Playlist

Recorded

January 26, 2019

George M. Cohan on Broadway - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

medley hit
corporate drop the needle
oh I remember that song
it sounds like I ought to remember that song
oh that song is by the same?

souvenir
once emerged
never comfortable

Another Sad Song Littering the Highway of Life - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey [from my recital Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

I love how the melody emerges from the chord voices
and perches on them
and complains to them

Clusters - Hubert S. Howe [from Milton Babbitt: A Composer's Memorial]

mouth shapes like pipe organ music with full, muscular, control of the pipe shapes
mouth shapes evoking bell decay in immaculate motions

cuts off sharply
can't stay gotta go

Banned Telepath 48 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

bells and gongs and mostly metal sounds scrambling around the Joyce worm, and guitar
and wooden train whistle

one is concerned with the ceasing of doing anything
that the ceasing be not too artful
nor too lazy
as though already on to the next thing
through the side of one's mind
offhandedly

metal on metal squeal talk and rasper rasping sweet nothings into the dragon's ear
declamation
can ring Morse taps
guitar elegy
scrape chatters on
coexistent doings

January 27, 2019
Der dritten Mascharada - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

distinct strands of thinking
structure: cadence point sequence
fanciful: interior phrase shape conversation

Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques - Maurice Ravel - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

accompaniment not an equal partner (as in Schumann) but every detail counts as much as anything sung
since I don't understand French I am not disturbed by any wordpainting that might be there
which seems mostly intent on capturing the mood of the persona singing this song
rather than the meanings of the words lifted out of the song's context

Louie Louie - The Sonics [from Boom]

as packed as packed can be

Evidence (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

interjectionary left hand blats

Well Paid Scientist - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters/In God We Trust]

a certain proto hip hop structure in the sense that any new affect segment sounds dropped in as from a tone arm

Coward Till The End - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

You :: Me
a complaint
when out of ideas throw a bridge away
more than a little Sting-y
warm wash synth rinse
(fade out long? really?)

Tomorrow's Gone (And So Are You) - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

song for kiss off

Holding On - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

punk attitude about what? getting through it
for battle within the way it is

The Field of Arbol II Magnetic Fields - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle (live) May 2011]

de-peopled
unobserved
plain

a distant world in a fictional universe, not where the action is
not even in the same galaxy cluster over from where the action is

Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 4 - James Joyce - Conspirators of Pleasure [from Waywords and Meansigns]

The reason we don't think of English as a tonal language is because we are all deaf.
The speaker is using their voice pitch reverberance to sever the parts of the adherent puncrustaceana from the next deeper encrustacean of adherent puncrustaceana. In short, it's puncrustaceana all the way down.

like unto a decorated psalm tone, it would make a remarkably strong password
not an exercise in declamation
perhaps in acting
as though any bit could have been heard as a could have been heard out in Dublin wild.

We see or hear these words as the pulsing of a vessel of flowing wordery
lexicon only viewed through a microscope and delicately held open (the tissue of the vessel) above scalpeled through
three weeks to heal

January 29, 2019
Der Pilligrienen Tanz - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

short phrases with clear countable beats
within which cage
the action is

Trois Mélodies - Eric Satie - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

The plain and square is foregrounded
or would be
if it were
actually
plain
or square

Wichita Vortex Sutra Part 3 - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll]

joy covered with ash
give up your desire
this vortex named

Hackensack (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the image of: tempi of LH and RH going off, slipping away from each other in cogjolty syncopation
but each always right with it
can seem several beats or measures off, but ain't
so: the sense of having awkward joints, or celebrating them

Here drums, have it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
(and beyond)

January 28, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 974 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Our last good chance to not rehearse for our upcoming gig at Hollow Earth Radio on Thursday, February 7, as part of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival. We are excited and thrilled to have been invited!

January 31, 2019
Piano Gusting - Aaron Keyt - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [at Jack Straw Productions, Seattle]

Aaron is participating in Jack Straw's celebration of the piano they (Jack Straw/KRAB Radio) dropped from a helicopter some decades ago. There the harp lay, many ranks of strings still intact. His score is for piano four straws, amplified by little contact microphones and tiny amplifiers. We blew in the straws, remembering the rush of winds as the soft plummeted home.

