Playlist

Preface

"Everyone really knows that objectivity in the descriptive criticism of musical experience isn't even really a coherent idea, let alone a real possibility. So it's too bad that so much writing lusts strenuously to assert that kind of authority, so that it misses the real, available, and far superior opportunity to share creative images of those unique (and literally, but not metaphorically, unsharable) episodes of "secondary consciousness" (as Elliot Handleman calls it) we encounter in any immersed listening."

- Benjamin Boretz - "The Universe of One, And the Music of the Other"  

from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020

Texts

Live

December 18, 2021

Neal Kosály-Meyer

Finnegans Wake, Chapter 8 - James Joyce

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

This was the first live public event I have attended since February of 2020, and it looks like it may be the last for some time to come yet. 

I'm glad we went and I got a good recording, but I didn't take try to take notes in the dark. 

The river chapter.

From Recent Arrivals

December 24, 2021

Sans Souci - Peggy Lee [from Lover]

travelogue fantasy song with good enough Latinish feel
would work well in a Bond film cabaret scene

Am I Blue - Ray Charles [from The Genius of Ray Charles]

with studio big band strings and Hollywood style backup singers
going full crooner

Discipline - Sun Ra [from Space is the Place]

it moves as though there were chord changes underneath
but I suspect some larger scale ingredients are thrown in the pot as it simmers

Recorded

December 19, 2021

String Quartet #3, Op. 30 - Arnold Schoenberg - LaSalle Quartet

1
the slower moving lines try to edge into the crowd in the street
we're all waiting now
the light has changed
we move with the crowd
as like a crowd we move
with our crowd
in our bones

2
in our homes
a quiet scene
so as not to be overheard
the crowd is all around

3
gossip spreads into the chattering crowd
the machines have driven us indoors
a city music
a city of small rooms

4
a danse macabre
crowd of bones
nobody can be comfortable

Liza (Take A) - Art Tatum [from Classic Early Solos]

the tune
under stress
has been taken apart and reassembled
slashed with notes
plastered with other tunes' bits
cranked really fast
16 fps at 24 fps

I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord - Rev. McGhee [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

the question arises
how is a white boy to understand this?

Warmin' Up a Riff - Charlie Parker [from The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes]

this is understood as straight-up intellectual
the parts that songs were made of
atomized further

Take a Little Walk With Me - Boyd Gilmore [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

no blues is or can be self-contained
they are social to their own kind

Mona - Bo Diddley [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo and the Beat]

he sounds so young!

Spudnik (Surf Rider) - The Ventures [from Walk Don't Run]

cool spy rhythm
dresses well

Soul Man - Sam and Dave [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

great attention is paid to outward appearance
armor

Rock and Roll - Led Zeppelin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

is he gonna get to the mashed potato
the 70s hearkening back to the 50s
Happy Days Crocodile Rock and all that
I was in middle and high school in the 70s
and suffered through several 50s Days
we were encouraged to dress up in 50s costume
thereby encouraging fashion sense
I resisted

December 20, 2021

Symphony #7 "A Sea Symphony" - Howard Hanson - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

snide preamble: he missed an opportunity to call it "A Symphony at Sea" 

La Mer it ain't
from a spot firmly on shore
a dreary affair
obligatory storm scene in the 3rd act
Symphony at Sea
Snore on Shore

Ever - Flipper [from Generic]

laid out like an ad for a patent medicine
existential self-disgust played for a lark

December 21, 2021

Assembly Rechoired 14 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [January 31, 1987]

Keith Eisenbrey · Assembly Rechoired 14 870131

I read from Kierkegaard
Karen plucks a kalimba
and discusses descants in the United Methodist Hymnal
it might be me plucking the kalimba 

the self is a relation which relates itself to it's own self
Karen sings some hymns
a derived constituted relation
if the human self had constituted itself
a question could have arisen
nervous self-deception laboring into a deeper despair

Low Beat Jingle - The Young Fresh Fellows [from It's Low Beat Time]

a trumpet plays a few notes
after a shaker and a bell then a trombone
lasts all of a few seconds
never the same twice

Banned Rehearsal 460 "Analog" - Pete Comley, Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2, 1997]

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 460 970802

Pete was recording us on DAT (digital audio tape)
but this is my version
analog signal direct to magnetic tape cassette
we'll catch Pete's version soon 

Isaac fusses
almost a year old
we provide a constant low-level micro din
a guitar sneaks in under a softly blubbering brass
probably trombone
also sax 

to some extent we're on our best behavior
being digitally captured and all
on edge
held back
making sound
for the purpose of having that sound recorded
starts to get somewhere in the last 10 minutes or so
as we diminish into somnolential putters
finally able to focus
we scratch

{from my journal entry of March 28, 2005:

attempts made to emerge from a trombone
the audio equivalent
to the visuals
of the play
in which all are verbally polite
but expressive of the unbounded hostility
on a visual cue level
a gentle fast funmaker rhythm
quiets things down
trombone
low ominous
of what grew before
yet again
contextually now 

squalls explode
sharp attack entrances
quick to take offence
a recurring thematic low drone
from which emerges}

