the fancy voice leading and counterpoint is in the arpeggios

Fantasiestücke, op. 12 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

leads you out
so simply
goes
so logically askew
the thread leaps
escherically 

the steady balance of answering phrases
is not the norm here
but lengths and sizes are a thing
as is balance
a reference
seen askance
through several darkling glasses

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 20, 2020

Rain 200920 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Rain 200920

there was rain and our drainpipe gurgled

September 21, 2020

Wallace Book 10 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1010 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1010 200921

The rain and dark has arrived, so back indoors we go.

September 22, 2020

Chorale 9 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 23, 2020

Wallace Book 11 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 10 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 11 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 24, 2020

Wallace Book 12 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 25, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

The Epilogue is a bear - slow, polyphonous, hefty, and requiring exact articulation and dynamics. I'll get it for sure soon, then I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace." 

Postscripts

should have known the which passed between was mad

enough was one little smiling good-humoured

sidling begged compliments i never way

the world is a figment of music
pitch in a swamp is a bird on a cattail
an embodiment of the absence of itself

Playlist

Preface

"A stimulus to creative activity you value for its specificity. The greater its specificity as a stimulus the more potent its capacity to engender and participate in an episode of creative activity associated with it."
- Benjamin Boretz "two notebook entries, 1981" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

May 19, 2020
Spite House Presents: Heather B & Amelia C
Heather Bentley and Amelia Love Clearheart
(from Heather's Garden)

Karen and I were sitting at the kitchen table after dinner that evening when, having both signaled our interest in this event, our phones each lit up to announce its beginning about an hour before its official start time. It turned out to be the sound check. Now being connoisseurs of sound checks we each checked in separately. Our streams were offset by 2 or 3 seconds. It was lovely magic.

There were some balance issues during the event itself - which we listened to together on another device - but their obvious rapport shone so bright it hardly mattered. It is always a pleasure to hear them together.

Recorded

May 16, 2020
Spherics (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

Music starts at the bottom and grinds at depth, not for our delectation. Signals strike the surfaces and reverberate through, to be passed along. We observe them, and in observing, transform.

Some sounds are events (not many)
some are indirect transitory vibration accumulations
moving through.

Downstream results of events as they propagate in the substrate:
a. we may suspect a mallet that strikes this gong
b. we may suspect a speaking voice

-spheres:
atmo-
bathy-
magneto-
bio-
audio-

imply a center and a limit, dividing space

May 17, 2020
Little Blue Boat - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



available for any maritime use
onshore or off

14oxooxxoxoxxoo - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]



These sounds are acting out
wearing  costumes
pantomime

wires
as sounding objects
are quick responders
capable of negotiating intricate puzzles

the plucked kalimba bars
are stiffer
less nimble

Charlotte's Umbrella - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



A fun song with
umbrella ella ella ella
whack'em with it

as a genre, the solidarity history song is a bit like hymnody
but they point back at heroes
whereas hymns point back atcha

Less is Moi - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

impeccable

perhaps that's my real problem with this, not that it's the stuffed shirt playing for the quasi-brow crowd
but that it's so much stuffier than high-brow can be
it is so classy,
takes such pains not to offend,
suitable for NPR use
we've been snookered

Rain - No Rey [from Contradictions]

how to begin?
start with strumming
that's a good trick

respect your sisters and don't kill your brothers
family advice

a multiple tempo song made of partial songs can be a narrative
(see Dichterliebe)

Under Evergreen - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



Wake up!
Emerge!
Out from!

(stray thought as I type: this could be about subterranean activity  associated with our hippie state college)

All At Once - Tyler Daniel Bean [from On Days Soon To Pass]



For all I know he's reading the back of a soup can to us. Off into the dreamy future of forever looking back, on and on.

Empty Space - Operation ID [from Legs]



An imperative?
Do it right now!

The crew is on it. All the equipment is heading in now. It is an intricate activity, emptying space. Where will we put all the stuff?

Outro - Lunas [from Over Me]



strummy dreamy streamy
stream strum stream strum
I smell the blood of a dreamyman

Longing to Belong - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

That line was well built. Melodic variation as a rhetorical underlining, emphasis.

Fucking Maggot - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



Rock and roll (if that is what this is) (and if it isn't then what it is (that isn't rock and roll)) as a mode of social amplification.