Playlist

Live

January 25, 2019
Mike Marlin and Friends: Purging Demons Through Sonic Oversight
Jesse Canterbury, Eric Dahlman, Keith Eisenbrey, Carl Juarez, Jim Knodle, Mike Marlin, Moonshadow, Deb Scott, Tari Nelson Zagar, Vivaldi
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Oh my.

tools of the trade

Mike was in Seattle for a welcome visit, and I was delighted to receive an invitation to join in this re-union show. I met Mike back in the days of The Tentacle, a local new music newspaper he helped found that had a glorious few years back in the last decade. I had joined him and Deb in a couple of free-improv events back then, one at the Odd-Fellows Hall, and one at Gallery 1412 at which Jim had also participated. Jesse, (back in town!) I have known for a while, but had never had the pleasure of playing together with him until last night. Eric was known to me only through sound (as Mike's cohort in Dubious Duo), but both Tari and Carl were newly met with. Moonshadow and Vivaldi are Mike and Deb's service dogs, and they joined us both as singers and leash shakers. ("the rest of you just rattle your jewelry.")

Equipped with a handwritten set list and a few quick words of instruction, we gathered in sub-committees of three or four to hash out introductions, swap yarns, and to enjoy the necessary preliminaries and hobnobberations, upon which being accomplished we gathered in plenary session to bring the powers that be to naught. A highlight was Aria 45, based on a sequence of words spewed by Old Orange Hair in Montana sometime last year. I have no organ. Indeed.

Demons duly purged. Ya coulda been there.

Recorded

January 20, 2019
Girl You Should Have Known - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

hazing ritual, front lines, songs of the

The Field of Arbol I Winds of the Sun - S. Eric Scribner - Dale Speicher, percussion [from Storm

Jim Knodle

Sound Cycle, May 2011]

Dale made thunderrumble in the space of thunderrumble in space
distant
crackless
massive

Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Hinson Calabrese [from Waywords and Meansigns]

question of: which interests in music might be intrigued by such a sprawling text: ambientists? (why?) || if true, might it be?

the text is focused on the present moment, no glaring trajectory of drama
long looping jammers
each statement made by a different voice
(statement quantity equals voice quantity)
in each case no matter where one enters nor where one leaves
carrying my dragon man

Stand Back! It's ProgRog!

We hear this language go by as though we did not understand a word of it, but as though the fabric of the thought containing our least understanding of where it is at is in familiar-like words

collector of plain language parts transcribed through a filter (Prog!!)
a steady stream of Irishness inscribed upon battlefelled parchmeant

January 22, 2019
Der ander Mascharada - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

middlest of three
riddle me this

Fétes galantes (Set 1) - Claude Debussy - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

impersonation of the poem's speaker
the someone who sings this thus
song and singer conspire to emerge as an unstable unity
an appearing person
a vanishing person

Ben Boretz

A Question, A Rose - Benjamin Boretz - Scot Moore

a matter of nearness
two (or more) violin parts played by solo violin

nearness of co-emergence
or between the actual duet (or x-tet) and us

a quartet for G, D, A, and E strings, played solo for keeps, all humming the same box
finishes with not ending, after not ending

as though parts had spilled out onto the not ever ending
after not ever after

Ben was kind enough to share this hot-off-the-press recording of this hot-off-the-press solo violin piece. When he shared a midi version recently I surmised to myself that hearing the parts played on real strings, with a real bow, resonating a single soundbox, and performed by a human person, would lift the image from fascinating to lively. I had no idea.

January 24, 2019
He's Waitin' - The Sonics [from Boom]

(for you)
more threats
was the idea this: that men thought women would like men who were pathologically jealous?
was the idea this: that men needed to express their deepest and ugliest as an antidote to it? (spurious)
was the idea this: that men thought men needed to threaten their women, in order for women to be their women, in order themselves to be men?
was the idea this: that no thought was involved?

The Sonics are a fabulous band, but the prevailing public ethos of the era (mid 60's) is more than worth unpacking in order to examine our own selves and ethos.

Evidence (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

a random-ish sequence of Monk-ish bits is all there is for what there is for what to work with
transparent pitchwork can play unfenced

I admire TM's articulative manner, in that it allows what could be an overbearing piano part to float among his fellows. It respects.

Track 6 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

polka oom pah done to a crisp

Banned Rehearsal 88 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

This was the first of six sessions we made on June 7, 1986. We were intent on getting to 100 before Neal left for San Diego later that month. Doug and Wally had come over and we set off from the Greenwood Half House toward and partly around Green Lake. Any theory of what we think we are or were doing or might or could be about is quickly outrun by the practice of doing whatever it is we were doing or just did do. The conversation of ducks is passed by but lingered at. Toy piano plucks and bird calls.

duckkind, the tugboat nature of

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 21, 2019
Gradus 344 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

My recording failed due to user error, but I made a picture.