One Beat - Sleater-Kinney [from One Beat]

having fun
with the ah-ee
diphthong
and
the oh-öö töö 

not sure what the words are
the diphthong rhythm drowns them out

Consider the Birds 36 - Keith Eisenbrey [February 3, 2007]

this one is shy
its regularity is difficult to grasp

Tune for Bobbie - Elaine Barkin [from Open Space 46]

a tune of violin sounds
descends into our room of drums
achingly brief

I'll Shed A Tear Every Day - Your Mother Should Know [from Demos February 23, 2017]

I love the misbalance 

too much snare
not enough back up vocal
every part of the drums
is on a different plane
the guitar is tiny

December 22, 2021

O Mistris Myne, Fvb. 66 - William Byrd - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the sense of what counts as metrical balance
is significantly other
than in the 18th Century practice
our ears have become so accustomed to
and certainly
different than modern industrial practice
the whole phrase is full of significance
its parts are proportioned
rather than balanced as such

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in G minor - Johann Sebastian Bach - Sviatoslav Richter

it floats
it is rooted

Sonata in G Major, Kk. 153 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

open ended balancing act
as soon as phrase balance was invented
it was subverted
it may have been devised as a tool for subversion

Concerto in D Major, Wq. 43/5 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi

hot take
the orchestra intro and the first solo
do not need to be in the same affect 

here the orchestra begins with a slow movement from deep inside
the solo is having none of it
2 opens
the solo both shares and redirects the orchestra's trajectory
they turn each other
the movement's flow
a single tonal whole
it ends without a flashing applause sign

Mass in C Major, Op. 86 - Ludwig van Beethoven - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Colin Davis, Christiane Eda-Pierre, Patricia Payne, Robert Tear, Kurt Moll

Kyrie on a lifting scale
or within a lifting world
pressure is applied from below
a new plane
no matter the struggle 

I'm not overly enamored of the sound on this recording
the orchestra has little definition within its sound
and there is a certain sameness about the choral sounds
it's like the sound of the recording is acting out the Mass in C
it may be partly that the chorus and orchestra and space are too large for the piece
there is a lot of articulative detail that gets lost in there
a shame since this is really an interesting piece
if you could hear it

December 23, 2021

Mazurka in B minor, Op. 30 #2 - Frédéric Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy

a key expands its breadth without budging

Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 (start) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer [recorded live at Gallery 1412, Seattle, on November 19, 2016]

this year (2016) he did 1 and 2 on the same evening
sir Tristram must be in the piano
the battle chapter
hurtle turtle
plethora of ululation
the corpse is outlaid
only a fadograph of a yestern sea
good rid hearing
mistletropes
a pretty nice kettle of fruit
make straight for Minos
really royally regally
Dooblong
Echoland
here now they are the fear of them annals of themselves
bloody wares
bloody wars
two sons at an hour were born to a goodman and his hag
blotty words
for Dublin
the copyist must have fled with his scroll
our ears
eyes of the darkness
euphonio saxo
a wrong story shortener
flick as flow flakes
stoop

Boll Weevil - Rabbit's Foot Williams [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

a song for addressing a force of nature
i.e. the Blues as a mode of prayer
this is really intense
as Otto the Repo Man says

Phonograph Blues - Robert Johnson [from The Complete Recordings]

repeatability
what evil have I done
a talk back 

"Beatrice, she got a phonograph / And it won't say a lonesome word"

You Got To Roll - David Honeyboy Edwards

just like a wagon wheel
articulation for us is not crucial
the greater power knows exactly what was said
you've got to get up Baby
by the light of the moon

Take This Hammer - Lead Belly [from Where Did You Sleep Last Night? - Lead Belly Legacy Volume 1]

carry't to the Captain
if he as's you
I'm gone
(cut off)

Begin The Beguine - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Song Book]

improvise upon or around /
re-compose

what's Cole Porter still about it
are the particulars of certain sequences of melodic segments and chord changes

Reet Petite - Jackie Wilson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

curious
was there a sudden change in the affordability of recording equipment
and of quality
after WWII
corresponding with an increased market
that is
was there an increase in the profitability of recorded songs
corresponding with the economic boom of the 50s
?

Blind Plowman - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [April 12, 1962]

secular (?) anthem
in the vein of mid-century triumphalist church music?
such a strange thing
grim comfort for the cold warriors?

Soul Kitchen - The Doors [from The Doors]

rock organ like
? and his Mysterians
still one place to go
secret alphabet
learn to forget what is said outright
what is sung above the organ's held tone
guitar brings it back down
to what is said
the clock says

Mother and Child Reunion - Paul Simon [from Paul Simon]

I remember early reviews of this
in which was bemoaned the loss of the high voice of Art
replaced by backup singers
But I think he was feeling hampered
by the lack of range afforded by the duet format

Jitterbug Waltz - Woody Shaw, Anthony Braxton, Muhan Richard Abrams, Cecil McBee, Victor Lewis [from The Iron Men]

DIY standard bearer
compose a recompose-able head

Sing Along! - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [from A Cassette Player]

a short figure
repeated with some percussion
and an occasional low tone
toward the end the figure drops
and elides
successive notes
jingle bells desultory

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 20, 2021

Banned Rehearsal 1041 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Ahava K, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1041 211220

the last noise session of 2021

December 24, 2021

Two-Part Invention in F minor - Gavin Borchert

This one features a repeated note figure
that wanders around the pitch field
and a slowly orbiting, more melodic line

