Playlst

Recorded

December 1, 2018
Allemande - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

closer to clearly a dance than any of Bach's Allemandes are
being older

step kick step kick
do they all stem from the same root dance as the Polka?

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

Purcell liked the noise of it
up to his elbows in liking the noise of it

a shake (ornament) on shake (word) - very clever, Henry
wordpainting as blatant as possible, visceral even
as though that were so completely the point
but also distracts some from the little seminar the notes are engaged in, as notes

and then there's a Wind Machine!

Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

four clowns
each answering

to reprise is to vary
the activating symmetries

we suspect the non sequiturs
are not so non as all that

a lull? a lulling? a trap?
(left hanging in the attentive lurch)

definitely a trap
pizzicati ex machina

Caprice - Henryk Wieniawski - Itzhak Perlman, Janet Goodman Guggenheim [from Itzhak Perlman 
Live in Russia]

an encore
a remnant of the old Music Is For Fun vogue

East Arkansas Shout - Sammie Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

picked that up (the vogue above)
a draft or older version of the land of a thousand dances
pre mashed potato too

Carabina Trienta-Trienta - Epifiana Sanchez and group [from The Art of Field Recording vol. 1]

There is a slow flange quasi-arpeggiation effect concerning the placement of the strum sound upon the strings within the presence of the recording. tape wobble or intent?

December 4, 2018
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - The Sonics [from Boom]

a reimagined throwback

Punk and its progeny being a back to the roots music, from the very root of it arises a propensity to revisit older songs and goose 'em. From this trope comes some of my favorite covers and moments: The Stranglers Walk On By; The Dictators I Got You Babe; and (live): Peterman I Can't Help Falling In Love With You; and Red Ribbon That's All Right Mama.

stripping the sheen from the 50's
bringing it home

Chordially (Improvisation) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

experimental
thinking with his hands
not a finished thing and clearly not a thing intended to be finished
melody notes perched uncomfortably on lumpy chord chairs

Eliza Act I - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

oh golly this goes back

in the year between my graduation from the UW and my wandering off to the East
Aaron, occasionally Neal, Dave Jones, and I would gather in the basement of Dave Jones's place north of the University and record improvisations. Over the course of several such session we improvised an opera named after one of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The result is easily not all that wonderful, but it has its moments and anticipates many of the activities that came to dominate Banned Rehearsal a few years later.

the overture
intoned trombone, bass clarinet, conch? ceremonial solemn
text erupts
fairy tales

If improvisation's purpose is to elicit pieces of music then we explode that idea by trying to elicit a particular known genre of music, demonstrating just how far off things can get. And it isn't due to us choosing the wrong kind of music to elicit. We do it in numbers.

we didn't have amplification per se to play with so we moved the microphones around instead
competitive cleverility
all of a sudden I realize
hey I'm in control here

December 6, 2018
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

fancy melismas and choral drums

Banned Rehearsal 275 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]


a piano, so, Toad Hall

as none was available at that time at headquarters
thumbpiano mixed to have presence
J operates a spring contraption and is cyclically quite amused
drum and brass with flabby lip
the organ transformed suddenly into The Show
or was that the Aaronsynth?
going on for the cause of why not go on
awake!
or drift more
fat finger tunes
some tiny whisper whistles imitating cassette ghosting
J squawks discovering agency
double double reed thingy designed for the desire to be at two with one's self
pre-toddler delight
squeamish should turn their ears aside
diaper is being changed

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 3, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 971 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt


December 4-5, 2018

How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude-ish arrangement of the hymn tune Foundation in July of 2001, the last of three little organ pieces. For the last decade plus now I've been going through all my keyboard pieces to be sure I have acceptable recorded documentation. They all work pretty well for piano too, though this one requires some carefully applied sostenuto pedal in three or four spots.

Playlist

Live

November 11, 2017

Amy Denio
Truth is Up for Grabs
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Pre: Neal tells us that 2/3 of Neal's & Anna's wedding brass ensemble is participating. Packed! All the chairs are brought out. Big enough to be a murmuring, luscious in this space.