Playlist

Live

January 11, 2019

Shelby Earl, Songs for Singing 2,
Matty Gervais
The Triple Door, Seattle

Matty - currently with The Head and The Heart and with Mikey and Matty, formerly with Curtains For You and The True Bugs, and I do not know with what all else even more formerly - was joined after a few solo songs by his spouse Charity Rose Theilen (also of The Head and The Heart), by his brother Mikey Gervais (also of Mikey and Matty, etc. etc.), and later by the Passenger String Quartet. His voice is a light tenor joy, effortless to hear solo and effortless in its blending with others - later in the evening he joined Shelby for a number. The blood harmony between him and Mikey is a Seattle miracle. The evening's set basked in the clear glowing comforts of home life facing itself bravely, young adulthood fading into the near past.

Shelby, in what she announced was her last calendared performance before she has her baby, was accompanied by Billy Brush on piano, and the Passenger String Quartet. The ping of her voice is set a bit higher than, but, in spite of any dissimilarities of repertoire or technical glitter, is quite similar to Liza Minelli's. And like hers, its strength is not really in its sheer volume, but rather in its graciously rapturous embrace. When she sings in a room she sings to you, to us. Her voice shines, enfolds, fills - as though in shining from her it shines from us. 

Recorded

January 5, 2019
Three Strathspeys (1979) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live on June 10, 2006]

Something about these, my second-ever set of piano pieces, brought Rameau, whose keyboard music I have been sight-reading recently, to mind. Uncluttered textures, clear phrases, and most of all, exuberantly enjoyed sonorities in all the registers. The finals of the first two are a tad clever I suppose, but the third one holds its focus out to the bitter.

Soundform IV Spaces - S. Eric Scribner - [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

whispered conspiracies
a windscape with none there to hear it
counsels are kept
the traffic without knows nary aught

You tell me.

January 5-6, 2019
Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 2 - James Joyce - Kio Griffith [from Waywords and Meansigns]

patiently sotto vociferated time kept magnetically
multiple concurrent renditions (none hurried) cross-fade joints
ham broadcast Polonius reborn bloviating as of old

narrow range of frequency recorded: the principals of the pitch if low and pristine would not be heard unless they interfered with higher frequency waves, and then they would be re-constructed principals, reconstituted on the mind's side out of its effects on those higher sounds - ghostlike.

prose sodden with poetic rhythm thinking
fond of sharp corners and rhyme games that veer away absolutely

setting: bandwidths and echo spans
sound recordings of sounds recorded: particular bandwidthprints evolve other-eon-ly, extraplanetoidenal cultural sourcing

ambient in that it is not addressed to anyone in particular
as the text of a book on a shelf not being read, not talking, applesauce
once upon a drunk and a very fine drunk it was
the scorch house putting all space in a nutshell
a damn good cup of skald you could trot a mouse on it

a compositional game: pulling the text back and back and down and down just to disappearance's nearing
o bother I must tell a troth
love's young fizz on a matter poetic

January 8, 2019
Canzon XVI - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

That it is in fact highly refined is of less import than that it projects refinement, im- or op- presses with its refinement.

Sam the Accordion Man - Williams Sisters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

the low voice slipping off in secret to become an instrumental part

Tickle Toe - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

selling a brand of refinement also, distinctly expensive


In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 7, 2019
Gradus 343 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

notes
not played
not posited
not proposed
not even queried
not tried, for want of any way about it

bunches at once

In what sense could these coalesce into a collection, or combination? how combined?
by use of, or by sounding, within a timespan?

Playlist

Recorded

Baker City, Oregon

December 28, 2018
Brick (sound excerpt from the film) - Shelley Roden, Foley artist

school bell drumming of ball footfall cross rhythms
echo play piano from score shows up as the run runs by the practice rooms
DONG! . . .
crows and bells

I was so taken by this bit of sound design, Foley art, and cues of music, that I went to the trouble of figuring out how to extract the sound track

cross-rhythms generated by the footfalls of two actors chasing through a school ground.

Soundform III Wind - S. Eric Scribner - [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

mallet work explosives

Finnegans Wake Part 3, Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Simon Ross [from Waywords and Meansigns]

guitar, kalimba
unmoored

music sound shifting as marker of section, otherwise inaudible disunderstandable
as though ordinary, phrases decrescendo and drop in pitch
Ironesia

The parts don't hear themselves together with the other parts, but only themselves alone, oblivious of their proximitousness.