Intermezzo in E-flat Major, Op. 116 #6 - Johannes Brahms

I could play it better I suppose,
but I think I'm done,
having other fish to fry

Anybody's Fingerbook, 2x2 (transpositional) B A - Keith Eisenbrey

the 3rd of many 

Keith Eisenbrey · 03 Anybody's Fingerbook 2x2 (transpositional) B A

2x2
refers to the size of the seed rotational array
(transpositional)
refers to the type of rotational array,
as opposed to (augmentational),
i.e. using addition as opposed to multiplication
B A
refers to unique paths through the array

Special Mention

My Dinner with Wallace

Much of my musical energy during the first year of the Pandemic went into producing this virtual recital of recent solo piano music by my long-time collaborator, Aaron Keyt, and by me. There are 9 reels total in the playlist, ranging from 10 to 20 minutes or so each, the whole stretching for just under 2 hours. I am quite pleased with the results, especially with how well I manage to illuminate the extraordinary "in-your-presence-alone" intimacy of Aaron's compositional voice.

Postscripts

::Consult the Oracle

time one has a spoilt I can't understand

it usual breakfast do you think it is

because I had perhaps that is how I

Reality Check::

more than one

monologue in the world

the ground wind sees

Playlist

 Preface

"Unlike you, I'm not personally frustrated by the current abasement and commoditization of the culture of music performance or that of art exhibition.

Because, some time ago, I decided to detach myself from the 'evils' of 'the culture' to find alternative psychic spaces where life choices and environmental effects are ontologized with a perspective that dis-reifies the irrelevant and renders it ineffective, while proactively reifying the qualities that are abundantly available to nurture the lifestyle which is desired. There's a confusion: 'art' ('music', 'concerts', 'museums', etc.) have symbolized an 'enlightened' ('elevated') lifestyle - they don't, anymore, as a general cultural phenomenon; but this doesn't mean that there isn't abundant stuff in our world which is nurturing to such a lifestyle; consider that at an earlier time, there were massive cultural phenomena which were non-nurturing (brothels and gambling palaces in Havana, Broadway musicals, bullfights in Madrid, bloated gourmands in Paris, mass-produced horse and dog races, charlatans doing magic and selling nostrums - & on & on) - but the presence of these phenomena did not appear to threaten the lifestyle of people who read books, listen to music, etc."

- Benjamin Boretz "outside out"  from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020

Texts

Recorded

August 7, 2021

Trombone Slide - Roy Palmer, Bob Hudson [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Playing within a style involves inventing a plausible style that it is played in,
an agreement among two
a collaborative invention.
Even if it is purported to be in a recognizable style
it is difficult to tweeze out which parts
we as listeners
are buying into
as signaling that style
without critique
even if such style can be named, there will be arguments.
That is,
these styles may not be as recognizable as you think,
except in extremely broad
(and thus next to useless)
terms.

When a Woman Loves a Man (take 1) - Art Tatum [from Classic Early Solos]

So where does that leave us with Art Tatum?
Held together less by style
than by personality
like spring in Seattle
if you don't like it
wait a few beats

All I Need Is You - Peggy Lee [from The Complete Recordings 1941-1947]

Benny Goodman and crew
provide the aural equivalent of her sparkly gown
and spotlight
high end
style and class

Sonata #1 - Pierre Boulez - Klara Komendi

this,
however,
was not yet a style at the time
a collection of qualities of gestures
figures persisting for arbitrary durations
resolving into gesture set regions
coherence involves us convincing ourselves
that we have perceived an individual thing
out there in our experience
it doesn't involve figuring it out
in any more technical sense
at least not necessarily

Better Late Than Never - Buster Pack and His Lonesome Pine Boys [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

scribble fiddle
banjo twiddle
up tempo
hoe down dance

Don't Forbid Me - Pat Boone [a Rescued Record]

too many more verses
and this could get adult 

good time to switch gears and sing a chorus
ramp it up
bluff and switch

Veni Jesu - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [April 10, 1962]

the style of this one soft sells itself

Baby I Love You - Aretha Franklin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

her band supplies the hip english
style solidly built

Lolly Too Dum - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [from Betty's Picks]

threat to never get married
a girl in my position
don't wait too long
fancy show tune type

Roman Nights - Meco [a Rescued Record]

all light show precious little else
sample ready

August 9, 2021

Book of Windows, Side B (820804) - Keith Eisenbrey - Jill Borner, Keith Eisenbrey, Bruce Huber [recorded in a common area at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, August 4, 1982]

Crumar is the ground
upon which is etched
the electric guitar
the text
wafts through like smoke
the Crumar's slowly shifting patterns
terrain bouldery
piled moraine
earth air and soft water
light and prying ice
footing not secure
a field of ankle breakers

This was an important work for me to have done (for me), not exactly a dead end.

