Playlist

Preface

detail of an image by Anne Gorrick

"Part of them approved
With words and added fuel to his anger,
And part approved with silence, and yet all
Were grieving at the loss of humankind,
Were asking what the world would be, bereft
Of mortals: who would bring their altars incense?
Would earth be given the beasts, to spoil and ravage?"
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Recorded

January 11, 2020
Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 68 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

Sequences of figures alternate between moving and holding still. Then the sequences all move. Then only a part inside moves in modal shift. And now back to when we started, but with a flourish.

Ceremony of Carols - Benjamin Britten - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey (director), JoAnne Deacon (piano)

A procession clomping clump clomp up to the risers.
Each verse is set.
Static. Flat.
Picture Book. Block Print.
(Relies on wide open grin charm.)
Front cover. Back cover.
Clump clomp clump clomp.

One; Another - Jo Anna Allen, Benjamin Boretz (Inter/Play)

Ben's mbira moment
shimmer bells shimmer

sea bird keen
keen sea bird keen

This is an unstable
→tenuous←
pitch space
we inhabit here

Noh punctuation

crumarmbira
such lovely melody

tres belles
bell trees

Superman - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

such a 60s sound
psychedelic Beatles
song structure: strongly developed, complete, composed.
Well done fellas!

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 6th version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

reverb: grandly huge
(rolls around in it)

title of a work: an inseparable part
Is the untitling a decision to not title or rather to title it untitled?

reverberation: the space sings back

Teenage Daughter - Whiting Tennis [from Three Leaf Clover]



a considered arrangement
(We heard Whiting Tennis several years ago at a nearby dive.)

January 12, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 801 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]



an arcade of curiosities

detail of an image by Anne Gorrick

Simultaneity of attack is not a thing that can happen among these sounds. Even were it to be demonstrated to have happened as an acoustic event-fact, recourse made to a study of the wave form, it wouldn't sound like it, because the parts themselves are in such granularly conceived individually specific time worlds as to be un-comparable at any such bludgeonly level as simultaneity could exist in. If simultaneity of attack is impossible (and sequence at least partly undeterminable) can there be a meter? a tempo? syncopation?

Rattle: a contained chaotic system, like humans.

We have transgressed to the rear corridors of the arcade, its backrooms and utility closets.

Rearview - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



Vocal syllables are not just on notes, but each note has a vector-complex of diphthong to keep it lively.

Sonata in F minor, K. 69 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

a repeating
or a seeming to be a repeating
figure made of pitch contours
with familial resemblances

Christmas Oratorio - Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns - Bellevue First Methodist Church Chancel Choir, Betty Eisenbrey (director)

detail of an image by Anne Gorrick

Overture: hanging out in the lobby of the piece proper.
We can consider replacing the specific composed accompanimental sound with a stand-in - such as piano or organ for orchestra - but not so much of replacing the choir and leaving the orchestration otherwise unmolested. Changeling accompaniments.

In order to be a Masterpiece (tm) of this type it must be doable by amateurs or it won't sell.

Helluva soprano there!

He gave the Magnificat to a mixed ensemble of solo singers - heavy on the male end.

A rather dreary business in the end.

Respectable Street - XTC - [from Fossil Fuel]

The drum sound has an interesting isolation.
The art of stage dance has morphed into the art of music video

January 14, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 108 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1986]



Utterance is experimental at root. We don't know what we think until we do, can't know the effect of our thought, ever. Hot tea helps on a chilly evening. It is a comfort to know there are some live ones left in these melancholy days. Also sprach Mehitabel. And sometimes we mark time only.

January 16, 2020
Untitled (Slow Waltz) 7th version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Each of these Versions 2 through 7 was made using the "Acoustic Mirror" effect in Sound Forge. At the time I made them I was concerned that the result was too obviously fake. But after all these years I understand this is largely because of the close proximity I had to hearing the raw take. All recorded acoustic images are exactly as fake as all the others.

As a composition, the central or key image is the just-too-long collapsing modulation sequence that occurs just before the first long pause: after which the image of that sequence is heard to have been permeating, and to continue so to permeate, every motion. It is and was the moment it hears itself.

