Preface
"And Rose just went right through, she went right through the rain-bow and she did know that was what she would do. She had it to do and she went right through the rain-bow and then there she was right on the top so that there was no other top there just the top with room for the blue chair and Rose put the blue chair there and she sat upon the chair. And Rose was there."
Gertrude Stein, from The World is Round
Texts
Recorded
 |
| Moses Coulee, WA |
Schaschlik - Bad Cop/Bad Cop [from Wings of Techno]
the precision projecting shapes
of synthesizer tones
here
betray their origins
as oscillating devices
designed to
produce
only what we have abstracted as sound
generationally abstract
Back to Dust - Kara Hesse [from Sojourner]
a hymn sung in full harmony
A Response to the Wednesday Morning Shooting at Café Racer, Track 4 - Neil Welch
blips on a pulsing line
Portrait - Mariah Carey [from Caution]
cleanly
sparkle bells
technical purity
sheeny
flawless
Swan Dive - Waxahatchee [from Cerulean Salt]
from below the irony belt
Elijah - Denise Glover [from Gaps in the Stories]
concerning economic mis-justice
Dancing Out In Space - David Bowie [from The Next Day]
flat boomchick rhythm
up down
up down
Forks - Blazzed [from Blazzed]
a firmly set jaw
heat until pitch extrudes upward
What Remains of Our Roots - Mikey & Matty [from Harbor Island]
poetry
concerned with ones personal position
within ones social
milieu
in the middle of ones living
Move On - No Man's String Band [from Let The Truth Be Told]
sticking to acoustic instruments
not sure about the bass
like
Amish eschewal of technology
past a certain threshold?
In Your Fire - Shelby Earl [from Swift Arrows]
the glare of blinding infatuation
Brand New Start - Spinning Whips [from Sentimental Groover]
time for a life makeover
Come On Up to the House - Star Anna [from Go To Hell]
solution for all ills
and every situation
Night Swimming - Cumulus [from I Never Meant It To Be Like This]
a poetry of self awareness
life analysis
Young - Swearin' [from Surfing Strange]
urban
heavy
power sound
Sorcerer's Magician - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks]
slow procession into dark fantasy temple
ritual dervish
to melt
the walls away
unmoving center
Web of Lies - Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury [from Ascendant]
across an expanse of quiet water
at wee hour tide
screaming gulls come and go
Numenoctagon - Jacky Ligon [from Possible Worlds 2]
 |
| Dry Falls, WA |
we float in apparent null gravity
curious creatures surround us
we
become
in the state
of having always been with them
Piano Sonata in A Major (#2) - John Field - Benjamin Frith
one surmises a familiarity with Clementi
even when disbalanced
disbalanced clearly
delightful low peril drama
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156, Book I "Impressions et poésies": No. 1, Lyon - Franz Liszt - Leslie Howard
comes on like a carnival barker
goes on and on about how fabulous the
show will be
ladies and gentlemen!
today we embark on a new age
let us tour the
civilized world
at this magnificent juncture in world history
3 Claviersonaten für die Jügend, Op. 118 #3, in C Major - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl
1
gets stuck on its opening flourish
new matter can't fit itself
through
without accommodating itself
to its gestural lingo
2
a lesson in voice-leading comportment
distracted by a daydream
outside the window
3 healthy exercise out of doors
for vigorous spirits
4
games and stories
that flit about
in near-plausible
nonsense
and mock heroism
Sea Pieces, Op. 55 #2, From a Wandering Iceberg - Edward MacDowell - James Barbagallo
as it wanders closer
it occupies more keyboard space
Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72: No. 9, Nils Rekve's Halling - Edvard Grieg - Håkon Austbø
strong beats are subject to quick decoration
Poème provençal, Op. 127: I. Dans la lande - Cécile Chaminade - Mark Viner
to dance
is to join music to our bodies
to become the avatar
of the puppet within the notes
A Woman is a Sometime Thing - Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong [from Porgy & Bess]
jaded advice
dressed in flash duds
Helter Skelter - The Beatles [from The Beatles (White Album)]
headphone use does this no favors
it only exacerbates the track
segregation
and too-hard pan placements
Talk About the Passion (Live in Toronto) - REM [from Murmur]
radio ready songs
are not often designed
to be attended
as a
particular composition
they are a mood
blasted into the cultural
soundtrack
Merry Christmas Baby (Live) - Bruce Springsteen [collected from Neal
Kosály-Meyer's Springsteen Miscellany]
Dry Falls, WA
heavy and unwieldy
All Too Soon - Scott Robinson [from Thinking Big]
eight bars of slow four
succumbing to gentle subsidence
Boy Glory # - Goodness [from Goodness 1995-1998]
hoping to present a feeling