Sound Examples for "A Tonal Model of an 'Atonal' Piece - Steve Larson

voice
singing solfeggio
(fixed do?) I think
and piano
and fine examples they are too
they like fa
a Schoenberg song

Banned Rehearsal 293 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [May 29, 1992]

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 293 920529

flutes and wooden thumps
the crows outside this evening are heading home
John is near speech
pot lids make quite a racket
so there is singing and hominine chatter
tambourine rhythm
brief
partly regular
regular enough
so that irregularity shows
speaking as an activity
is prefatory to the lexicon
patterns of expressing expression
are there in babble
sounds like the Big Red Bag of Fun
piano
must mean Toad Hall
sail boats pound
pout
tap tap tap tap
shake
bong goes the bell
elsewise we have become quiet
with lots of shifting around
tins and lids
a whistle is heard
more fipple flute than ocarina
John sits hard on a microphone
we bong more bells
and rub lids
John is a helpful little dude
coda of doom
we wandered off somewhere

{{ from my journal entry of December 27, 1994 }} ::

revolvular metal scrape
HOO!
Dance Dramatic peering up onto a tabletop of sound
sibilant bells
clicking like water dripping
like elemental sounds heard prior to cognition
preverbal
just like John
or at the turning point
just verbal
struggling articulation
revolving back to where the potlids began
the Potlidiad

August 10, 2021

Dig Me Out - Sleater-Kinney [from Dig Me Out]

XXA XXB CDEFGH . . .
schematic lyric structure
a switch
ends as it begins
guitar

Work / Architecture / Unity / And / The - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded on April 7, 2021]

performed as a continuity
but could be finessed (the gaps)
weighing the balance of time as experience
each segment has its internal tempo
and the gaps could be listening more carefully
to those tempi
there may be no right way to play it 

cool!

The Friend - Low Hums [from Sounds of Speakers]

lives up to the name of the band
a vibe for a mood
for an image
some cymbals
a synth
hand drums
below it all
the sea floor bass
crows are on the move
wordless

Gradus 205 - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 6, 2012]

Many A-nats
both slats
this piece lives in this room
its resonance occupies this space

autopedagogic
teaching one's feet
to climb the steps
agogically 

clock time
history
nor time line
history
are granular enough
or round enough
to accommodate
(a) musical event(s)
nor any

pitch space image is not location space image
an effort might be made to mitigate their interference
so that where an event is
or emanates from
doesn't obscure where it lands
in the image of pitch space

{{ from my journal entry of February 6, 2012 }} ::

hints of Bs 7th
[NB presumably I was hearing the upper harmonic of one of the low A nats]
odd it should take so long

Alleluia - Margie Palmer [from Make a Joyful Noise]

[NB - Margie is a cousin on my Mom's side of the family, this is from a private recording]

McAbee voice similar to my Mom's but as a Soprano

August 11, 2021

Saint Thomas Wake, Fvb 36 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

Did they ornament their vocal music too
when they sang?
In practice if not in notation?
It may sound like aimless noodling to our ears,
but their aims were not ours
those are precise and individual noodlings

Symphony Sacrae II, Op. 10 14 "Verlieh uns Frieden genädlich" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana

surface continuity is not his bag
there is a thread
but the terrain it winds through is tricky
there are gaps

Suite in G Major, BuxWV 240 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

the voices stop
hold up
to be sure
their fellow voices can be clearly heard
sometimes
hurry to catch up
everybody gets to the end of the trail

"Lobt Gott, ihr Christen, allzugleich", BWV 732 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Michael Chapuis

played first plain
but with cadential ornamentation
then played plain
then played full fancy
with more of that cadential ornamentation

Sonata in A-flat Major, Kk. 127 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

threads aplenty
but they are abandoned with abandon
picked up later
get stuck in loops

L'Ernestine, Wq. 117/38 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi

in a lyrical 3 meter
songlike
a teaching piece?

Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI: 12 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

also (like the CPEB above) performed on clavichord
phraseological head rhymes keep us from wandering too far

August 12, 2021

Rondo in A Major, K. 386 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardner, Malcolm Bilson

call it a rondo and everyone will know it starts at home base
(attend the immediately repeated notes in each figure)
(and where within each figure they sit)
(another thread to tie it)
(you may applaud now)
(hire me if you like)

Theme and Variations in F Major, Op. 34 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

spacious theme with room to breathe
lovely lines
interesting Feng Shui
loosely limbed
tightly sinewed
good bones : gracious
in a way that neither the Eroica nor Diabelli sets are

declines to process
accepts to enjoy

returns the theme burnished but unsullied
doubled
bow put on
among his more civilized compositions

Sonata in D Major, Op. 106 - Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Romantic or proto-so
in the sense that it is modeled on Romantic opera
someone is singing
but they aren't fighting their own means
like Beethoven did
or subverting it
like Chopin does
one would enjoy this
as one would one's favorite number
from the show last night
here's the ingenue's boudoir scene
brushing her hair
somebody put florid in the water
scene with the chambermaid
somebody is hiding behind the arras
shenanigans transpire

Mazurka in C minor, Op. 30 #1 - Frédéric Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy

each register has its own ideas
about how the figuration understands the key
nearest analog: Scarlatti?

Klavierstücke, Op. 118 - Johannes Brahms - Julius Katchen

1
a strong step
then a stumble
meter play in long lines

2
Aaron's Intermezzo 
shorter lines
that build and fold inward
bivalent meter
complex in several dimensions

3
let's get muscular and manly
but with tender hearts
after all we once were sentimental

4
anxiety and abruptness

5
peace
and tranquil thoughts
happy memories
be gone dark corners

6
darkening skies
in the night
has it come to this
pathetic end
Manfred?