Gradus 110 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2006]

modified detail of an image by Anne Gorrick

the second A
but first let us pause
before we break our silence

let us not linger
except over the pause after

Minimalism: the art of decoupling specificity from iteration.
side thought: music engravure as a form of critique or analysis.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 13, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 997 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt



It was a cold dark snowy night. Aaron braved a brief break in the precipitation to join us here at the Tintinabulary, keeping us on track to get to number 1000 in time for our show at Gallery 1412 on Groundhog's Eve.

Postscripts

ward purgation terrible frightful

sensory night length the spiritual

rare since this base manner lead lowly ex-

to little dots that flash
the bridge

densely mirrored

Playlist

Live

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recorded

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

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

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

Music artifacts are syntheses, every last one of them.

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

The una corda mechanism had a squeak.

OR

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

We perfect music as we listen to it.

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

Tidal Waves - Lunas [from Over Me]

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

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

lots to do
hustles along doing it
not time to waste

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

. . . no applause please

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

the farce of dustiny
primum mobilisque

deviation from meaning
telling to hear what is meant

one must mind what is never said

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

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

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

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

Under Pressure - Queen, David Bowie

ultra discrete production
game knows game
no sound need touch another

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

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

definite buzz in the equipment system that's for sure

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

Aaronsbundler fight song

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

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

sounds in your face
like hawkers at a bazaar

taxonomy of climate
atlas designated regions

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

:: INFORMATIONS::

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

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

::OUTFORMATIONS::

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

the shrills hold sway
tamed by the holler

own worldly dissonance proudly

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

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

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

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

I was early told to think vocally. I do.

Gradus 109 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2006]

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

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

ample room in the meter
for weighty sighs

Selections from Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

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

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

the sensual experience of thinking

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

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 6, 2020

Gradus 361 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a chord dire and splendent
regions are created

thought path
or trace

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

further on we go
farther back we reach

polyvalent relations to memory

Postscripts

taste good he said and took it i've asking

time one has a spoilt i can't understand

it usual breakfast do you think it is

the dragon

is language itself

the risen throne

Playlist

Preface

"My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me - or I hope so - with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days."
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Recorded

December 28, 2019
In The City - The Who [from A Quick One]

municipal siren's song
immemorial

Rawhide - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

spirited!
quasi-cover
re-imagined song

as much as he mocks it
he is enjoying himself
doing this

Assembly Rechoired 11 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [December 1986]



weightless harmonic breaths
slowly reading lines in German
Klopstock?

thumb piano and the free reed blow harps
perturbations in the persistence of doing a single thing

hoot mug
holey
hoot mug

that tree

day after our first Christmas together
(we have the ornament, with the birds, yes, in a cage)
I'm sure I have a picture of that tree
tuning the fretted lap strummer
[what is a piano? battle zither?]

cow bells again
feel no pain

fist whistle
wood branch horn

Karen plays hymn tune on the fretted lap strummer while I play hymn tune on the sasquatch horn. Something fell over.

bangclunketbangetybang
thump

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 2nd Version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

dyads in the LH |chick chick| part of the |boom chick chick| figure
each functional bit of the figuration follows a distinct path

achingly lovely weird modulation series
pull out of it by appearing as if it hadn't just landed you there out of complete elsewhere man

continuing by momentum right out of one's mortal coil

those last two dyads
from the |chick chick| bit

Banned Rehearsal 711 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2006]


xylophone whistle horn (cornet? alto?)
go for the bangclank equipment

softly
a gong
goes bong

QUACK!

bleat bleat goes goat
DUCK!

take it from the big hooting the very big hooting
rootntootn

moving a round sound around
playful (at its essence)
play pretend
pretend play
redundant: play and pretend

Neal and I play the lets tune game on big buzz pipes
a softer mallet is used when striking right to the ring of it

December 29, 2019
autumn sonar - Triptet [from imaginary perspective]

drums are in a rolling barrel time zone motor
guitar and horn search the fog and murky water

Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded November 2017]

At the beginning I am establishing articulation points
sonographic nodes
posts
map pins

taking time to do it right
careful

taut not learned
scary dense polyphony elucidated in pitch unison sequence

Sonata in A Major, K.65 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

just possibly the most lucid composer of the 18th Century

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

. . . Five

note how unique each rhythm of phrase or line or sentence is!
full of repetition and reference

answer: poor old Joe
six: answer (Kitchen with Dinah] tik.

seven: who are this list
answer: eight
and how are your maggies?
answer: descending melody of repeated stressables

nine: panaroma eye of a noodle shake again oh how starling
answer: a collide or scape
10 (ten): answer.

read and spoken

a reading is an analytic performance
speculating the voices that speak
the thrall of our lies
I hope they threw away the mold
lists of name with cough obbligato

not even to the charmer maid . . .

January 1, 2020
Happy Jack (acoustic version) - The Who [from A Quick One]

ironic novelty song
attitude is all it has

Seconds - The Human League [a Rescued Record]

we do love our synthesizers

stands for meaningful if topical
meaningful if you know what it is about
if you don't, not

can't be until it reverberates itself

Resistance at Brechemin (second set) - Chris Cochrane, Doug Henderson [March 1986]

We too had been playing with songs that arise in the context of improvisation.

Ideally, figurational stability should become invisible
and provide a framework that illuminates otherwise inaudible aspects of an iteration

love their synthesizers too
but treat the knobs as a thing to twiddle, rather than as a thing to set
not to get a sound
but to follow them in the air

two levels of instrumental sound:
the performed
and the peripheral
their economy of coexistence.

this sound is song
and this isn't
songsound
and notsongsound

this sound is the jamming of the songsound
the jamming part of it

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 3rd Version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

ends as a sequence of variations on the end of it
the piece
consequently
ends numerous times in sequence
each more endingly that the last prior ending

The Hunters Return - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

gestures signal the ending
the players signal each other

The Day That You Deleted Me - Your Mother Should Know [October 2011]

with the mass horn section! (I had recorded several takes of Mike Gervais on saxophone and Neal Kosály-Meyer on cornet, then used them all)

Hanging On The Telephone - The Tim Version

wordy
the purpose of the hook: structural anchor (dead weight)

Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 66 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

pay mind to the ends of anything

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

. . . not even the charmer maid

eleven
as the gates may be
temporarily wrapped in obscenity
little brattons

let
me be
Los Angeles

the mooks and gripes
I was operating the blue light at the time
Karen the white.

a woman of no appearance
an invisible [house?]

no applause please . . .

January 2, 2020
Man With The Money - The Who [from A Quick One]

hints at a story behind the song
like a song from a musical

The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

trying to deal with punk but trapped in a blues heart

Reading: Luke 1:18-22 - The Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

pronounced like might have been olden time like

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 4th Version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

it gets to the edge
and peers over
into it
with steady purpose

(shorter each time around)

Slavonic Dance #2 in E minor - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

all in the surface
nowhere to gain purchase
more resumé then music

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 30, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 996 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


last of the decade

Postscripts

rushed bring stupid behind policeman with

the job was going to be one pass the

boy the elder one's naughty lebziatnikov

carrying a sack of gold

a bird flutters through the sun

the dragon

Playlist

Preface

"Being a work of art is being perceived a certain way, i.e. being noticed (experienced) as an instance of the disposition of instances of certain types of instances of certain types of elements. That the 'same' entity or phenomenon is susceptible in a distinct perceiving as constituting a different such instance, or an instance of a different type, is located at an epistemic level distinct from that on which the identity of a given work of art is determined."
Benjamin Boretz "1972: Two Notes" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

Recorded

December 21, 2019
Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 (start) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2019]

ceremonious, stately :: so

He begins to query the quantity 12 in questions
aunt sirs.

things to eat and
things to drink

sing song
on occasiong
looked earish with his eyes shut

The small functional words
parts of speech
are left alone for the most part.

The multisyllablical words or polyrunic single pulse words are taken with more license.

A man is spread out among the city
sounds like a rude word . . .

Strawberry Fields Forever Take 7 and Edit Piece - The Beatles [from Beatles Anthology, volume 2]

extended version for maximum weirdness trademark

We've Got a Bigger Problem Now - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

cool number
under the bottom of it

sneer would be satire
the most imaginative song on the album so far I think

Banned Rehearsal 106 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1986]



bells and small whistle bamboo or tin and clacking as a backing

composing: the art of changing one's tune

over time

an aspect of recorded sound worth more careful attention: the recorded image of the size of the places in which these sounds abide

Aaron and I, singing, find places to unsettle our intonation
we do not blend

more cowbell than many musics dream of
cowbells in a big way

We're so glad.

organized sound, as a concept, presupposes an organizer [?]
at one end or another

beta rhythm sets in
long dim
model airplane motor
turns over now
not exactly a wake
nor a sleep

it continues long into sleep
far down

Untitled (Slow Waltz) - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, February 2002]

The second simultaneity: a dissonance off the get go that no amount of Satieesquery nor warmth can resolve.

pebble in a shoe
thorn in a side
eagle in a liver

Gradus 108 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2006]

Each A-nat of these six A-nats foliates or refracts into acoustic's proper parts. One can trace a hocketish tune among those proper parts on one or more of each of those six A-nats. Is there a downwardgoing quality to any of those proper parts' sequence upon time imparted only by the downwardgoing quality in some sequential atom of the music, otherwise irrespective of the more literal motion among their own pitches, arising from the respective roots of foliations. But these must be sought out.

My role: I am its conceptual soundboard.
(I've heard it all) :: so far

In resonating space do partials also foliate, fractal-like?

Always two there are, the player and the listener? but which is which and why?

Can't Keep - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

That is a fine sounding ukulele. It is interesting how the vocal part, at the start of each verse, starts right there in the room with you, then sets off somewhere to howl at the moons.

Shucking Corn - Keith Eisenbrey [August 2006]



I recorded the squeaky kiss sound of it.

How Still My Love (alternate version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

throwing curses around: you won't forget me
this song (and others of hers) go around in a circle
never get up and be gone

Raise Your Hand - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live 1975-85]

I'm curious as to what kind of preaching he had heard. He picked something up somewhere.

"Mrs. Ramsay rose. Lily rose." - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, February 2002]

The beginnings of things abrade upon the ends of previous things. Surely among the prettiest of my compositions.

Serenade in E Major - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

firmly within the ritual of tripartite ABA Menuet Trio Menuet land

The end of a piece must take great care to not intrude too rudely upon the beginning of after.

December 24, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 800 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]



recorded on the 25th Anniversary of Karen's and my wedding rehearsal dinner -pizza and beer

Neal echoes into the bellsphere imitating looplike technology.

a stroll through a soundmake
regions of events
at distances
in places

actual loops
an accumulating pool of announcement
as Neal counts up to us

All the critters celebrate and lift a song.

Energy envelope waves pass or are passed through.

Some of our former noise sloshes around at the bottom of the pool.

Groundhog Day - Three Fingers [from Three Songs]



Everybody's groundhog day over and over
working isn't fun but tacobell ain't free

December 26, 2019
Sonata in D minor, K. 64 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

let's gavotte
out tonight
(slam dance)

La de Chamlay - Jacques DuPhly - Christophe Rousset

Ben's phone booths metaphor :: evidence of, or support for oppression. Or nostalgia.

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

words/breath
words/phrase
phrase/breath
line/foot
clause/line

... sounds like a rude word

one analytic performance might simply be to explode the paragraphs out onto the page in pseudoverse.

The old stock collar is coming back.

Answer: Finn MacCool!
Two: Answer: a song
Three: which title? thine obesity.
Four: What Irish 6 letter 2 syllables. Harmonize your responses in the ribs of your resistance.

No-one expects the Irish Inquisition.
a predicatement
Five . . .

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 23, 2019
Gradus 360 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

A D then a D and an E
Same D

pitch matching: Does the pitch of a note necessarily match the pitch of the reverberating harp resonance arising out of that note? Of course not!

3rd D down, and 1st E down: 26 semitones - midway between is a note D-sharp/E-flat not yet in the sequence.

Postscript

from all that is the yet understanding

not for this is not done call it which works

fancies of things but inasmuch as

was alarmed to be walking barefoot

but the lion turned away

no causation

Playlist

Preface

"As my explanations here are probably above your understandings, lattlebrattons, though as

augmentatively uncomparisoned as Cadwan, Cadwallon and Cadwalloner, I shall revert to a more expletive method which I frequently use when I have to sermo with muddlecrass pupils. Imagine for my purpose that you are a squad of urchins, snifflynosed, goslingnecked, clothyheaded, tangled in your lacings, tingled in your pants, etsitaraw etcicero."

James Joyce - Finnegans Wake

Texts

Live

December 14, 2019
Finnegans Wake Chapter 6
Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Neal performs this in the dark, except for some spotlights during the Mookes and the Gripes episode, for one spotlight of which I was responsible. I therefore did not take notes. However, in an accident of my system for choosing the next thing to listen to, my recording of this will come up shortly. I'll probably listen in short bits, rather than all at once. Stay tuned.

December 19, 2019
Extremity
Lu Evers
Jo Anderson, voice; Keith Eisenbrey, piano; Lu Evers, voice and clarinet

I am grateful to Lu for inviting me to join in this intriguing collaboration. I was so involved in the doing of it that I don't have much of a sense of what it is from the audience side of the stage. Lu and Jo read some texts that Lu had written. For some of the texts Lu played clarinet. For some of the texts I played piano. Lu had written scores for me to play from. For one of the texts Lu and I played together.

Recorded

December 15,1019
Leather and Lace (Alternative Version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

message music
tell you something

outing a conversation with a known actual person
or fantasy of a conversation with a known actual person
or providing a soundtrack for another's life moment

throwing words, nonspecific events and particularized emotion laden words
in hopes that some of a set of them will hit home

All Around the World or The Myth of the Fingerprints - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

This song is a body dancing in many frames.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [from Continuity in Small Things, February 2002]

hiss noise heavy in the mix
and yet we hear the music signal as though it were pristine within it

Karen sounds great
I flubbed some notes but was otherwise right on

nice song writing, past me!

Turtle Island Waltz - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

Who is appropriating whom indeed?

Can appropriation by appropriate?

The whump of the drum is preceded each time by a quiet whoosh
a soft fabric sound
very like the wh of whump

Gradus 198 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]

Among these pitches, the A-nat in the middle of the range, where we would be speaking in terms of pitch register, is easily felt to be the focus of the activity. The purpose of our hearing is, partly, in order to hear our selves.

How is one supposed to hear?
Why is one supposed, exactly, to hear?
Why not overhear what one is supposed to not hear?

piano pedal technique: as one slowly releases a reverberation the dampers won't quite each engage with absolute unanimity of time

result: the possibility of a melody of the sequence of apparent tones as they linger differentially, as they arise as others are stopped, as others are withdrawn

Swallow Your Fears - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



So articulate!
So fast!!
clawhammer hardcore?

DK should hide in shame

Sonata in G Major, K. 63 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

a tinkerer was Scarlatti
which is why
he is such a composer's composer

La de Guyon - Jacques DuPhly - Christophe Rousset

solo music

not intended for multitudes

much more private
for among intimates
fellow wizards

Sonata in B-flat Major, Wq 65/45 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

strays into other tonal regions
as though losing itself in bookstacks

follow carefully now
you may have to find your own way out

3rd movement is more than a little tipsy
this is W.C. Fields juggling drunk
a mimicking wit
a puppeteer

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 16,2019
Banned Rehearsal 995 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Postscript

saying that allow for the always living

but because of this effect it makes the 

soul live without knowing why his voice was

arranged my tapes in three neat little stacks)

carrying a sack of gold

a bird flutters through the sun

Playlist

Preface

"

NOW ADVANCING ACROSS AN UNROLLED SOUNDSCROLL.

ALL OF IT - FROM START TO FINISH - IS PRESENT NOW. FROM BEGINNING TO END. THE WHOLE STORY. A PRESENCE NOW FROM BEGINNING TO END. --: PAST PRESENT & FUTURE PRESENT (,: ALL THE TIME :): PLAINLY VIVID. (EQUALLY. ((& UNVARYINGLY; - ALWAYS. &) EVERYWHERE.)

QUALITY OF HERE:?- :(EACH WHERE INDEXES WHOLE STORY 0F.). THE SAME FULLNESS OF STORY OF. -- (-: THE SAME OLD STORY. _ &

NOW? -:(,RELEASED FROM START) ADVANCES;-& PASSING AS A POINTER PASSES (,___ AS TIME MIGHT PASS-), DIVIDES PRESENCE NOW (,ALWAYS) IN TWO PARTS: THE PAST PRESENT FUTURE PRESENT PART (,BECOMING SMALLER & SMALLER) ACROSS WHICH NOW HAS YET TO PASS. :PASSING AS A POINTER PASSES (,- AS TIME MIGHT PASS-)-: NOT TOO FAST (-& NOT TOO SLOW EITHER -), BUT JUST RIGHT.- (CAREFUL NOW. )-. EACH NOW (.!PRECISELY) POISED HERE ON ITS NEXUS.-. -OF? CONGEALED;)-) TIME.

(: WHAT HAS NOW BECOME?

"

J. K. Randall "a soundscroll" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

photo by Betty G. Eisenbrey, altered by me

 Live

December 12, 2019
Kathy Moore, Crystal Beth, Guitar Cult
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Kathy Moore

paradigm: solo stage act in the small
quest: how big a sound can be made alone
clarify: not loud, big
tool: loops
types: pre-made / on the fly

elaborating environs
for voice and persona
to project
shine

Crystal Beth

power suit
constant core
accreting immersive braids
to be released and spun out
into out
places other
places outer
places
presumed still to be still spinning

self replication
on an outing
sonic super suits
to allow
an outing

final dissipation
spinning
out

dissispination

Guitar Cult

elders, circle of
lensing

call forth mind join peer power grid link
(disindividuation to amplify intent)

led
(it would seem)
by the pulse keeper

circle stomp (dance)

care taken
on where it gets to
but is less concerned with how to get off the horse

disintonation corps

Recorded

December 7, 2019

Sonata in A minor, K. 61 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

move as little as possible
attend minutely

The figuration contours replicate into the ornament contours, and no doubt into the phrase contours as well.

Médée - Jacques Duphly - Christophe Rousset

repetitions for branching chronologies
muscular
like wrestling

This House - Harvey Schmidt - Mary Martin, Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]

And that's the end of that!

Nazi Punks Fuckk Off - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

lots of words not intended to be understood

December 8, 2019
Assembly Rechoired 10 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [November 1986]



drums, organ
(Bickleton?)

some odd disturbance in the recorded cymbal sound - grated, or sliced off at a near buzz of a tempo

carousel waltz
but wanders quickly to a slower space
seeking a lively stasis
something that will build of its own accord

which we do find
and which does never quite lose the lingering flavor of that carousel waltz

a ukulele is picked up
the electric organ is dropped

we are good about getting quiet as easily as we get loud
moreso mayhaps

the piano
playing quietly

the quiet
playing piano

:blogger make little joke there:

sounds like Karen at the drums
me on piano

clearly I was on to some thread to follow

my thinking is clear here
and I love what Karen's ultra soft cymbal sheen does to the overall

at what point in this process does recognition of a thought
as a thought
occur?

Untitled (Slow Waltz) - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

nice pedaling Keith!
strong piece, too.

I remember what drew me to it at first was how carefully each note must be balanced, both vertically and horizontally, and the multiple long lines that never drop, but that articulate each other out and in.

[NB: this was a version I recorded at the Tintinabulary in July of 2004. I then proceeded to apply various reverbs to it, some subtle and some not. Those versions will show up here over the next weeks]

Sahn Sun - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

cheerful!
It's darling!

Solo Set at HeckFest - Lori Goldston



fiddle

cellofiddle

woodpecker on maple tree in Maple Leaf, December 14, 2019

sound seems invisible
to the social chatter

treated as a servant

one rarely thinks of cello figuration in the same sense one thinks of guitar figuration, but Lori treats the cello like a outsized guitar

that is:

guitar seems to be a polyphonic instrument by default, occasionally playing single strand tunes
*
while cello seems to me single voiced by default, occasionally playing chords

(Lori begs to differ)

and there may be a tam tam

Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [Chapel Performance Space, March 2018]





The Chapel spirits were lively that evening

order passes through for a visit

short high contrast forms

December 10, 2019
Keyboard Sonata in A, K. 62 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

Domenico deigns not to modulate - he just is there (elsewhere).

The radical discreteness of parts in stark contrast

allows other parts to bridge the gaps
at points far distant from either

Les Graces - Jacques Duphly - Christophe Rousset

A hot house flower
from the center of civilization
perfumed with ornament

The Owl and the Pussycat - Igor Stravinsky - Karen Eisenbrey, soprano; Keith Eisenbrey, piano [University Temple United Methodist Church February 2002]

and the light of the moon

not well recorded, but Karen nails it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 12, 2019
Jesu, der du meine Seele - Keith Eisenbrey



The 12th of my 12 chorale settings that together constitute the 12th part of my Études d'exécution imminent, recorded on 12 12.

Postscripts

any more than what is works are fixed what

know how to live with spiritual

or temporal things as substance passive

hung there from another mind

dyes gray violet

blows on the bass drum

Playlist

Preface

"In any case, the trouble with regarding works of art as primarily about the world is that they are in the first place of the world. And in the sense that the world is what communicates through language-dependent perception, art works surely add themselves to the world and use the ways that the world communicates to communicate themselves."

Benjamin Boretz "Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art, From a Musical Point of View"
from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

Recorded

December 2, 2019
Elephant Bells - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

music
in plain sight

unhidden

sound groups :: each a hinge of others

we move from one group
bells for instance
to another bell group
through the hinge of the synth tones
or through the hinge of string plucks

or all the vices versas among them

Solo Set at Nocturnum - Lori Goldston



an amplifier played by a cello played by Lori

The loudness is not the point of the amplification so much as the largeness of it, our nearness in relation to it, getting our ears right up there next to it.

An amplifier setup is a malleable ear mechanism with a malleable output, a virtual soundboard, a scrim, or filter.

the granular tracing of an intently listening ear

The Drink I Didn't Have Last Night - St. Rage [August 2016]

This song is the whole reason for the fringe-y shirt.

Sonata in G minor K. 60 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

a crowd talking through mirrors

so fully of its texture that there is no reason for it to be coy about stopping when it's done, without letting on about stopping until it does

La Louise Wq. 117/36 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

a finger puppet show that keeps trying to peer out of its box

Chaconne en fa - Jacques Duphly - Christophe Rousset

a receiving line
everybody is a bit tipsy

hic

December 3, 2019
Doctor, Doctor - The Who [from A Quick One]

near rhyme: floor | jaw

Dog Bite - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

too slow he says
in order to show off

Swan Swan Hummingbird - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

falling off the psalmtone into the harmonic soup
half a song

G---- Melodies #4 - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

the struggle for authenticity through appropriation

("That trick never works!")

December 5, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 799 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2011]



unpitched sounds rarely are
really

photo by Betty Eisenbrey - adjusted by your blogger

none of these opening sounds are pitched
as such

but this sound is about nothing but
pitch

when the piano comes in it only proves the point

bigfeedbacksqweeel

Someone Pay My Student Loans - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]

stuck anthem

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 1, 2019
My soul doth magnify the Lord - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, soprano; Keith Eisenbrey, piano



We presented this as part of the morning service at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle. Not too bad for a live performance.

December 4, 2019
O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross - Keith Eisenbrey- Keith Eisenbrey, piano

Wahkeena Falls, photo by Betty Eisenbrey

This is the eleventh of my twelve chorale harmonizations, composed in 2017

Postscripts

happened her entire honored so would

have scorned her or at the very least sent

her ball awry and it had her mightily

(today is not it)

no rules apply

just sit there