Ondt and Gracehoper
a poem in rhyme

Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

December 30, 2018
Canzon - Thomas Grabbe - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

fitting fitness
appropriate attire
as the be all of all of it

Meanwhile
they develop further the science of polyphony and variation
and of ornaments to grace them

Serenade for Strings in C, op. 48 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Berliner Philharmoniker, Semyon Bychkov

display
bigger and more glorious empire than any

such lights
more than any others

such dresses
more splendid than any other empire's lights and dresses

the self-grandiosifizing Nobility that rose back against the wicked upstart's troops
those troops from their beloved French cousins now dead

and all they do with the knowledge is dance
a carefully prescribed portion only of grit life gets through

the romanticized serf life
counterpart to the antebellum South

such gentility
in the bloody claws of legitimacy

that same dress that same face
new rooms

write any story on top
a One Act Opera Without Words

Look! The light sky! Hark!
The Lark! Twitter bird!

our hopelessly generous attitudes about our past oppressors
we are nostalgic for our kings

barf
his derivations are in the winding up for all to see

January 1, 2019

the past

Grandpa's Spells - Jelly Roll Morton, George Mitchell, Edward 'Kid' Ory, Omer Simeon, Johnny St. Cyr, John Lindsay, Andrew Hilaire [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

horns blaring to all corners
the center holds tight

I Can't Believe You're In Love With Me - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

alto and tenor share a fancy version of the tune
then a series of alternating quick bits with the drum

Don't You Just Know It - The Sonics [from Boom]

drunk sloppy, immovable

Crepuscle with Nellie (take 4) - Thelonious Monk, Al McKibbon, Art Blakey [from The London Sessions]

palpable heft
it moves but it is an effort
until it lifts of its own
and back

Did You Steal My Money - The Who [from Face Dances]

the too smooth, too distant, sound has a blanket over it. my money my entitlement

Banned Rehearsal 87 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

your blogger and soon to be spouse, 1986

a valiant stab
I just turned the level all the way up

Book of Windows (select panes)
Ideas should be run with, unlike scissors.

preacher voice production, not quite sprechstimme, but like it, lifted

Trance Butchered Knight at revolution's height
hard core earlyish Banned Rehearsal
Funmaker set to Rend

must have been working on the songs I wrote for my nuptials soon to be
there's the text auf Deutsch

Anna and Aaron arrive
brought in on a past cassette

the ancient Italian fighting art for the family
we don't know what we're doing anymore
than you do

TV gun shots derived from cyclic noise flange or the boofing of balloons
soggy of the green great lake monster in my bathroom

hunted

gathered

Hard To Mention - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

whatever it is
drive right through it
don't look, (but it does)

24 Preludes 1 through 4 - Lockrem Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey [June 2006]

once an idea is in hand
he does not let go

nicely played, past me!

Let Me Sleep In Your Arms Tonight - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

sung at a tempo that is only available in the big sky night of western stars

Banned Rehearsal 910  - Aibell, Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

metal, wood
substance that sounds :: things appear in sounds, in their sounds

if one is not talking one feels one is not existing
the piano tunes of Wallace drift across the bells and potlids
milk can and shakers various
magnificent metal squeal as mega music

now pitch hangs in space as a concretion of a physical object into time
a glow
even a special bit, as after the credit roll

Canzon XIV and Galliarde XIV - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

style: a cooperatively created object of thought inhabited by its creators
intersection of what we collect in our closets and what we don from them

He's the Last Word - Ben Pollack [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

nice duet vocal, soprano and alto, neither quite the lead
also, an excellent tuba

I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me (alternate take) - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

my how they jump off the beat
rebound
hot potato

Such A Lovin' Appetite - Wayne Storm [a Rescued Record]

a songwritten song
could set the tone for a Watersic satirio-comic film
I'm glad it goes away

September on Jessore Road - Allen Ginsberg - Allen Ginsberg, David Amram, Bob Dylan, Jon Sholle, Steven Taylor [from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll]

thousands
and millions
with bread from the state
malnutrition skulls
border trucks flooded
ambassador bunker alone in the rain
what shall we buy without food stamps on Mars?
how many daughters with nothing to eat? to go.