Soir de fete, Op. 32 - Ernest Chausson - Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson

buildup upon buildup
hype
excitement
the fete-ands now in their own places
preparing
such pretty gowns
celebration of fashion and society
(just wait
the Sacre is right around the corner)
pious dreamer
heart pittapat though it mittamat
back to the ballroom
such a lovely evening out here in the moonlight

August 13, 2021

Bill Bailey - Arthur Collins [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

blackface as desire
desire to be what
black?
goes to great lengths
to make laughable
the image
of black
that they share for us

but desire
is desire 

even when disguised or denied
like 10 year-old boys pulling girls' pigtails

Poeme-Nocture, Op. 61 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

huge registral range for both the bass and treble
any part of the harmony
nearly
can be in any part of the registral space
uses the whole keyboard freely
sensitively
inner part voice leading
slippery as wind puffs

Postscripts

::Consult the Oracle

league stacks along with all the bigs he was

probably offed he wasn't rubbed right likes

Stalin chances of age surviving that

Reality Check::

through matrix

trace result

sand paper

Playlist

Preface

"In short, the composer who has presumed to speak reveals himself in the guise of a speaker who is compelled to compose, with words." Martin Brody "The Age of Milton" Open Space Magazine Special Issue 14 Spring 2012

Texts

Recorded

June 20, 2017

Aku (Bard Chapel Version) - Keith Eisenbrey

Kingston Bridge, ca 1982

Aku exists in several versions, none of them the pristine digital archival copy that might have existed had I had the know-with-all in 1981 to imagine such a thing. The best copy for which I had playback capability was the cassette copy made for me by the listening library folks at the University of Washington. It was this copy that I took with me to Annandale-on-Hudson in 1982 and played for Ben Boretz and my fellow students. Ben thought it could use some space around it so Bruce Huber loaned me the borry of a guitar amp and a second cassette deck, and a couple of hours, so we could play it into the chapel and record the results. By the time I ripped it to digital the recording had deteriorated somewhat, causing a certain amount of wobble.  A long story whose point is simply that Aku, as a personality, seems to actively seek out noise. Perhaps this is why we get along so well.

Exploration of the space-noise continuum. Parts of partials lag behind other parts of partials. Speeds of speaking. The speculative purpose of composition by design is, one hopes, to elicit, out of its designed complexity, unforeheard, undesigned wonders, such as these. Not for the faint of heart. Awesomely cruddy. Puts up a hell of a fight || flicker of light on water || durations hang past rational valuation.

Hey, Mr. Rain (version 1) - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

Callling down the powers from above, a rain dance in song. Feature: a far more subtle tempo shift than in Heroin.

Banned Rehearsal 247 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

Near Burns, Oregon 1990

Candles burn in the barn fly attracted to flame becomes the wick stories in rhythm sipping around the edge of rhythm's gloss and falling in drunk being drunk. Radio: not atonement theology, but atonement pornography. The radical onslaught. Though even here a compositional tactic: wait till "A" has been forgot then spring "A" on you again and again, playing with the rhythm of forgetting and expectation. Richly sonorous affront on all fronts to professionalism's hegemony. It is important to cease thinking in marketable chunks, sound bites, convenient 12 packs.

June 22, 2017

Heart Attack - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Almost perfect! Cut the vocal before the last 5 words remind us what song we are hearing and you've got it. Fine Feature: Chorus has a shrill hook nearly unrecognizable as vocal in pedigree.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 10, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170610 Anchorage A - Aaron Keyt

June 18, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170618 Anchorage B - Aaron Keyt

June 19, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170619 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Banned Rehearsal 937 170610-19 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Steve's Guitar (one of many)

I tried something a bit different in mixing the telepaths together. Rather than plopping Aaron's contributions down in the middle somewhere I simply looped them over the top of our porch session. All Aaron all the time! I figured they came so far to be here they ought to be given several contexts.

Playlist

Live

May 13, 2017

Gamelan Pacifica presents

Lou Harrison at 100 Years:

The Seattle Connection

featuring Gamelan Pacifica and Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

directed by Jarrad Powell

with guests:

Heather Bentley, viola and violin

Jennifer Caine Provine, violin

Paul Taub, flute

Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Maria Scherer Wilson, cello

Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

May Rain (1941)

Gending Park Chokro (1976)

Threnody for Carlos Chavez (1978)

Pathetan Wantah, laras pelog pathet lima (in remembrance of Lou)

Ladrang Epikuros (1981-82)

Air in G Minor (1947)

Končerto por la Violono kun Perkuta Orkestro (1959-1940)

timbre

mix at

certain edge

of the set of overtones

that particular sort of

slowing down we do at

ends - coded differently

as a structural cue

it turns everything

into a microtonal

landscape

the parts rely on each

other not just to

keep together but

to be what they

are within what

they are singing

a particular

way with the

sensibility of

how things wander

off

it is extraordinary how something so ordinary could be so extraordinary

drone

membrane of a soap-bubble lake

flute swallow-fleet

rippling swift across

Recorded

May 14, 2017

We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

What we want to hear from the cool: "Join the party!"

Banned Rehearsal 245 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Jump right in. magnetic tape echo spiral residue reconfigurable membrane morphing drum we can
hear our bodies moving by their occlusion of sound. Hangs in there for a good long time not being music. Try different settings! Fluid transit intention. Now we're plucking and plunking.