The governing vibe is of a pit orchestra, rather than an art orchestra. That is, there is no concerted attempt on the part of the performers to transcend themselves and become else than a group of musicians playing this music.

Full tilt expression, nothing held back, nor humor nor sorrow nor low nor high nor ought nor else.

How they end (the songs): not quite abrupt(ly).

Recorded

November 11, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 620 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2001]


Snare drum springs soften the sax. I revisit an old thought. Weighty massive thoughts dimple the ground. Tattered banners bothered in a chilly wind. Dampers off the strings prolong sax bleats room eloquence. Frivolity kept away. Every thought is a palpable mass.

O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

As (though) recorded live in a big living room.

Banned Rehearsal 787 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2011]

bits of sound barnacle the border
hints of vastness in the near distance
held back
drums guitar and bass a rock band
in the same sense we were ever a jazz band
"banned rehearsal" pronounced "scribble scribble"
eloquence feeds back has been trying to escape into glory
irreproducible results Neal sings!
It Was a Monday Evening
narrative church rhythm thank you very much
done found some groove we never found before and never will again
pure

Bulleya - Amit Mishra, Shipa Rao [from Bollygood Volume 2]

Values production value. What is this without its bells and whistles? Full throttle is the base line setting.

November 12, 2017

Your blogger, ca 2001

Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Recorded so that, or is it always that, harpsichord sound is more specifically localized than piano. It is lighter, pointier. Immense intellectual heft, lightly borne, tales within tales within could finish and be done several times but then continue on, again, into ravishing beauty.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

To be inside this fuguescape fuguemare fugeuedral aware of the granular harmony of the spirit.

2nd fugue like a chapel echoes the cathedral and looook! we can open up this wall and create a third midsize space - and finally 3rd fugue here's the choir with our Orgelmeister Kappelmeister - an architectural tour, all the sites singing. Surely if this had gone on JSB had a grander weirder place for it to get to than any such place as it had already been.

Karen and me, 1986

November 13, 2017
Lazy Drag - Thomas Morris [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Light touch on the beat at the start, allowing them to fatten it up or thin it out as needed. Patterns of same.

Columbia's Waters - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Conceit: this song is a job application in which many of WG's stock phrases are trotted out again. A window into a process of making.

For Minors Only - Chet Baker, Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Clearly, this track is a product, an object, quintessentially commercial.

Far and Wide - Brahms - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from A Musical Souvenir: The Lake Washington Singers Spring Concert (April 11, 1961)]

Some fine piano playing there, Joanne!

Hymnen - Stockhausen

Karen and Isaac, 1996

What is a theme within such a thicket?! A prop, a focus, a thread to follow, a placeholder: NOT THE SHOW.

I think to myself "this is the Stockhausen that got on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's." Extreme Ivesian quote festival. (I started composing about 10 years after this was made, and it only took me about 4 years to find it, for it to find me.) I spent a lot of time with it back in the day.

Sounds we follow as they variously incarnate and morph toward other veering incarnations.

Electronic music was what it is now, a bunch of folks playing with new toys. What sounds can we get on this? What are its sounds? Its voice? As it concerns radio: radio waves, invisible light, dark light, another dark, another sleep, another night, another wake. Front loaded: an active eventful texture, signals in transit, the harrowing descent, breathing human sleeping.

". . . nur eine Erinnerung": What does that actually do as an excuse for the böses Blut es gibt?

Some events are discrete moments, note-like - hard edged short events. Others are episodes of flange and sweep - long events. Flange-y buzz-hum-y waves rhythmed syllabically. We hear the timbre shift as a quasi-vowel shift. Thuds of war episode in third region where whistlers imitate the whole of what they are of in mimicry, in mimicry as a kind of abstraction. A full range of immediacy(ies) articulating murk.