January 2, 2019

Eliza Act II - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

perplexed by Beckett
with dij(eridoo)
at the same time one is obliged to speak
oblivious of apriori self-defeat

music is alarmingly simple to imitate
to make it, actually, is also simple
but also easy to miss completely
the slightest pretense wilds the aim

January 3, 2019
Prelude by the "C" - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

introducing his band with a filler sort of song full of effects with nothing in the behind of it
trapped by its need to have a particular energy throughout
like a workout in a gym
nothing is accomplished

Banned Rehearsal 278 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1991]

J greets you

Toad Hall Outpost
microphonic misbalance is a problem || or is salutary || in that it is distracting
it removes transparency
forces a retreat from suspended disbelief
can't forget we are listening to what microphones hear in a space
we are amused that J turns a page
J is amused that we are amused

Kierkegaardically Dock

the geese were in a flock

and Keith read Donne

and Down John ran

Kierkegaardically Dock

Aaronsbundler in Ivesian wads of notes
devolving into Mahlerian kitsch drift off
becoming a careful study of bounce rhythms
drum head color clicks and sticks on tight head skin

whisper monsters

Playlist

Recorded

December 8, 2018
How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

my recording of December 5, 2018
unfinessed timing, but with great care to amuse

Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down - Sister Fleeta Mitchell, Rev. Willie Mae Eberhart [from Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1]

at ease with its confident command

Soundform II Cricket - S. Eric Scribner - [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

it is as though this weren't music we were listening to
but washes of layered ambiences
any story line focus is deliberately frustrated
so that we can experience this space without participating
a particular distance at which it grows dark

Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 4 - James Joyce - aleorta [from Waywords and Meansigns]

outside inside
a quark an ark a bark
a beach of words like sand churned into filtered whorls of thematic synergistic jumbled geology
worlds piled into higglepiggle rhyme heaps
bits of precontext clinging
mucking up the whole weary moraine
repetitions
stammers
a dye has been applied to these lists of words
radio-ating

December 11, 2018
Aria - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

Something about the way pitches repeat at register is more than vaguely reminiscent of Webern.

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

a musical extravaganza held together by a plot
but the extravaganza of the music is primal
which is why a dance number as a part of one of these things makes perfect sense
Wagner's through-compositional compulsion was just a way of making plain what had been developing all along, it actually lessens the importance of the music as such with which opera began its history

Schicksalslied - Brahms - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw

slow groundwork allows weightless lift
oops, dramas
setting a dense poem chorally adds density without contributing clarity, comes across like a movie adaptation of a book

Kansas City Shuffle - Bennie Moten [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

show dance upon which variations or doubles compete

Dona Nobis Pacem - Ralph Vaughan-Williams - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Richard Clement, Nathan Gunn, Patricia Nealon, Pamela Elrod, Sean Mayer, William Borland

much like Purcell in the knee-jerk wordpainting, but inflated by more ample resources, oppressed by the imperative to be important, National
the sentimental sanctimony of Empire
unlike Purcell in that it takes itself seriously

wordpainting fails to enhance text's meaning, it merely underlines an empty aspect of it
good for a laugh, but otherwise generally a distraction
it would help if he had any sense of timing or proportion

December 13, 2018
Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra - Heitor Villa-Lobos - Chamber Orchestra of St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Vladimir Altschuler, Marco Tsessos

mid20thcentury Display Concerto
a vehicle
for solo enhanced by orchestra
the play of sounds against each other - what makes a concerto a concerto - given lip service at best
given that limitation this is a rather attractive example, with melody up front

All The Things You Are - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

mumbling in close formation they scrawl a tune

Skinnie Minnie - The Sonics [from Boom]

woohoo!
hey!

Crepuscle With Nellie (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

syncopation can be accomplished by playing ahead or behind the felt beat
or, as here, by moving the beat to where you need it, stretching and squeezing the flow into a taut rubato

Tomorrow - U2 [from October]

pipe tune
builds up
only to get to where the fade is

Rock and Roll - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

trying different vocal persona, demo-ish, (or self study)
rough song, smooth coda
what might this sound like if we were to do it this way?

Playlist

Recorded

November 18, 2018
Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 130 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

the more these unison notes get to know their fellows not the less fellowship ensues but the more specific their intra-life

the key upon which we stand is often a bit soft
just before a cadence our feet punch through requiring detour

this warmheartening mass of stringbox resonance, if we could imagine it as arising from other means than stringboxes,
what might that means be imagined as sounding like

alone

the key must be somewhere around here
look everywhere

The Prodigal Son - Rev. S. J. "Steamboat Bill" Worrell [from Goodbye, Babylon]

rhythm saying translation
gospel according to Rev. Steamboat
Amen

Blue 7 - Sonny Rollins, Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins, Max Roach [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

each chord to chord sequentialization they play is cross-indexed to other songs in which such exact sequentialization pre-occurred in their individual and immediate imagination

tell me true
do I or you believe Max Roach was really keeping track of where one was through all of that?
yes, do.

Working In The Coal Mine - Lee Dorsey, Allen Toussaint [a Rescued Record]

Zoolander! or slang code?