My Stuff - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Female point of view as such, in contradistinction to the more typical pop-sensibility: What from a male point of view the male would love to believe is the female point of view, but probably isn't, at least not straight out, without the slow poison.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

The third take from the Jack Straw recording session of May 2005. The reverb, strangely, confines the music, envelopes it, gives it skin and face.

327 - Black Horse [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In what social context is this appropriate? War? Riot? Steam Letting? The danger of raw emotional evacuation is that the steaming turd has a social effect, and it accumulates.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A recording we made at home in January of last year. What gives the composer in me pleasure is how the accompaniment spotlights the voice, following it closely, like an aura, a glow.

Paradox Bagatelles - Craig Pepples - Sascia Pellegrini

each atom spaced so as to reveal aspects of itself that would otherhow not make impact :: these atoms are all and each clearly about the thing they are all and each saying, spoken clearly :: the sense in which they are a plural of bagatelles is that those animals, those bagatelles, must be all in the sequence, lumpily interspersed, grazing.

May 16, 2017

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

Long tones are short-term drones. A florid fugue plays the surface of a sedate fugue.

Quartet in C Major, Opus 76 #3 Hob. III:77 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Kept safely deep within this very model of a repertoire string quartet (all to be admired and copied): worries, hesitations, concerns. The finale, party crashing, wandered in from some minor key quartet.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Scraps of bits, unaware they are part of any sort of design. Commentary and disagreement. Full of sudden shifts, shortcut modulations, make do with where we have gotten to [in order] to get where we must go. Nothing else quite enflames the soundbox like scribble-bowing, glowing hot.

May 17, 2017

Deep Henderson - Charlie Straight [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fat precision. Like a sloppy drunk clearing a pool table to the last spinning ball. No sophistication, but deep for sure.

Easy Come, Easy Go Love - Sunny Clapp [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Crammed (frat boy phone booth). More fat precision.

Crying Holy Unto The Lord - The Blue Chips [from Goodbye Babylon]

Appropriation of the profane by the sacred, or invasion of the sacred by the profane?

Get Ready for Christmas Day - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Goodbye Babylon]

Digging through the rhythm of language into the substrate of melody - it breaks off just before ignition.

Boyd Raeburn

Over The Rainbow - Boyd Raeburn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Runs through more presets than a casio. Every possible arrangement of the tune in quick succession.

It Could Happen To You - Bud Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Same deal as above, but all by his lonesome. (Chopin!)

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The image of: independence from the beat, as though just talking, except that it never wavers from being exactly where it needs to be. She may be hiding behind the male point of view's desire for what they want the female point of view to be, but she does it while openly dripping the fatal drops into your drink.

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Star Vocal! Hear it Here! (a blended orchestration of echo effects) Repeat with instruments.

One Of Us Must Know - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Excuses, excuses.

Vincent - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Well Don, I'm sorry, but "snowy linen land" is just puke-worthy. Wodehouse had your number decades ago (see "pale parabola of joy".)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 15, 2017

Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Quasi-similar motion (pitch-class nearness by shortest route) as countermotion. Take that, MF! 

Playlist

Live

March 24, 2017

Floating in the high cold air - Lori Goldston (with friend)
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

LG

feedback of the box :: an additional hyperbow with which to pull each string's particulars into relief. Geologic. Ample. Generous as a long prairie drive.

LG wFriend

silent harleys flocked wheeling :: floating west to the foggy gray sea

roadless road trackless track pathless path

the deep pressed feel of pressed deep

smeared cyclic rhythm abstract :: surface of an ad hoc medium

elicits out of nowhere a baritone saxophone solid as amber

mind body spirit pull away

shore side

an anthem

Recorded

March 21, 2017
Taking Me Home - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Delivery on the flat line, punk nouveau.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, on November 6, 2004]

Mt. Rainier National Park - ca. 1975

I'm perhaps inordinately pleased with how delicate and transparent a thing this turned out to be.

Cell Block 21 - The Hollow Points [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

A cinematic chorus from a punk rock musical. Our hero lands in prison. Video unnecessary, it's all there in the music - though perhaps if Busby Berkeley tried it . . .

Xtet: Last Dance for Milton - Elaine Barkin [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

clear lines

clear abruptions

episodes of interruptions

stabilities flourish here and there

but persistence is not deemed necessitous

It makes perfect sense now that I think about it, remembering all those crazy pages of scrawl-doodled commentary {(Igor's goriest, etc.), how like precision scores they are, as in: play this tune exactly so, at an angle to the page, hand drawn, fanciful, from the idiolect} that Ars Antiqua and its "proprietary squiggles" would appeal so deeply.

Self-Righteous Fool - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

Curve balls so subtle you'd be past 3rd base before realizing you had struck out.

March 23, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus VII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Collisive. A time-scale shredder. Armor up before listening.

Symphony in G Hob. I:94 (Paukenschlag / Surprise) - Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

If the image of the music is the exploring of the most pleasing aspects of something, what is the something we are exploring the most pleasing aspects of? A discourse of the spaces between sets of tunes?

And herein we find that brilliantly square one fingered tune (Pa-Pa Hay-Dn's Dead And Gone) that lurks behind Beethoven's Eroica variation theme.

String Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven

A telescope extended and collapsed at once, in networked dimensions. And waddayaknow? There in the midst of all that "Es muss sein!" is PPHDDAG inverted, in three quarter profile!