November 14, 2017
Trust Me - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

The plea goes on and on circling inside around the instrumentals, pleading never ending changes.

Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

In a warm keyboard bath. Is it just me or did I really catch a partial quote of Bridge Over Troubled Water in the strings?

We're Desperate - X [from Wild Gift]

Structural density of the guitar/bass complex: leave space in the verse for the words, leave none in the chorus.

Banned Rehearsal 67 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]

In the little Greenwood half house, sneezing, heater, hooting: slide show? Conversational, sort of, in that we are doing activities and also being with each other as just folks a little bit. Bumping around is up front, music as such, in deep background. Woozy but not unpleasantly so. Making spaghetti, it sticks good. Slow swing dinner in B-flat minor. This is our trademark DING! from a junkshop in Kingston NY. The tape machine has an eraserhead button (still does, long unpushed). "I hope that was intentional or not." My dad shows up, must have been something to do with my passport. Karen may have moved up to live with Neal & Anna while interviewing. Tri-doxology, para-para-doxology (hindsight) a hindsight. It is very nice it just slips underneath the skin. Berry-ness is discussed. Wild sound on acoustic guitar.

Polly- Nirvana [from NevermindWordblurbs in exact syllabic count fitted into soundblurb segments with pitch trajectories, a partial song. (Schumann's inescapable ghost.)

Banned Rehearsal 432 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 1986]

Paradise

We try to get something to work. Got those wah-wah tech blues. Aaron's synth, I believe, we struggle with the extent of our tech-savvy: this has an "in" that fits the guitar patch cord, therefore if we plug in the guitar to it we will automatically get magnificence. At the time it seemed, oddly, that nothing was happening, that the guitar strumming had no effect on what was coming out of the synth. The jury is still out on it, but the sounds of us struggling with it are fabulous. "It is my firm belief that with five more synthesizers we could achieve total silence." And yet, between the synth, the Mighty Wurzlitzer, and our direct to cassette mastering, I wonder if any prog rock band has ever sounded as good? the Tintinabulary at its finest. We don't do nicety.

Banned Rehearsal 621 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2001]


Nothing to hear but you. You make the sound. In our digitally produced era there is more air between the sounds, which allows more expanse of surface with which to mess, more coast to invade. Plunks and hums tiny sounds of extreme interhearing. Down to pianississimo violin tremolo and small frame drum, ocarina moving between their soundboxes' resonances, articulating a shiver whistling in the dark.

November 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 698 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2006]


Testing the waters. It generally doesn't take much to get it going, inert as it is, (though it be), just takes the right gentle push prolonged just so long. After several false-like leads: snare drum, flute and buzz, but that also falters . . or wait, now it's moving. Reasons to hang in there. Seeping into other sounds groundwater invisible under cover of underground it sneaks past the carousel skimming the feedback fence, flirting with skimming it under cover of skimming past it we flirt under darkness with the broad light of it, of past days.

Goodbye Amsterdam - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

Relations among people occur in landscapes. How much we leave - its expanse of sorrow - when we leave each other. Gentle stutters in the guitar figures.

Banned Rehearsal 906 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2016]


Neal learns himself speaking. Tiny construction workers hammering miniature hammerings. Wallace watches o'er, duets across the continent with cowbell. Lightweight sphere rolls the texture of the drumskinhead amplified by circular tension applied. Copperpipe in syntheticfoam insulationtube squeak like balloons.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 12, 2017
Rain Traffic Crabby Crows - Keith Eisenbrey


Our best guess is that the crows were complaining about the rain.

November 14, 2017
Kitchen - Keith Eisenbrey


For the record: I didn't break anything.