that will catch the attention of a wide
audience
something they seem to feel themselves
Tomorrow - Glenn Tate [from Days of Wine and Roses]
every week
new 10-year old red headed belters
would belt this
half-song
to balconies across the land
Summerboy - Lady Gaga [from The Fame]
pulls the ends of lines back into her head
A Fixation - Steve Layton [from The Composer Plays Revisited]
we will think in terms of these few tones
they will be passed down into
the society of tones
to be considered in relation
to
other-registral positions
of these few tones
Free Improvisation Quartet Project, Track 4 - S. Eric Scribner, Amelia Love Clearheart, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Bruce Greeley, Ha-Yang Kim, Aaron Keyt, Jim Knodle, Carol Levin, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 30, 2018]
trumpet leads
piano and cello harmonize
percussion comments
sideways
What Are You Going to Do - naciremA [from Dirt Cult Records: You Don't Have to be Cool]
thrash tantrum
Begging for Love - Rusty Dedrick Orchestra [from Irving Berlin, All By Myself: Notable Compositions 1926-1933]
intro lines are bifurcated
beginning with outer appearance
ending
with inner actuality
(I look happy
but I'm sad)
song itself
entirely sincere
Hilli ho! Hilli ho! (Bridge) - King's Singers [from My Spirit Sang All Day]
time for foxes to hide
Shaharzad Parsapato-Iran [from The World Sings Goodnight]
with a quiet hand drum
Cello Set 7 - Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury [from Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury]
a spider plucks her oud web
Grunky-Tom - Sacajawea Elementary Students [from Digital Dreams]
found a funk dance groove
 |
| Dry Falls, WA |
Another Day - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from High Roads and Hard Shoulders]
finger pluck figurations
build a flexible support
for blues to
ride upon
Easy Toime Blues - Brenda Ray [from Original Songs/1950s Music]
electric keyboard with rhythms
not much past light up keys
tempo
goes askew-y from the drum track
(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right - Homer Banks [from Written in their Soul: the Stax Songwriter Demos]
talking oneself into being an infidelitrix
September 8, 2026
You Help Me - Holly Palmer [from I Confess]
a bit of a vocal showpiece
going all grandiose and anthemic
never
belts it out of control
Shut Up - Chrstina Aguilera [from Lotus]
underused passacaglia possibility
in the honk honk honk honk baseline
or perhaps an overtly academic fugue subject
a concatenation of
simple parts
locked in place
clever use of bleep-out censorship
bleeps
as part of the rhythm
gives the game away
Ancient - Wake [from Dirt Cult Records: You Don't Have To Be Cool]
buzz saw guitar
battle shriek
later
in casual pose
with opium pipe
on a jag
of their jag
on the jag
jump from jag
Solo Poem for Sixtext - Benjamin Boretz [September 16, 1988]
measure to a constant tone-location
and from within the company
of
the remainder tones
the constant is an F
if I mistake not
we
pause to have considered new notes
also
in the company of
remainder tones
or
have we wandered off the diagram
into a
new context
erstwhile constant companion
flew the coop
a
wildlands of tones
ideas put these here
but whose?
the recorded sound has no ideas beyond its inscription
the ideas
as originally being conceived
lost into memory
time travel
for ideas
jumping across the intersubjective cleft
minimize damage
for greater fidelity of idea transmission
a constant essay
concerning the clarity of saying
the meaning of
coherence
and its processes of expression
Gap 1st Batch, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 - J. K. Randall - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded August 27, 2026]
I think I'm getting there
My Face Won't Bleed! - Doug Haire [from The Crawford Opera]
frantic code
tap tap
4 Minutes (feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland) [Peter Saves New York Edit] - Madonna [from Hard Candy]
in trashtalking funk tempo
lots of flashing lights for the stage and big
screen
the personae are ants in a huge spectacle
86 - Dawn Richard [from Goldenheart]
the singing person is a fiction
a puppet
a theatrical presentation
an embodiment of a text
Forest Show (continued) - John Teske, Neil Welch, Greg Campbell [recorded live in Ravenna Park, Seattle, August 4, 2018]
...and we are served tea sacrament
you are welcome to the bells
thank you
a bass thrums in bass linear script
we sip tea and
chat
You Gotta Keep It (Outta My Face) - Mudhoney [from Superfuzz Bigmuff]
push back energy
Retro Futurist - Bad Cop/Bad Cop [from Wings of Techno]
Dry Falls, WA (Coulee City in distance)
spaced out scam call
interrogation
as a style of haute coutour
Track 15 [from Unknown Christmas Album]
and if your choir is full of fuddy dudders
we have this serious
faux-modernist piece for you too
with trumpet parts!