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 20, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 931 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Yellowstone National Park, 1998

Playlist

Recorded

February 12, 2017
Morris Clyfford - Arthur Margolin, J. K. Randall [from Inter/Play]

Two voices, call them Plain and Fancy, make attitudinal micro-adjustments to each other, each chomping at the bit to engage, but neither desiring the other to give up an inch of what they are. Dog bark in the next room joins the rhythm, and suddenly the co-agonists find themselves occupying a mutual corner. That's just about when the tape ran out.

Who We Hatin' Now, Mr. Reagan?- The Center for Disease Control Boys

Broad political comedy, mostly for each other.

One7 - John Cage - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Muttered in secret || DECLAIMED!

February 14, 2017
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

I love the quick-echo between the vocalists. Grooving on the texture of close-packed material.

Banned Rehearsal 608 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Spiral up incline slow vista shift toward intimate familiar || radio fog dissipates, as the.

Do the Stomp and Drag - Glorious Day [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In punk-face: If you are treated like a zombie you may as well dance the dance.

Isaiah 6:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at University Temple United Methodist Church, on December 21, 2014]

The recording linked above was done in the studio. The live version was recorded during the Offering, which adds a great deal of extraneous noise.

High Plains Drifter - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The pages of this hand-scrawled book, a bit narrow for the lines, are full and generously so. The letters give each other room to sing.

February 16, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 6 - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Two fugues crammed so tightly together that stray bits extrude suddenly into oddly contoured voids. Quartz in schist.

Menuet in D Major I and II Wq. 116/3 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Lighter than air, the glance into minor thrills, a mutual stillness.

Symphony in D Major (#96) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

What might break out into the open from within the polite.

Quartet in B-flat op. 130 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Gets going by never quite having been got going so that each :: place from which :: never is a place deflected || from this we persist || systemic flaws and their extensions

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 12, 2017

Ghosting Doubles (first) (after Amy Denio's "Ghosting") - midi realization

I had been working since late last year on the next part of a long project, an extension of my Etudes

d'execution imminent, and had gotten pretty far along on a hunk of sound generated by a pretty ferocious chart. When I heard Amy Denio's fabulous solo accordion piece, Ghosting, recently I immediately thought that I would use that as the basis, in some way, for the next part. But on Saturday I had, as Ben put it once, "a better idea", and the above is the first of three (?) sets of doubles upon her tune. For those with a quick ear, the middle voice in the above is a simple transcription of Amy's original. ("Ghosting", copyright Spoot Music, ASCAP, is used by kind permission of the composer.)

I rather like the bald, frill-less, un-finessed midi sound of this version, though I do plan on learning to play it myself as well.

February 13, 2017

Banned Telepath 54 Seattle 170213 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

February 15, 2017

Banned Telepath 54 Anchorage 170215 - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 929 (170213-15) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Aaron's bit is a wonderful 19-second long Moog-App twiddle. Neal speaks of cabbages and death. Steve and I find a new way to torture the atomatone. Karen rings bells.

February 17, 2017

Partita - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey

Kingston Bridge, New York, ca 1982

I have been attempting to learn this piece of Ben's, composed in 1955, for decades now, on and off. This version, recorded yesterday morning, is a pretty good picture of how well I'm doing this time around. I think I could still fix some of the more egregious bits of rushing, and clean up a not-quite-together attack or two here and there, but beyond that I'm not sure I'll ever play it much better. It always has been just a bit past the limits of my available technique.

Playlist

Recorded

January 14, 2017
I Fought The Law - Bobby Fuller Four [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Nice triplets in there. I love the dipthong on "law", curling back on itself as though hitting resistance. Almost appropriate: Karen and I recently watched "I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang", which has some truly amazing sound events in it, as well as a fascinating view of the connection between the penal system and slavery.

Samuel Barber

Prayers of Kierkegaard - Samuel Barber - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Schenck

The solid tonal sensibility loses grip in places, it works to break free, struggling slowly, manages to unsettle the more settled.

John, I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Technically perfect song-writing. The voice pushes at the instrumentals, as though it were trapped in their cage.

You Better You Bet - The Who [from Face Dances]

Postural pullback, only to return to full frontal, hiding the low point of tenderness from prying eyes. Or letting it hang.

Violin Concerto - Henri Lazarof - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Yukiko Kamei

Icy spreads its arms and twists 

acrobatique 

aerialesque 

orchestral circus stage 

big top fire breathing peril 

here come the clowns sardonic 

self regarding self 

chatty nervous

Janaury 16, 2017
Adagio (3rd Movement from 11th Symphony) - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Triumphal weariness, as settling to the ocean floor's deepest trench, through its subtle gradations of dark.

Good Things - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Held close, stiffly still, simmering under pressure.

Work Architecture Unity And The ("17 Crags" 010511) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Second go at it. A sense of enforced singularity of event, severing any particular participant's interest or curiosity. Salutary to the extent we find a way to do what we always do but spread over thinner space. Or: an exercise in leaving space so that we can't always fall into the always-going-on-ness, leaving space for sharper corners?

Judith Shatin

Homemade Music - Judith Shatin [from Open Space 21]

Intervals Between Events: A Study.
Intersections of sets of distances between events as motivic cells. Clearly, so as to index the sets.