Parallel in Name Only - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]



and in the eye of the beholder

←─────────→
             eye
←─────────→

space having been
emptied earlier
improvised theatricals

Trump's Snake Oil Medicine Show - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury



His backup singers and band are dynamite.

Just Leave Me There - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

its hard for the blues to fly
but it must try

Highland Mary - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



Some people really get into ethnic heritage.
They form clubs and bands and all.

May 19, 2020
You're A Cop - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

clever verse and pitch-perfect sound design
the poetics are narrowly satirical
the musical portion supports that
but isn't itself satirical

Grown-Ups Are H8ers - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



by babysitters for their charges
to make common cause

Unbalanced Suns - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

I remember the first time I heard a guitarist's fingers shifting along the neck in recorded music. It was probably some Simon & Garfunkle song or other. As a classical musician in training, this came as something of a mind bend. It still is, after a fashion. It makes the player's body audible in a way that singing, oddly enough, doesn't, except when breathing is audible. It underlines both that music is a bodily activity, and that more than music, as classically understood, results from it.

Sunday Song - No Rey [from Contradictions]

Pick strum sound doesn't have the same effect. Rather, it comes across like a harpsichord's un-pitched twang or a piano's felt-hammer thump. It brings the instrument forward, not the body of the performer.

There is some nice duet singing here. At the end the board operator gets hold of it for an inverted fade-out: repeat the last line past what balance would require then increase the gain on what is left over.

Mackey Creek - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]



The particulars of the story behind this don't matter, but the precision with which she spools it out does.

Snooze - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



When you need me
I won't be awake
a rejoinder, kiss-off type

May 21, 2020
Postprandial Depression - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]


A half-second of great sound before recorded amplification smudges it out. If it doesn't have my trademark sound then no-one will know it's me.

Arrow - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



A two-chord* song
until the chorus
of which the first chord has two pitches sung as extremities of an interval
and how those two pitches hang with the other chords and changes

*the one chord and all the others. Ken Benshoof once opined, in a composition lesson long ago, apropos of Rameau-type harmony thinking, that there were only three chords: Tonic, Dominant, and Everything Else. After some thought he added, "well, maybe also Subdominant is its own place."

The Wasteland - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



A journey in each verse
as is each day
the song Paul McCartney was aiming at but kept missing

Pants! The Mini Musical - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



We saw Bicycle Face do this show live, with props and costumes, at the Highway 99 Blues Club, back in 2015.

This version has
corsets! sound effects!
otherwise unaccompanied
fabulous kerfufflousness
with the Feminist sermon, of course
quite enjoyable

Track 7 - High Class Wreckage [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]

fill in the blank spot with feedback
rough hewn

The vocal got lost in this one.

I Still Miss Someone - No Rey [from Contradictions]

genres within genres venning promiscuously with promiscuously venning genres
(nice snare drum sound!)

Track 7 - Pouch [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]

yes he's shoutscreamroaring
but with focused rhythmic intent
loud as they are these songs are tiny

2X4 - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



sexual persona parading
smartly satirical

Save Me - White Orange [from White Orange]




such a gentle opening
then the same notes powered up
but losing nothing of the atmospheric stasis
still mood

the underlying clarity of the composition remains

back to a gentler sound with only an echo of the roar

The Spook - The Deadrones




playing the John Lennon Trick
you can this and that but you're blank inside
keep it vague for maximum imputation of meaning-riddled-ness

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

May 17, 2020
05 17 20 Covid Toothbrush BR - Steve Kennedy

Steve brushed thoroughly
almost 30 minutes

May 18, 2020
Bannedecameron 200518 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Bannedecameron 200518

Karen and I played electric guitars
Neal dialed in from the Lake City outpost
and played an electric guitar

STE-024 200518 - Aaron Keyt

From Toad Hall, Aaron
phasing along to Steve's thorough brushing

Postscripts

possible passive when such without any

active work of its own but likewise for

the night is which may enter of all kinds

no view now

elf ore

the rose's thorn is the cowl of the receder

Playlist

Live

January 10, 2020
Why All This Music?
Karin Stevens Dance
Velocity Dance Center, Seattle

Kauai: Sky, Lava Rock, Palms, Sand, Woods, Ocean
Dancers: Micaela Gonzales, Hazel Morris, Ben Swenson-Klatt
Music: CHA - Carol J. Levin, Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart

Ecology of Wonder
Dancer: Maeve Haselton
Music: Heather/Dio Duo - Heather Bentley, Dio Jean-Baptiste

Llandover Woods
Dancers: Anja Kellner-Rogers, Emma Klein
Music: Crows at a Crosswalk - Leanna Keith, Daniel Husser

A Small Space of Wildness
Dancers: Maeve Haselton, Robert Moore
Music: Kin of the Moon - Leanna Keith, Heather Bentley, Kaley Lane Eaton

A truly enjoyable evening all around. Karen and I had dinner at The Tin Table before the show, and the glory of the sound of the old wooden plank Odd Fellows Hall floor of it as activated by the wait staff in their working was worth the visit even without the lovely dinner itself.

Social composition among the groups of dance performers and the groups of music performers is similar, or rather, the social composition of the music performers, in that each group contains at least one member in common with another, is echoed economically in the social composition among the dance performers in that one dancer is shared among just two of the pieces. Among the music performers numerous sharings, among the dance performers, just one.

I was digging the care and clarity with which ideas propagated through groups of dancers, from unfussy unison motions (I don't know dance-lingo - what I mean is when the dancers are dancing the same movements at the same time, but (unfussy) not overdoing the precision of it) to exchanges and conversations and arguments and lovings.

Recorded

January 4, 2020
Gradus 199 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]

After noting the broad empty expanse of it
and the pitch repetition
after noting all that
one might at first wonder, then guess, then surmise, then theorize, then test, then provisionally affirm
the pitch class set size and composition.

It counts as one of those facts about it
one of those red herring facts
as to what is it about it.

Music artifacts are syntheses, every last one of them.

That particular A is chosen because it modulates the moment just so,
not because a decision was made to only play A's
and this happens to be one.

The una corda mechanism had a squeak.

OR

The coercive sense in which errant notes of stray pitch classes hardly matter since the power of their suggested dis-inclusion as a possibility overcomes the fact of their purported wrongness.

We perfect music as we listen to it.

For me, Gradus is a thought experiment, and a welcome consistent presence as an object of consideration.

Tidal Waves - Lunas [from Over Me]

sloshes back and forth in the beat
and a cut short coda
perhaps a segue to the next track

January 5, 2020
Sonata in F-sharp minor K. 67 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

lots to do
hustles along doing it
not time to waste

Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 (end) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2019]

. . . no applause please

whisper so the message does not travel
any number of ways can be devised to fail to tell

the farce of dustiny
primum mobilisque

deviation from meaning
telling to hear what is meant

one must mind what is never said

pure lyricism of shame brot
(an ethel)
appears to be about cheese

possibly twelve:: :: answer ----.

Land of Hope And Glory - The Who [from A Quick One]

sounds like my generation (baby)
with a pound out to pound it out

Under Pressure - Queen, David Bowie

ultra discrete production
game knows game
no sound need touch another

Banned Telepath 7 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1986]

Big Red Bag of Fun
and Aaron's Epic Sneeze
AhCHOOO

definite buzz in the equipment system that's for sure

nothing has ever sounded as good as the funmaker nor will ever

Aaronsbundler fight song

Karen brings me tea (present listening back day)
tea in this hullaballoo!
woo!

how many is we?
Back to take me out to the old root root rot (attenuating circumstances)

sounds in your face
like hawkers at a bazaar

taxonomy of climate
atlas designated regions

among the more ornately wrought of the telepath projects, personnel-wise and geographically
several fine repeated versions of the music box innards from whomever arrived I know not but what has been among us throughout though now sadly broken up about it

:: INFORMATIONS::

a telepath is an improvisation session with a subset of the band (often including guests), made in conjunction with other subsets of the band making each their own telepath in a different location, all to be mixed together later to make a full Banned Rehearsal.

In this case Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, and Yvonne Meyer made a session in San Diego in November of 1986; Karen and I made a session in Bickleton (also November of 1986); then Karen, Aaron Keyt, and I made this session in Seattle. The far flung tapes were gathered together in April of 1987 and became Banned Rehearsal 107.

::OUTFORMATIONS::

the persistent dulcimer
((buzz: the sound of the sound of the mechanism of sound capture))

the shrills hold sway
tamed by the holler

own worldly dissonance proudly

I am reading from an early volume of this book from which this blog I write is lifted

We seek to buzz the space
like a house-sized kazoo

an opera, as is Book of Windows, for that matter

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 5th Version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

I was early told to think vocally. I do.