November 15, 2017
Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey

I finished composing the first eight Études d'exécution imminent in May of 2014. In terms of the original chart this was the half-way point, but I needed a break to re-think myself, to consider where the composition of these had gotten me, so I took a self-imposed sabbatical from composition - indifferently observed: news of the death of J. K. Randall brought forth a response in the form of J, (September 2014), I was asked to contribute to Ben Boretz's Festschrift (Another, December 2014) and I arranged a traditional hymn tune for Karen to sing just after Christmas (Hail the Blest Morn) - altogether a fairly productive sabbatical. In the spring of 2015 I started working on these disassembled piece parts, which together constitute the 9th Etude, finishing in August, 16 months later. That was a long time for just a few notes, but I flatter myself they are densely packed. Arranged as in this (not quite perfect) performance, one after the other, the piece parts play out the re-writing of memory as it is remembered and its eventual, inevitable, loss.

Playlist

Live

March 11, 2017
Katya Kabanova - Leoš Janáček - Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

The plot and characters are strong, but it's the pitch work commands attention. Similar in approach to Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, but with sharper edges.

Recorded

March 12, 2017
Sweetheart O' Mine - Jelly Roll Morton [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

JRM plays a Lisztian trick with his pianism, in that it sounds like a transcription of music for a much larger ensemble.

Shout Sister Shout - Boswell Sisters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Boswell Sisters - Hats!

They arrange their voices like a horn section.

Oh Baby Maybe Someday -  Ivy Anderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement, orchestration, song-writing, and composition, are all identical activities. The only difference is social attitude.

Loose Lid Special -  Tommy Dorsey [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Big massed sound choirs. The instrumental soloists imitate singers.

This Subdues My Passion - Charles Mingus [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

I kept getting the feeling that the band was manipulating (lip-ipulating?) the sound of their instruments to imitate the sound of older recordings.

I've Got You Under My Skin - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Songbook]

'On the beat' in the sense of there being a sheer dance floor between his sound and the beat he's on. Crazy break-dance too, and not even a shred of effort is heard.

Symphony - Stefan Wolpe - Orchestra of the 20th Century, Arthur Wesberg

Imagine a troop of jugglers performing multiple game-based jugglings simultaneously, each juggler juggling not just what whirls in the air but their specific interior gang of characters, one for each game.

Beginnings are beginnings. Endings are where what it is happens to get lopped off.

The Mountains High - Dick and DeeDee

The development of electronic amplification allowed live sound to begin to duplicate what was only possible in the studio before - and for live sound and studio sound to imitate each other, inventing themselves along the way. Pretty fancy singing back there too.

Cinque Variationi - Luciano Berio - David Burge

Ann Peebles

The piano writing reminds me of Art Tatum, in its melodic superabundance, and of Thelonius Monk, in its unblinking clarity. Melodic variations at heart, but standing in for a single melody is a thicket of tunes, and of sets of nuanced weights and subtle angles.

I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down - Ann Peebles [from Original Funk Soul Sister The Best of Ann Peebles]

A political knife attack from the past. Damn she's good!

Concerto - Walter Piston - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard Quartet, Gerard Schwarz

I believe I recorded this off the radio some many years back. Its 'concerto-ness', that is, the sense of its contrasting sounds, is not a contrast of opposition, or of vying equals. Rather, the quartet provides a new sound region within the orchestral sound, now hidden, now revealed - and further in each quartet member reveals individual smaller regions within the quartet sound region within the whole sound. It's also got some lip smacking pizzicato passages.

Revereware - Keith Johnston, J. K. Randall - [from Inter/Play]

Reed and no reed. That old familiar Crumar sound slowly molding the bend. There is a sense of proximity play. Each sound source exists in specific relation to the listening mic. Hide and go seek. Each proximal node carefully nurtured for coexistence. Didjeridu makes the Seattle Stu connection, I presume. If one had a choice in all the world's musical history for who would be the best person to be in charge of your pitch-bend wheel, it would have to be Jim. Were pitches ever bent to so vivid a drapery of sound?

March 16, 2017
Graceland - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

Attributions jumbled and uncertain. Who says what when? The instrumental rhythm, oh so impeccable, appears to be solvable, but then one wonders.

Banned Rehearsal 243 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Recorded hot, small instruments scraped banged and rummaged through. Clearly not great music, but just as clearly intently engaged, and in the clear intent of being only and purely intently engaged.  || the Jaymar before it fell apart!! Ah how we miss thee!! || Getting to a place where, in music, if it were speaking it was doing, would be speaking in tongues.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 13, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 930 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Steve constructs a tiny set of drums on top of the xylophone. Karen revisits the bug guitar. Keith roams about what catches his eye. Aaron provides treble trombone talking points. Neal cuts it up in pieces.

Playlist

Preface

"Blake proposed seeing not with the eyes but through the eyes -- not, that is, with the limits of the natural organ as habitual frame but through an open channel. Same with ears, the open channel, passing through "the doors of perception." This stance is listening through sound to the core, as if the actual sound were a leak from another dimension asking to be tracked back to an original, which, however, never shows itself." George Quasha - "Hearing Speare Hearing Through Sounds Themselves", The Open Space Magazine Issue 10 Fall 2008

Texts

Recorded

August 7, 2016

Kid Ory

You're Next - Louis Armstrong - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr [from Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens]

How it moves from its empty foreboding chunk chunk opening harmony into summer weather, as simply as remembering what's for dinner that night.

Creole Rhapsody - Duke Ellington - Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, Freddie Jenkins, Arthur Whetzel, Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Fred Guy, Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The opening musics reenter after the virtual record-flip break through a fissure made sneakily by the pattery snare drum, which leads the finish, thereby tying together an otherwise episodic amble.

Romeo and Juliette, Premiere Tableau - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

Prokofiev lives in the troubled harmonies that occupy the middles of his phrases. Squarely in the Berliozian Romantic tradition, the music both amplifies and inhabits the dramatic scene.

Jig Walk - Pee Wee Russell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Pretty sure it is just drums, piano, and clarinet, but the clarinet uses what are nearly multiphonics, with an assist from nicely particular registrations of the piano's chords, to impersonate backing horns.

You Go To My Head - Sarah Vaughan - Sarah Vaughan, Clarence Brereton, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Bill Kyle, John Kirby, Bill Beason [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Long vocal line with surprise rhymes sprawling over a sumptuously cushioned accompaniment.

Red Rodney

Mark - Red Rodney [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Let's move this along boys, we have a lot of notes to fit into three minutes.

August 9, 2016

Havana Moon - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

Just under the radar, CB's voice relaxes into a smoky smooth bluesy basso at the ends of phrases.

Hide Away - Freddy King [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

In a way the Beatles did this track a loving disservice by referencing it so often. It's tricky to hear for itself.

Kicks (Remix) - Paul Revere and The Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

A pretty great song weakened by the author's message lyrics.

One Of These Days - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

A seventies dorm room Bolero.

Mi-Parti - Witold Lutosławski - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jacek Kasprzyk

Clouds of strings circle and envelop, or call forth and let evaporate, the unsustainable potent violence of the dead, ascending in glowing ash.

Elimination Dancing - Bow Wow Wow

Unimaginable without the virtual stage show, costume changes, the works. Power punk glitz.

The Boy In The Bubble - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

Turns around on itself so many times you would almost think it wasn't meant to be not a lullaby.

In Bloom - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

A canvas of solid colors, not primary, in dynamically proportional blocks and stripes. Strong and messy verticals.

August 10, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 416 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, March 1996


We gather our tools, weigh them in hand, cross-calibrate, coalesce into: e-guitar, tenor sax, bass line (on the mighty W), drums, t-bone, various percussionals. Pressure is applied from angles low in the mix :: slowly squeezing violin and cornet out of guitar and sax, a residue of drone coats the wreckage. A late hurrah.

The Farthest Shore (Kalessin) - Keith Eisenbrey


This is a midi generated realization of a flute trio I wrote in 2001 for Sarah Bassingthwaighte, who took it to some little town in Russia with a bunch of flute students. It was apparently performed as a flute nonette, though the only record I have of it is the program with my name transliterated into their alphabet. I looked around for a scan of it, but was unable to find it. Alas, my sound files are quite well organized and indexed, but the image files are not. More to do.

In Session At The Tintinabulary

August 8, 2016
Gradus 295 - Neal Kosály-Meyer 

Playlist

Recorded

Preface

"A note as a sound has suchness. But the note all-alone has no self. Only when it is in the world (as such) of music, it disappears as it participates into "higher" musical units, such as musical phrases. When is a note a sound? When it is an utterance?" - Robert Morris [from "the detail of the pattern is movement", Open Space 19-20 - fall 2015/spring 2016]

Texts

April 23, 2016
Night Blooming Voices -  LaDonna Smith, Wally Shoup, Davey Williams, Jim Willett, Trish McCarl

As I came of age in music, during the '70s and '80s, the DIY medium of choice was the cassette tape. I understand they are even making something of a hip niche-market come-back. Imagine that!

Someone seems to be playing a massive musical saw, capable of deep swooping sounds whose vibrations are so slow one could nearly count them. Everybody else is squeaking balloons, or one massive room-sized balloon. Later they agree to a sound proposal, pulling toward it all together in order then to twist off from each other in multi-bodied fountain arcs. This would kill as the soundtrack to a slow-motion film of people smooching, steering just between horrifying and hilarious. It weaves and finds, weightless. Spoon stirs in a glass, or a marble rolled around? At just the right moment - Stand back! She's gonna BLOW! Banshriek's holiday, roll the coaster. (I would love to see this acted out). Second soundtrack idea: an addled single-tracking-shot through the brains and thoughts of coffee shop denizens. Fluid seeping into subgenres of Gesamtkunstwerk.

April 25, 2016
One8 - Cage - Michael Bach

A compositional discipline for the performer. Pitch, dynamics, color aplenty, but only as placeholders to fill durations. Big dots or long bars in an empty field. The score is to be followed, like instructions, rather than responded to, as a stimulus. The unit of measure is the bow draw. The silences are pushed forward, but they end up uniform, the negative of sounds for which there is no particular reason to be. Or, It attempts to put sounds into a piece of music that are not the sorts of sounds that could be in a piece of music, for in order to be those sorts of sounds they would need reasons, intentions, activators and activations, all of which have been proscribed. The whole is an aural episode without signal of beginning middle or end, every location is the same location. What sort of virtual space is that? The formless and void?

April 26, 2016
Down Around Her Ankles - Pomegranate

As is that which follows, this is another of the rescued records. A practiced clean drum beat, over which the guitar and vocal pull away separately. What I suppose is the bridge relaxes the intensity a bit, functioning a little like a tonal move to the subdominant. The vocal rhythmic play is held to the drum beat by a tight elastic grip, like an industrial strength rubber band, or strong magnetic force.

Love Me Till The Sun Shines - Fantasy Four

Unfancy. A classic drum bass guitar vocal sound.

Wartime Prayers - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

For as much production value as persists or is insisted upon here, it never makes this a polished song, and certainly not a strong poem, instead it places the song's vulnerability into a pronouncedly glaring light.

audio found in the silent 8mm home movies of the Ring Family - Christopher DeLaurenti

Recorded media are notations, intentionally or not. A signal is a notation, however the signal arrives or from whence it derives. As it is derived here, it is an artifact of revelation, the sound of a found signal (re)transcribed mechanically. From hidden to uncovered, like bugs under a rock. I'm not sure how much Christopher edited the material, but I hope the answer is "very little" or "none at all".

Patrick O'Keefe at Seattle Composers' Salon on January 8, 2016 - Patrick O'Keefe

Patrick offered 3 short piano bagatelles. Studies in multiples of musics, circling warily, or playfully, keeping each other's eyes on the other's eyes. I like these even better upon re-audition.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 25, 2016
Gradus 289 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Of subsets within, and transformations of subsets within by re-iteration within transformed subsets within.

April 28, 2016
The Drink I Didn't Have Last Night Is The Drink I Shoulda Had - Your Mother Should Know (as St. Rage) - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We recorded drum, acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals, and lead guitar tracks.

Playlist

Recorded

December 27, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 414 [February 1996, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

These clothes do not fit. Something is about to itch. Cabin fever. Stubborn drums. Finally boils over. Returns to the sullen wall.

Lauda Anima (midi version) - Keith Eisenbrey


When I finish a piece I usually like it pretty well, but I am always pleased when they get better upon re-listening. The sense I have is that this piece builds itself a delicately balanced ladder, one stick at a time, slowly and precariously ascending into darkness. It manages to live pretty comfortably in midi, but I will always regret that there is no recording of Marcus Oldham's superb performance of it at St. Marks a decade or so ago.

Outrageous - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

Paul gets down to the funk.

December 28, 2015
Qixingshan - Benjamin Boretz - Momenta Quartet [on Open Space 32]

Uncanny intervals, inexorable stillness, ape rage exhausting itself on an empty landscape.

O voi, troppo felici - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

I kept getting the sense that all these chromatic shifts would suddenly come into focus and be completely regular, if only one could find exactly the right point from which to hear it.

Konzert in F Major BWV 1047 - J.S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

Such a small ensemble to make so many disparate sounds. It is as though there are more groupings than are mathematically possible. The secret is that he treats each register of each instrument as a new instrument, so that any two have among them a wealth of possibilities to work with. Thankfully, Herbert doesn't over-inflate his ensemble much for this one, so it comes across more like chamber than orchestra music, which is all to the good.

Petites Pieces "La Capricieuse" Wq. 117 #33 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Breaking the stranglehold of baroque practice in the name of private amusement.

December 29, 2015
Quartet in D Major Op. 17 #6 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet
Concerto in C minor K. 491 - Mozart - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Malcolm Bilson

Baroque combinations interrupted by articulating cadences. The soloist's opening salvo drives a wedge into a crack in the rhythm.

December 30, 2015
String Quartet in F major, Op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

The politics here are of intimates, not nations - familial social.

Playlist

Recorded

April 28, 2015
You Don't Know Like I Know - Sam and Dave - [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock and Soul]

The sound most upfront in the mix is tambourine. Vocals aren't buried, but they're within the sound, and seem to drift a little further back by the end.

Recital - Luciano Berio - Cathy Berberian

hiding behind not hiding behind, or how we forget the puppeteer.

Concerto for String Quartet, Brass, Winds & Percussion - Walter Piston - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz [recorded from a radio broadcast]

A nice enough piece, by the book.

She's Got A Way - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]
Under African Skies - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

I guess I'm a sucker for essentials.

Michael Leese

WYSIWYG - Michael Leese - Trinity Chamber Players

Ages ago, it seems, I was active on the classical music forum on CompuServe and got acquainted with Micheal. He and I shared some sounds and then lost track of each other as the internet morphed under us. I was saddened to learn, as I looked him up this afternoon, that he passed away a few years ago, far too soon, at the age of 49.

The whole stays put.
Through it details flow, either pitchvertical or pointblankhorizontal.

Distance, Dance, Discern - Ryan Hare [from Intrada]

The relation between what is electronic-produced and what is acoustic-recorded is here uneasy. the EP is in a big space or makes a miniature me. AR is practice-room flat. Each pushes the other to be the real, neither vanquishes.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 26, 2015
Duet 150426 - Keith Eisenbrey

This Sunday's improvised solo duet was on a child-sized solid body electric guitar and a softball sized ocarina.

April 27, 2015
Banned Telepath 33 150427 Seattle
Banned Telepath 33 150427 Somerville
Banned Rehearsal 884 150427 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer (in Seattle); Aaron Keyt (in Somerville)


Aaron's portion was delivered with a warning that MIT Press publishes some interesting lists.