(no guitars)
Art is Either a Complaint or do Something Else, Mesostic 2 - John Cage
oracular substrate
certain kinds of things occur
stepped out of
voice
to signal end of mesostic
A Response to the Wednesday Morning Shooting at Café Racer, Track 5 - Neil Welch
listening to this track now
I see how I might have started thinking
about J. K. Randall at the public concert
Celebrating the Life of Carl Richard (Dick) Eisenbrey (continued) [recorded live at Langley United Methodist Church, Langley, August 26, 2018]
my cousin Rich tells how Dad taught him to swim
Peace and Quiet - Waxahatchee [from Cerulean Salt]
voice sound tuned to the guitar sound
Improvisation - participants [from Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions 2018]
the ideals of anonymous printed gate information
a theater of images in
corners
left to right in parade
curtain to curtain
out the
back
dystopic agitprop
scraps of posters
mass hypnosis
How Does the Grass Grow - David Bowie [from The Next Day]
next level production
next level hip
next level with it
urban high life
fast life
Greetings from '93 - Kara Hesse [from Sojourner]
phone machine message
Truckin' - One Man's String Band [from Let the Truth be Told]
life
moving stuff around the countryside
in vehicles
68 Chevelle - Your Mother Should Know [recorded August 30, 2018, assembled October 8, 2018]
one of those ads
with too much personal information
falls into its
own story
selling a legend
Who to Blame - Shelby Earl [form Swift Arrows]
accepting situation self talk
unresolved but balanced
Stand Up Straight and Tall - Denise Glover [from Gaps in the Stories]
campaign comfort song
Smoke Signals - Star Anna [from Go To Hell]
a hard rocking album finale
Spaceman 2 - Blazzed [from Blazzed]
soundtrack to a basement-made scifi horror movie
pedal setting toggle
Curdled - Swearin' [from Surfing Strange]
voice sound
tuned to the side of the guitar sound
they remain
distinctly tuned
Hold This - Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury [from Ascendant]
tuning
to the hang of the tones' space
hanging
in the tuning
of the tones' space
Snake Charmer - Mirjam Tally [from Possible Worlds 2]
an illustration queer and obscure
more to it than it can seem all at
once
 |
| Dry Falls, WA |
Nocturne in E-flat Major (#9) - John Field - Benjamin Frith
there is a bodily pianistic pleasure
in balancing simultaneities and
shaping phrases
a pleasure in making things clear
a piece can be
valuable
as much for the pleasure it provides to its performer
as
for what it provides to its other listeners
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156, Book I "Impressions et poésies": No. 2a, Le lac de Wallenstadt - Franz Liszt - Leslie Howard
a vista opens in unwinding leisure
7 Klavierstück in Fughettenform, Op. 126 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl
which is to say
that their internal workings
are overtly fugal
formed from the inside like fugues
not from the top
pieces
that are repeatedly reminding us
how they started for
private study
and small audiences of cognoscenti
Sea Pieces, Op. 55 #3, A.D. MDCXX - Edward MacDowell - James Barbagallo
stern fortitude
Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72: No. 10, Knut Luråsen's Halling I - Edvard Grieg - Håkon Austbø
the impression is given
that Norwegian peasant dances
had a
characteristic stumble to them
and lots of stomping
Poème provençal, Op. 127: II. Solitude - Cécile Chaminade - Mark Viner
lines of clear syllable count
elegant and sophisticated
Oh, Doctor Jesus - Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong [from Porgy & Bess]
show prayer
Long, Long, Long - The Beatles [from The Beatles [White Album)]
dressing up quite a nice song
with an overdone coda
Sitting Still (Live in Toronto) - REM [from Murmur]
verse to chorus
alternate
modes of projection
Music, when soft voices (Bairnstow) - King's Singers [from My Spirit Sang All Day]
lyric poetry
set to evoke its mood
Ko-Ko - Scott Robinson [from Thinking Big]
jazz
as a thing to do
has a proclivity to self-enclosure
it
speaks about itself
and its ways
I Feel OK 'Cause It's Christmas Day - Bruce Springsteen [from Christmas in Asbury Park]
actual performer was announced
but I didn't catch it
Maxwell
Somebody and Jimmy Levino?