Wheatland - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

settles into frenchfilm montage mode

the happiness of it treated as one might have treated a key in other spheres

the hypothetical
other
electron

Pop Pop Da Da's Empty Word Club Band - Aaron Keyt - Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocals

a precision key-bard contains its own recomposed notes (program)
what can a Da Da do? La de Da?

Da Da as (sophomoric) (insufferable) cleanser
works a charm

Hyena - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

the big guitar guitar guitar sound is a room they love returning to

Banned Rehearsal 274 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]

johnny jump up?
in the pre-garage Maple Leaf Tintinabulary
before it was infested and became

Boylair

jumpup jumpup

cymbal of drumset and shrillpenny whistle join to battle high fidelity
jolly jumpup baby we have here

a drumbeat and its worthy opponents the different drummers
vowels intonate
differently hung in acoustic space
low or high on the bendy branch
rattles and cymbals totally into messing with cassette tape limits

the drums may be big in Jerseyville
but they're bigger here

6 and 3
got it to go (an ad)
Piccolos is closed! replaced by Pete's Pizza

the beads travel over the face of the ground
like a horde of antelope

there is no still point at the center of it all
Aaron sibilates a list with s sounds
everything goes (on) in the mouth
it's a stage
all the world's a

when Banned Rehearsal talks gibberish to toddlers
we overdo it
hyperintellectually
in a way that only Da Da did could

tempo on a slider

the stance from which Aaronsbundler is played
always
in motion
on the march

Lauda Anima - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [composed February 2001; recorded November 2018]


in my mind composing this I was focused on subverting the 4 4 4 4 -ness of it but ended up problematizing octave equivalence or non
seemed almost too simple when I wrote it, too obvious
I was wrong about that

November 20, 2018
Froggie Went a Courtin' - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

replication of field recording at the start
we are Miss Mousy
every song is a reason for a big fat singalong

Soundform I Voice - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle May 2011]

visitation
or creek crease along the trail
creek cross creek crease

November 20, 22, and 23, 2018

Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Jenken's Henchmaen [from Waywords and Meansigns]

as si fi ro bo vox overread from signalsphere
detailed language largely bulldozed by and under space
space synthesized joyce voice
as though humano-utteral rhythm abstracted from spellingplay picked up from broadcast
oaky doaky in episodes cued by interludes and breaks
gender in voice filter
knock knock
wanders off from digital filter to a more transparent sing song spoken area
it is with great relief that we
tuff as reset word
making silly voices
tuff

what might we make of the expanse of this? draw maps? train our microscopes? pursue dubious rumors of sense?

does the global, granular, and quotidian together gathered form a whole or only so if we close our eyes I believe in Fairies I do I do (Kathleen E saw them wearing boots)

suspicion :: the helps we get from our fellows indicate paths of pains of inquiry which, truth be told, have so often been found empty and wormy

OR

one's own associations distract into the personal

we each make of it what we will
if we will
less and less do I so will

missive from distant galaxy

OR

to decipher by xray of ruined scroll unflattenable

guns!guns!guns!guns!
ends with chantish (on the) plain cloistered (in the)

November 23, 2018
Ah, miserata vita - Johann Grabbe - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

oh, how compositionally arch!
balanced with clowns
so as
to cut more deeply

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

barely dramatizing outside of a desire to compose a complexity of vocal presentation, spectacular!

by stringing it together
with a plot and characters

actual stage acting not required
rather
discouraged

In Session at The Tintinabulary

November 19, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 970 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Aaron brought over a new wind instrument, a tiny little saxophone about the size of a soprano
recorder

Playlist

Recorded

November 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 273 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 1991]

I am about
in tone nation
of tempo

sticks to its guns
in the red toad hall
the piano of eliza act 2

hearing J grow before our ears

becoming conscious of one's own sensations
nursery song for the young to join

I'm trying to figure out who's playing what
but the math doesn't work out
pretty certain me on piano, and Aaron on brass
so if Karen is plucking the pluckinator who's holding the baby?

domestica moltissima

a trope of complaint about free improvisation is that it always devolves into increased volume competition
this is the counterexample

a diaper is changed right there on tape

a forest of intervals none heard ever before
we wallow so in the the revel of our mis mal in tone nation

off
in all the ways
off
can be
off

Pressure Drop - the Specials

as the verse descends stepwise
the word repetition spreads
the pressure drops
(clever)

Carpe Diem Carpie - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

fishy fish tale
that giant golden horse trough in the sky

We Shall Overcome - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]
Songs from the Voices on Earth - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga [from Storm Sound Cycle May 2011]

an ambience created on the fly cooperatively
Ivan's friendly inquiries toward the sound around him
oracular