The Dancer - Patrick Marland [from Hendrix Uncovered]

Easily lovely. the bass is subtly amped, close the fingerboard.

January 17, 2017
Finnegans Wake Chapter 1.3 - Steve Gregoropoulos [from Waywords and Meansigns]

Spoken with attitude. 'scuse, with AttiTude. The music allowed to attempt to overpower, the vocal imitating the lingo of partisan journalism. Drunken sbrawling squalities. Text just one ring of a circus co-occupied by dueling Captain Beefheart Impersonators, infiltrated by multiple iterations of the Chaotic Noise Marching Corps. Babble of neverending political speech. Each music change: to enter a new room.

January 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus V - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

How they do crowd upon each other! At the end (and this is frequent in these fugues) there is the sense of "OK, now we're ready to really dive in, now that the preliminaries are over."

Alla Polacca in C Major Wq. 116/4 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

The purpose of ornamentation is to skew counting, to turn tables on the concept of number. These little pieces are about meter in a way that little else is again until Chopin's Mazurkas.

Symphony in E-flat Major (#76) - Haydn - Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

It is not simply that he moves in the unexpected way (surprise!) but that he gauges each unexpectedness so carefully, veering just so far along the circle of fifths, just so much further at the structural hingepoints: Where we have gotten to determines the depth and yaw of the veer. The slow movement has a focus that allows a huge dynamic range (a model for Schubert's late sonatas?) Then an extra fancy last movement.

Ave Verum Corpus - Mozart - University Temple Chancel Choir, Keith Eisenbrey, director, Howard Wolvington, organ

Last Fall our choir director, Chris Vincent, was in Italy and kindly allowed me to take the choir for a few weeks. He even let me conduct this justly famed anthem from late in Mozart's short life, for which I remain ever so thankful. What a pleasure! Listening one becomes so rapt that it is not until it winds down into the cadential trill that one realizes what a ride one has been on. A bit like life that way.

Sonata in A-flat Major Op. 110 - Beethoven - Rudolf Serkin

An earnest attempt to clearly play what is clearly there. He makes some interesting connections among the tempi in the fugal bits.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 16, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 927 170116 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Aaron is back from the far north for a few weeks. Hurrah!

Playlist

Live

December 17, 2016
Finnegans Wake Chapter 3 - James Joyce
Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

memory fragments in the dark

Recorded

December 10, 2016
Thunder Road (live) - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975 - 1985]

American Pie, bye bye
American Pie, escape from
American Pie, escape from within the language of

but hardly a moment in there that doesn't tell.

Ghosting (for Pat Graney Dance) - Amy Denio [from Tutto Bene]

Color me blown away. Barely a minute and a half long, the tonality is seeming solid but treacherously slick, and the rhythmic sense hovers between flatfooted folkish 3+3+2 and one of Cortot's floating riffs on a Chopin triplet. It would take a graduate seminar to tweeze out all the nested partitions of thirds and fourths winding around in there. All that and then a suckerpunch quasi-double-time cadence that would have made Machaut smile. Amy was kind enough to grant me permission to play around with this: Theme and Variations? Fantasy On? Riffy Etudes? Hmm.

Anonymous - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Buried in the mix, a guitar's bare hint at reflection, like the dull glint on a gun barrel.

Banned Rehearsal 607 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer - April 2001

prolonging the lead in, the sense of getting ready to start. The sound world: percussion is in front drums bells wooden bars, guitar in imitation; slipping around inside strands of sustained tones sliding around, back into the percussion chattery. Inventing a mix, an instrumentation, a pattern of weedy tangled sounds. Regularity emerges, but always challenged by some angular, obtuse momentum. Doors open and close. A healthy hang-in-there attitude. Winds down even more prolongedly than it wound up. In the end we present multiple short fragments of possible mixes bending toward the oh-so-composed, long fades perpetually reawakened.


Just Keyboard Respect - Mark Zuckerman - Peter Winograde [from Open Space 21]

Beautiful keyboard writing! (and beautifully played). A clear, delightful, but frightfully quick game of Randallian pinecones.

December 11, 2016
And The Wind Still Cries - Randy Raines-Reusch [from Hendrix Uncovered]

An undulating drone and what gets pulled from it.

Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 - Mr. Smolin and Double Nought Spy Car [from Wayroads and Meansigns]

Recited, for the most part. Music enters though the relation between the reciting and the various musics over which it is recited. The big thunderclap near the opening joins the two. As deeply embedded in the humanities as the text is, this take on it comes across like stitched-together missives from space aliens, or as though on latenight downchannel TV. Or: brazenly neo-modern: the old text surrounded by ready-mades. Defiantly not integrated with itself.

December 13, 2016
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IV - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Clotted keys, knots of partial centrality. Occasional clarifications: red herrings?

Polonaise in E-flat Wq. 116/2 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Carl finds some very peculiar ways to count to three.

Symphony in C minor (#78) - Haydn - The Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

Sequences of types, as sets, sequenced into sequences of types as sets of sets, articulating the picture of life painted for their masters by their servants. The ordered day. It's hard to imagine (if you will excuse the inexcusable) Haydn hiding anything, but then...

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 12, 2016
Banned Telepath 51 Seattle 161212 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

December 13, 2016
Banned Telepath 51 Anchorage 161213 - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 924 161213- Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt