Playlist

Recorded

July 22, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 78 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]


the legendary push to 100 begins in earnest

Anna had decamped to San Diego, Neal to follow in a few weeks
we figured we could fill 23 sides if we got together as often as possible and made several sessions every time

with dulcimerian strum and guitar and funmaker
distinct presences playing pitches
vaguely downhome funmaker bend button to imitate saw or bee swarm

the relation between the metaphor of steady beat and the metaphor of click track clock time
each is a kind of virtual reality

Neal sings a sudden song Strange Animal interrupted by a wicked great funmaker effect
Sprite in punkissimo overdrive

clocktime is a metaphor of objectivity and reproducible results
beat is a metaphor of inner time - heartbeat breathing sleep
to conflate them is to sell beat short
to measure the rightness of a beat by its adherence or not to a click track clock time timepoint is to utterly mistake its subjective essence
trading image for fact

clavichord even gets in there most sinister of sounds

disproportionality is our speciality
does it go on too long?
experiments should not halt upon receipt of desired result
desiring a result is an ur-error

Stay Away - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

ferocious bass playing back there
sure like that fuzz box

Downtown Hangaround - Blank Its [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

minimalist patterning
nice focus
power suit

"...woe my road is spoken..." (first midi draft of May 29, 2006) - Keith Eisenbrey

another in a series of drafts of a set of variations for string quartet

affect is carrier wave for pitch set transformation

Life in a Marble - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

just a young man and his strummer joined by kin on cello and voice

Gradus 288 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

the highest G

if the acoustic machine that is the piano
strings soundboard hammers frame harp dampers
could be adequately modeled algorithmically

then one could design interfaces for the dampers
on a gimble or as independently operated as the keys themselves

one to play the hammers
one to play the dampers

could virtual strings break?
algorithmic modeling of the sound of a string breaking?
virtually?

if it doesn't then the model is inadequate
limitations are important

the E comes in as though it hadn't really

July 24, 2018

Cavatina "una voce poco fa" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

how exactly weight is adjusted to articulation

Don't Fish In My Sea - May Rainey, Jimmie Blythe [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

celebration within complaint
irrepressible right hand comments

Ubangi Stomp - Warren Smith [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

copping to racial thievery (N word trigger warning)

What A Sweet Thing That Was - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

as crowded as the words are
there is lots of time for spare my my my my to spill out

Septet - Arthur Berger - The Contemporary Players [from Form]

long tones doled out sparingly
to tell
we search them out where they cling
past woods edge
a guide will be wanted
to return

Barefoot School - Bellevue First United Methodist Church Children's Choirs [from my Mom's tape of May 6, 1971]

I shared narration duties on this, and so it becomes one of the very earliest instance of recorded sound recognizable as me

our charming pious tale of spreading the benefits of civilization

July 25, 2018
I've Never Been In Love - The PK's [from a private tape]

history: the night before Karen went off to UPS at the end of the 1981 Summer in which we (she and I) happened to have both been in the same room at the same time for the first time Karen and Neal and Yvonne made this recording of their (really proto-PK's) collaboration. It was supposed to be a good tape.

Shut Out The Light - Bruce Springsteen [from Neal's mix-tape Six B-Sides]

story ballad family retrieval

Banned Rehearsal 268 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Paul Eisenbrey, and Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

clams up
big honk speaks across the spiral tape as it lies on its reel
J clears his throat
nervous sort of explosiveness
chatter
all the doo dah day yes sirree doo dah
buddha baby
imitates squeaky violin squeal
failure to incandesce but many many colorful bits
bug call

July 26, 2018
Haunted House - Fall-Outs [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

politely overdrawn accusation
gaslighted
never trust a breakup song

Song From The Storms and Winds - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, live at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 21, 2011]

tone held through thundernuk place
within place within place

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 27 - July 6, 2018
Two Pomes Play - Keith Eisenbrey


Most of June and into July I was working on getting an adequate recording of these short two-voice

piano pieces. The first is one of my takes from June 27. I finally got the last one pretty well on July 6. These began their lives in the mid 90's as duets for clarinet and bassoon. In 2000 I transcribed them for piano solo.

July 23, 2018
Gradus 336 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

. . . and the fifth B
perihelion swerves of many kinds
lit up the bubble of now in etheric mind nowhere hidden

Playlist

Live

November 10, 2013
Octava Chamber Orchestra, Johan Louwersheimer, cond.
Maple Park Church, Lynnwood

Divertissement for Double Woodwind Quintet Op. 36 - J.E.A. Bernard - (Dan Schmidt, cond.)

Domestic activity contained within the possibility of its own unhinging - like a picnic.

Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun - Debussy

There is nothing impressionist about it. Corporeal, warm with pulse, glowing with stench.

Concerto for Clarinet and Strings - Gavin Borchert - Sean Osborn, clarinet

Gavin Borchert

As music it begins, or always begins :: from music it veers, or always veers :: subsiding slowly into autonomous alt-conscious selves :: selves of each other's self each autonomously alt-veering :: beginning again to veer again so as to glimpse again, over the shoulder.

Selections from the Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 - J.S. Bach

The clunky mal-shaped peasant core inextricably embraced within the ornate regularizing societal gloss.

Recorded

November 10, 2013
Christmas Carol Service (1969) - Bellevue First United Methodist Church combined choirs, Betty Eisenbrey, cond.

A tape recently copied from my mom's collection. She directed the choral activities at BFUMC for most of my childhood. This is one of the earliest recordings I have in which I play a part (a 10 year-old in one of the children's choirs). It ends with an arrangement for combined choirs of the over-wrought quasi-hymn O Holy Night. Ben Boretz often asks us to recall those moments in our musical lives that sent us, willy-nilly, into music as a calling, those moments to which nothing outside of music can compare. Being a part of this performance was unquestionably such a moment for me. I suppose I was naïve for having my buttons pushed by this, but hey, I was only 10.  And to be honest it still gives me a thrill - always a sucker for a great entrance.

Piano Music - Aaron Keyt

Improvising on solo piano, an essay on phrase length/shape/balance/note-count. The effect is part Satie, part Broadway, part antique dance. Pitch is so not the point.

November 12, 2013
Assembly Rechoired 48 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy - December 2005

Getting somewhere, but not by our own effort - more as though being ballooned.

Snohomish Concert (Steve's Mix) - S. Eric Scribner

In October of 2010 Steve Scribner produced this concert at a little theater in Snohomish. The event itself was pretty informal, with lots of banter between the audience and performers. The music was a hodge-podge of compositions (by Scribner, Neal Meyer, Wayne Lovecraft, and me) and various collaborative improvisations, making a low-key evening out of some pretty far-out music (far-out per se and far-out from its accustomed locale). But what Steve did, through judicious cuts and inspired overdubbing, is utterly transforming. All the low-key has been expunged, and all the sprawl has been made thrumming taut. What was informal and chatty has become sharply focused, a model of formal balance and precise contrast.

Sonata in B-flat K. 281 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

Now we know what was inside that opening trill.

Little Liza - Men's Quartet from Bellevue First United Methodist Church (?), ca. 1965 (?)

Always a bit off-kilter

As I child I knew this song (mistakenly) as "Little Eyes". It was one of my favorites when I was 6 or so, and I had no idea my mom still had a tape.

November 14, 2013
Banned Sectional 12 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - September 1985

In the left channel is an attempt (surprisingly successful) to duplicate the right channel (recorded earlier that day) without being able to hear it. Some sudden songs, including I Want a Girl From Venice California, (twice of course, once on the right and once on the left) - and the audio guest list from our first concert (the previous January) - including cameo appearances by Neal's family of origin and the Chez Sleaze Reserve Section.

Banned Rehearsal 693 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Meyer - December 2005

Xylophone provides context while we attempt to squeeze radio noise out of a balloon. One of the major arguments of which Banned Rehearsal consists is that between "making a tape" and "recording an improvisation". In practice this often comes down to how cognizant we are of the microphone in our midst, or of the other mechanical aspects of recording sound, or of the mere fact that a sound we make now will be a recorded trace later (See BS 12 KEE NWM, above). Here we come down decidedly on the side of "recording an improvisation", working out a soundscape communally until each constituent is precise and distinct.

November 15, 2013
Reflektionen mit Christine Schornsheim und Clemens Goldberg

My German is only good enough to gather the topic of conversation (the various keyboards used in Ms Schornsheim's omnibus recording of Haydn keyboard works), and the patina of articulate consideration, but not the gist of it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 11, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 847 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

November 12, 2013
Silvertone 131112 - Keith Eisenbrey

An experiment - overdubbing a Silvertone hollow-body directly through a Fostex MR8.

November 14, 2013
Mitchell 131114 - Keith Eisenbrey

Last weekend an acoustic guitar walked itself over to my house. I think it has a bad pickup, so my attempt to record directly to the MR8 resulted in some heavily distorted noises that I rather liked. The link will take you to one of three quick riffs I made with them.

Sonata in C (Partita) Hob.XVI:1 - Haydn - Keith Eisenbrey

I still have some work to do.