Gradus 109 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2006]

a valedictory session, the lowest A again
just because
before launching into the final A-nat
song of teapot past

January 7, 2020
Shine - Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

ample room in the meter
for weighty sighs

Selections from Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

(theoretically): the same pulse
but different relations of duration ratios
as much as pitch and pitchclass scheme
distinguish pieces from other pieces
(within this set of Second Thoughts pieces)

what binds a piece as a piece?
a regularity among its parts?
including a regularity that only emerges in comparison with other pieces (within this set of Second Thoughts pieces) exhibiting similar relations among their parts

the sensual experience of thinking

This was my performance at Seattle Composers Salon in January of 2018, and includes the Q&A.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 6, 2020

Gradus 361 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a chord dire and splendent
regions are created

thought path
or trace

Improvisation as real-time composing works
when we can allow ourselves to follow each thought of another in constant recalibration, building on before and kicking away the scaffolding.
while kicking away
but kicking away
or kicking away
if kicking away
if and only if kicking away

further on we go
farther back we reach

polyvalent relations to memory

Postscripts

taste good he said and took it i've asking

time one has a spoilt i can't understand

it usual breakfast do you think it is

the dragon

is language itself

the risen throne

Playlist

Live

November 15, 2018

Heather Bentley and Friends
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Heather/Dio Duo - Heather Bentley, viola; Dio Jean Baptiste, drums; (with Darren Palmer, video)

flutterby shutterby
seaby skyby
shorn of weight

cyclic himalayas crash the skyshore

morphmaps
cooperative restraint
allowance in laser focus

CHA - Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart, Carol J. Levin

giddy rhyming path
leading where it always started and began

a polydimensional shimmer song
turned a corner turned beyond the corner turned

nothing crucial not
nothing not crucial

capsules eschewed for bare feet

Recorded

November 10, 2018
Stockholm Stomp - California Ramblers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

for dancing Charlestons for slidy strings

Boppin' The Blues - Carl Perkins [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

the kid's done some yodeling
catching up an octave or so in unguarded dipthongs such as "y" in "baby" or "rhythm"

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted - Jimmy Ruffin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

one wonders just how much it cost to produce this recording

all those engineers to pay
all those musicians to pay

On The Trail - Oscar Peterson Trio [from The Great Connection]

stringing a whole puppet theater of dancers
any of whom are lighter on their feet than any Astair or Kelly e'er was
one or more impersonating all or all

then things get serious

AB 7A - Throbbing Gristle [from Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits]

sparkly! will there be rainbows and sly unicorns?

awakes beneath it subtended slowed speech
grumbling troll

tin foil
drum snare

Banned Rehearsal 84 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, George Kosály, Marta Kosály, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

enthusiastic singing! a treasury to hear them unleashed
a different take on field recording
to think of it as field recording

and in comes MLKingJr

full feed back

captured or embraced by the mouths of apes

and back to the fingerspun glass rims
funmaker joins the fray

in layers like how we dress here
sound outfits on parade

grimly go we grimly go
gimly grow we gimly grow

dinly go we dinly go
and grow and grimly

oboi roi in gloire

some of these layers are rough and tough
energy relaxes so simply

Beethoven builds repeats ad nauseum

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Voluntary on Old 100th - Canadian Brass [from Red, White, & Brass]

brass ensembles to organ music: what bell choir music is to piano, or halfway along
another nexus: church and art music - a stubborn one if ever was

Top of the World - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

on a Toppenish farm!

November 11, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 2006]
jittering nervously theatrical fidgets
that is
fidgets portrayed the ground as level and clear
the mountains miles away

it may be night
nay it might be

it might be May
at night, nay

a feedback hovers far off, poised
ceremonial tingling tinkling bingling and bongling
care must be exercised lest it veer too near us

bells from the rafter pendant
we zero in on it

stops and then
vanishes

Bury Me Close - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

oops! already blogged this one recently oh well
knockout melody of those words

Where Are You - Rachel Harringon [from Celilo Falls]

this is the one I should have so I did
a howl to wolfmoon human moon howl
string band sneaks up on you and is perfect before you are aware it is

Gradus 289 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

and the first g preceded by quite the list of notes
an abundance in which sing precise intervals
re-deconstructing in exponentially accelerating epic grandeur
a sense of a chord sound

a combination (in a rung) is a collection, a set, a bagfull, a bag
each bag being infinite in extent and content

some long no note bits are between rungs but others aren't

King Arthur Act I - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

the five act format works in a smaller room where the guests can accept the shorter parts as worth the size of space
a costumed oratorio

November 13, 2018
Premier livre de pièces de Clavecin - Jean-Phillipe Rameau - Pieter-Jan Belder

the end in mind at every beginning renewed
loves that low grumble
Chopinesque suggestion of contrapuntal elaboration
never acquiescing to the fact of it
a confluence - the Gavotte of this also came up in my sight-reading cycle that same morning
order among the suite parts is satisfactory but not crucial, ad hoc is ok
except the Prelude, which must be first

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 12, 2018
Gradus 342 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a sequence of Venn diagrams formed as a chain jumble linked by how a token is a part of a pair
Romantic Ordealism - that an artist's effort is part of the image of what the piece is as itself
plausible melody and polyphony
venntrios

November 13, 2018
Lauda Anima - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude in 2001 for organ, and only had to make a few adjustments to make it work for piano, which version I present here.

Playlist

Live

September 29, 2018
Free Improvisation: The Quartets Project
S. Eric Scribner presiding, September 29, 2018, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Aaron Keyt, piano, objects, melodica
Bruce Greeley, bass clarinet
Carol J Levin, harp, electric harp
Ha-Yang Kim, ‘cello
Jim Knodle, trumpet
Karen Eisenbrey, piano, objects, drums (?)
Keith Eisenbrey, piano, objects
Neal Kosály-Meyer, piano, guitar, voice
S. Eric Scribner, piano, percussion, field recordings
Amelia Love Clearheart, bringing what she brought, doing what she does

Mr. Scribner gathered this cohort of 10 to improvise variously arranged quartets while carefully avoiding having too many Banned Rehearsal members all together until the very end when we were all there anyway. Good feelings all around.

Recorded

September 30, 2018
Twenty-Four Tonal Preludes: 5 through 8 - Greg Short - Keith Eisenbrey [March 2007 at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle]

5. lively but a bit rushed; 6. crazy man; 7. tender, lovely, childlike, lullaby waltz (delicate piano writing!); 8. tells a whole story complete with corporate lament refrain, a ballad, that is, is what it is

Where Do We Go From Here - Oscar Peterson [from The Great Connection]

a show-off but
o what glory!

a tour through his colleagues' manners
a tip 'o hat to Bill
a say hi to Sphere

Track 5 - Empire Brass Quartet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

brass fandom
another enclave
with its enclave pleasures

Banned Rehearsal 82 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

blowing pipes
rattle laugh
third body
imaging itself
as bumblebug balloon rub
elastikissing sticky kiss
rainbow plane
pass over
dog barks
twangchord talks
balloon talks
pipe blows
still guitar strums a while
and also another bell bongs
pipe blows
pluckdrone pipes blow (two of them)
we retreat back to sounds just made before that what
that will now new be made
guitar close in
each
but specific close
not equal
so drumbody
guitarbodydrum
boxword
an utterly other sense of playing well
giving it your voice
in doing so
it allows others
to give theirs their voice
the world is our axe
and laughing box
return to rattle again
sleepy as they are
focus remains

October 4, 2018
Something In The Way - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

interval: between acousticish sound and electroreverberated sound drives it
or
driven: by 2ish note tune then 3ish note tune
intriguing that it doesn't go on because it could

Sonata in G - Pietro Locatelli - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Musical Evenings With The Captain]

never finish a thought unless thy finish be to pick up another thought
never finish a balanced thought
music before Beethoven killed it dead
two violins and cellopiano continuo
movements arranged not for drama but for social function presumed
else why?
better than whist by far

Ballad of the Whitman Greeks - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

the city they named twice made famous by a cartoon a story heard having been told to
but unverified
micro-urban myth?

"...woe my road is spoken..." draft 060604A - Keith Eisenbrey

another midi go at my variations for string quartet
playing with just so variation flowing through just so continuity
room to breathe
finding foil and echo in a pitch pattern

Bury Me Close - Rachel Harrington [Celilo Falls]

wrapping words around a place in the voice
the place that lies above and the place that lies below
waters upper and lower
should have seen her dance

Lincoln Beach Park Walking North - Keith Eisenbrey [May 2016]

I accidentally recorded this
pushed record unintentionally

so wasn't careful

saw a seal

latter day dinosaur sound (microphone bump bump) overlays sound of walk and sounds along walk

right left
left right left
he had a good job
and he left right left

rhythm between the relations among the sound from outside our mechanism of walking
the sound of our walking the sound of our talking while walking and the sound of the device hitting and rubbing

sexy flange of wave sough

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 1, 2018
Gradus 340 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

does the quantity of simultaneously played notes count beyond 1, (2) (many) (lots)? and is that importance commensurate with horizontal quantity?
possibility: composition can resolve or confuse that issue or mediate that resolution and confusion

Playlist

Live

Like it is

September 2, 2018
CHA Trio - Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart, Carol J. Levin
Cafe Racer, Seattle

Such a beautiful time this was
CHA Trio is a chemistry found, a rare and precious thing

after their set other threes of us rode their sparkly wake
(thank you for allowing your blogger to join in progjazz keyboardist guise)

Recorded

September 1, 2018
Duetto "Pace e gioia sia con voi" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

conflict is a structural interaction

Rabbit Foot Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

"bisquits are a little thin"
light quick strummelo

Do blues guitarists often play in A-flat
or has this recording been sped up?

Your Promise To Be Mine - The Drifters [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

The vocalist needed a pop guard.
(sweet sax track in the back)

The Great Airplane Strike (remix) - Paul Revere and The Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

spy sound with a power blues heft to it

Jenny Nettles - Harry "Pappy" Wells [from The Art of Field Recording Vol. 1]

fiddle scribblin' with left hand pizz!

followed by the obligatory "I made some mistakes like I thought I would but that there Jim Davis used to play that awful nice" nuanced self-deprecation

It sounded pretty fine to me.

Strict Time - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

gamelonic flow

Banned Rehearsal 81 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Tad Pole - Kosály-Meyer - we continue sudden singing
slip rattle backbeat

several false starts stacked in sequence onto the end bone of it

microtonal study - some people likes a beat

goes on too long in a most peculiar way
part two with vocals and funmaker sneaking in there
quite the sham man there chant there

Kyrie eleison - my vocal plus 'du

more of the sorts of microtonal thinking that only liberated intonation would allow
whipping flames out of that tambourine back there karen!
the between bits composed as to be uncertain for a good long whether one is in which bit of what song

". . . to pick up where we left off" (more stuff under the seat left back there)

one is in or not static stuck but tugged

Karen lofts the date into the epistolarisphere
the rhythm of the pace of writing read as improvised textual crosspointed 3-dimensional poetry

September 3, 2018
Fear Bitterness and Hatred - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

we hear in excruciating detail some venerable genre of psychedelic surf parking out in a moralizing 60's message board

Duet in D - Haydn - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Evenings With The Captain]

a pleasant breakfast in the sun room
its own costume drama parody
playing for its fellow wizards

Lakeside Summer Home - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

its tense: past telling present subjunctive had now been past narrating the present as though from the future

"...woe my road is spoken..." - Keith Eisenbrey [midi draft of June 3, 2006]

disparate times in a row of chained pitch worlds

Great White - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

coloristic active composite arranged patterned

Something of Mine - St. Rage (Your Mother Should Know) [mix of April 19, 2016]

And we're going to go give blood today too! waddayaknow!

September 6, 2018
Concerto in B-flat BWV 1051 - Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

reveals what is admirably small and transparent
allowing maximum differentiation, the play among individual strings isn't washed out in box resonance
inner overlaps each distinguished

portativ continuo? interesting and quite successful!

not played as THE SIXTH BRANDENBURG CONCERTO
but keyed down so that its intricate address is made plain
its hocket phrases are allowed to remain made of parts made by individual players

no big deal here move along

we can't

See, The Conqu'ring Hero Comes from Judas Maccabeus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

played for dreariness and all it doth not add
rah!

Aria "Contra un cor che accende amore" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

every moment a theater
a stage made of dynamic moments

High Fever - Coon-Sanders Orchestra [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

patterned sequence of time spans similar
but made not so
by each's display
watch me!

Symphony 1 - Samuel Barber - Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin

comes on like movie credits of the 30's
must grab NOW
moments of being must be ultraexperienced
in big screen passion

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 3, 2018
Gradus 338 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

shows its hand as the better idea
recomposed from the ground up

the color of water
protesting singularities

a discussion about wealth
among friendly climes

playful
glittering