November 6, 2018
Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 2 - James Joyce - Ollie Evans and Steve Potter and Co [from Waywords and Meansigns]

M Python radio play in a blender
overheard at its rehearsal
overheard at toothbrushing

multiplex the multiplex narratorices
over the backdrone
classroom at attention

such as it may be
studiorum upstarts
to me or not to me

the game goes on
distinctly understuttered
incipit intermissio

from the table
over a book
read by another

November 8, 2018Concerto in G BWV 1048 - J.S. Bach - New London Consort, Phillip Pickett

shuffling through the stacks for
great oh yeah I remember that's sooo cool! things

deep in the stacks
subindexed scary bass (truly)
almost forgot myself

query the first: how might this have sounded then?
query the next: given how it might have sounded then, among those possibilities, how amazing might we make it sound this time?

Quartet in A minor Op. 132 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

thoughts circulate in contemplation of an enormity or
but we really can't just not
well
meant
(a distracting toy)
seek chapelic comfort

4 Organ Preludes - Brahms - Craig Cramer

the tug-o-war among:
the instrument
the space
the score
the performance
the sheer sound
the recording
the abstraction

[blogger's note: Bach Beethoven Brahms (alphabetical order too!)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 5, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 969 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

November 10, 2018
Maple Leaf 181110 - Keith Eisenbrey

I recorded some birds in our backyard this morning

Playlist

Recorded

October 15, 2018
Sonata in C minor - Pietro Locatelli - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Musical Evenings With The Captain]

ornamentation is a supplemental pointer
as is repetition
and scale degree
function

it points

but what is it that points
and ought we to
blindly
and boldly

follow?

Moving On Without Us - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

told in stanzas
featuring a monolineal refrain

Rat Hotel - Charming Snakes [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

hot wheels stunt track driver
the familiar push button thrill
the inevitable frustration of which
forces the ear into the tight packed mosh of feedback
for anything to bind it

Songbirds and Stillness - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga, Neal Kosály-Meyer [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011, private recording]

sound floating free of intent, barely anchored to seafloor

kelpish in swaying slumber

gravissimo

October 16 and 18, 2018
Finnegans Wake Part 2, Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Robert Amos [from Waywords and Meansigns]

advertisement
very plain
intro blurb at length

the rhythm of one strand of punnish
the wordless either

did these ways wend
they and the world is made free

plain speaking reading or telling

word by word

to the left leans a guitar whose not recently tuned strings being open and exposed are variously reverberated by the word by word formants and resonunciations of the speaker's head

to make a long story badder
apocryphal of rhyme
ear relevance

tongues' promiscuities

curtains

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 15, 2018
Figure Study 181015 - Keith Eisenbrey


Neal, being deep in rehearsal for Chapters 4 and 5 of FW, couldn't make it to do the Gradus, so I kept the piano company.

Playlist

Preface

"The words we choose to address our musical thoughts and concerns are moral actions. It's not that, by choosing, we have acted in a moral way; nor is it that, by choosing, we act in a way that is good or bad. It is, words are actions, actions that are subject, subject-able, to moral considerations. By choosing words to address our musical thoughts and concerns, we choose verbal language; by choosing verbal language, we choose, willingly or un-willingly, wittingly or un-wittingly, many words, many actions, many moral acts."
Jon Forshee "If Music, as a Music: Three Notions Around the Thoughts of Benjamin Boretz" Open Space Magazine issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

September 16, 2018
Forever - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

twice the tune
twists away from its starting
neenerneenerness
instrumental bit

then twists away again
just to the point of losing
grip

Banned Rehearsal 271 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 1991]

old ice cream
at Toad Hall
advice for adult living
baby talk
inane conversation with sound effects
distraction of infant in the room

lots of pistons

Aaron proclaims that when J became 27 years of age Bruce Springsteen would be president.
that would be strange
opined Karen
not as strange as who is president
now that J is 27 years of age

Sonata in D minor - Jean-Marie Leclair - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Evenings With The Captain Vol. 1]

contrapuntal weaves were all the rage still
so everything copied it as a model
as later the operatic scene

civilized grace (what else would one expect from a Jean-Marie?)
some instrumental showing off

September 18, 2018
Drifting - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

free reed harp as one-man horn section
shukashukashukashukashukashu
song of where we landed

Making Hey - Eve Beglarian - Eve Beglarian, Matt Fieldes, Damien Bassman [from Open Space 21]

or was
as in
at as
an or
even was
when that
as in

Night Signals Journey To The Sea - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011, private recording]

doing next to nothing for a stretch inflates doing anything from both sides of the performance doing divide
turning in sleep

. . . crickets . . .

woke up the birds

abide next to nothing
doing

abstract literal
(fact as though image)

September 20, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 8 - James Joyce - Mary Lorson and Brian Hall [from Waywords and Meansigns]

on a bed of tones and crickets ALP told all about as a comic dialogue
from the Ginsbergian Beat Voice Sound notion
i.e. music sound upon which to sit
to lie
8 bit hip hop

what men say about women
never the other way

witness we are to conversants' conversant converse

a pause as to shift
point of view

done

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 17, 2018
Gradus 339 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

6th B up then a 4th above

Playlist

Recorded

August 25, 2018

Mossyrock, Lewis County - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

guitar plucking tenor minstrel
a collective memorial

Kilvert's Hills - Krassimir Ivanov [from Open Space 21]

contrabassoon, I think

turns melody's ear here
there

all been there
never wasn't

a cozy room in the woods

Nature Lives in Motion Part 2 - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, May 2011]

I drew a picture and wrote a poem

August 28, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 7 - James Joyce - Mike Watt & Adam Harvey [from Waywords and Meansigns]

guitar thrum color of page
figures texture of tale
slipping off character intrusion of voice
goes under (done)

August 29, 2018
Hallelujah, Amen from Judas Maccabeus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

It isn't that he had a tin ear for English, it's just that he didn't care. Settled for blocks of affect.

Requiem - Mozart - The English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir,

Barbara Bonney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Blochwitz, Willard White

accretes and presses down
to rise while falling
all the while a collective endeavor
any given passage traverses solid spans
we never get to where we were
no span remains
or survives a passage

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 27, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 965 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

On the porch with
Aaron, chanter
Neal, phone
Karen, autoharp
Keith, ukulele

also sharing a few little bells and a dried leaf

August 31, 2018
University Bridge 180831 - Keith Eisenbrey

cars on grated bridge deck go by

Playlist

Recorded

July 29, 2018

Finnegans Wake Chapter 5 - James Joyce - Neil Campbell [from Waywords and Meansigns]

as from in a swivelorbiting teacup ride
the fellows of which filled with pulsing square wave glowers

quiet enough suburban sounds around oblivious
lore is rich with long loops backdrops cranky go round

here's the motor at the heart chugging chug chug tip
under the waves it goes

July 31, 2018
Aria "La callania è un venticello" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

snark within form
form lights fuse
fuse polite tunes
tunes turned to
to revolution

Get With - Ben Pollack / The Readheads [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

that guitar sounds amplified
as richly detailed as the trumpet
the drums must have been two blocks west
instrumental dance for dancing instrumentals

Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

same deal
but the drums moved back in
trumpet replaced by loudspeakered voice
beautiful virtual space of recorded sound
cut to fit to the two minutes thirty or so

Symphony in D minor (The Year 1917) (#12) - Shostakovich - Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky

soundtrack for which visuals are superfluous
(panoplepticon)

circling lost in the orders of its circling figures
somebody keeps turning the frenetic up

meanwhile in the simple hearts of the proletariat
history's burden bestowed
distant doings afoot

Stop Her On Sight - Edwin Starr [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

power coloratenor
barely a song before it's gone

Don't Let Nobody Turn You 'Round - Silver Light Gospel Singers [from The Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1]

tempos within voice
genders of tempos
held together at the tap tap tap tap tap tap

Fire - U2 [from October]

kind of a mess, drifts off in a Pink Floyd haze

August 1, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 79 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Neal

merge! yield!
recounts a story of the container of stuff they had brought with them from back home
Karen clears her throat
Keith recites in whale a sixty cent bus trip

time and a consideration of decision making
measuring regret and loss
Orpheus and Eurydice perhaps, in another guise

Harry and Maude hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot

remember! merge! forces beyond their con|||| . . .

August 2, 2018
Once in a While - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

for those paying close attention, I blogged about this one just last May.
punctuated by insert beats and relax chorus a BRIDGE!!
Big Punkt
to guitar solo Haydnesque affect-thinking translated to song structure
finishes in punctuation mode

The Teen Thing - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

so I listened to the next track too
clever filler bit of song for between

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

still messing with tempos and pace, dynamics
seeding ideas into cloud forms
chains and links and daisies

Pretty Saro - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

precise pitch articulation
essential inflections

masterful

no song needs to be
or could be
more than this

as good as it gets

10 Minutes for Aaron - Keith Eisenbrey [April 2016]

loose hi hat cymbal inverted on antique milk can with mallets (various)
all its sounds' parts and their lastings

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 30 2018
Banned Rehearsal 963 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

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!