did they drag Jerry Lee Lewis out of the
southlands
for a few bars of solo?
constantly full blown
Desert Bloom - S. Eric Scribner [from Soundforms/Multiples]
bespoke intonations tinge the surface
for miles around
Manicure - Lady Gaga [from Artpop]
leaning into the artificial
Hum & Bristle - Steve Layton [from Virtual Composition]
scraps of scales and boulders of chords
a raging flood
We The People - Carl Smith [from Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos]
ejaculatory interjections are great fun
I Say It's Spinach / Let's Have Another Cup O' Coffee / On a Roof In
Manhattan / Soft Lights and Sweet Music
- Rusty Dedrick Orchestra [from
Irving Berlin, All By Myself: Notable Compositions 1926-1933]
Dry Falls, WA
Mr. Herbert Hoover says
now's the time to buy
{NB
don't take
market advice from a song}
Art is Either a Complaint or do Something Else, Mesostic 3 - John Cage
arrogant differences
last words are finalized rhetorically
Yammer Thiam-Senegal [from The World Sings Goodnight]
and that's the last of these
the last time through
I listened to
the whole album at once
and it turns out
that was 30 years ago
yesterday
Cello Set 8 - Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury [from Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury]
following sounds around on an instrument
In the Machine-Tom - Sacajawea Elementary Students [from Digital Dreams]
to use a device
is to celebrate it
instructing a machine to perform
is a method of devaluing human
performance
Wake Now - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from High Roads and Hard Shoulders]
morning
linger in bed time
How Many - Brenda Ray [from Original Songs/1950s Music]
consumer products
for anyone to be cheesy
to their heart's content
Interlude - unattributed [from Dirt Cult Records: You Don't Have to be Cool]
let's get sad
 |
| Dry Falls, WA |
Body and Soul (Take 2) - Thelonious Monk [from The Complete Columbia Studio Solo Sessions]
thinking about what's happening
inside that progression
that the
melody might help discover
Sweet Young Thing (Ain't Sweet No More) - Mudhoney [from Superfuzz Bigmuff]
role play
bit commitment
Gap 1st Batch 13, 14 - J. K. Randall - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded August 28, 2026]
could redo 14 I think
some of the accents don't quite carry
Cheney Dies With His Head in a Mudhole - Doug Haire [from The Crawford Opera]
taps is tapped
and shots are fired
4 Minutes (feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland) [Junkie XL Remix Edit] - Madonna [from Hard Candy]
a dance mix
which is to say
any relation
to the form of the
song
as anything but an assemblage of tracks
tacked in place with
a drum machine
is ignored
You Keep Me Hangin' On - Holly Palmer [from I Confess]
minimal instrumentation
bass and drums
occasional hint of guitar
Your Body (Martin Garrix Remix) - Christina Aguilera [from Lotus]
dance mixes
presumably
belong to a public dance culture
rather than to a concert culture
or even to a barband moshpit
culture
the purpose
is to grease the skids
of get up and
move your body
so
those whose bodies have got up and moved
can watch the other bodies
what has also got up and moved
if
they distract attention unto themselves
as such
they have failed
this one has playful features
and is mildly entertaining now and then
{see doodle}
Try To Remember - Glenn Tate [from Days of Wine and Roses]
the sort of song
on the radio station
my dad had on
in the
car
when I was a kid
In Your Eyes - Dawn Richard [from Goldenheart]
not the sort of song referenced above
a dance in multiple plies
in "in your eyes"
'your'
takes the downbeat sometimes
other
times
on three
Forest Show (continued) - John Teske, Neil Welch, Greg Campbell [recorded live in Ravenna Park, Seatlle, August 4, 2018]
the distinction between tuning to each other
and improvising together
whether with or without a score
is hardly worth mentioning
beyond the notion
that normative tuning to each other
is a
hidebound tradition
a socially prescribed ritual performance
this performance
is tuning with each other
as a mindset
of
performing a communal music
A Response to the Wednesday Morning Shooting at Café Racer, Track 5 - Neil Welch
all that can be pressed wrung or distilled
from a D-flat
(or
D-natural
it's between the keys of my piano)
Celebrating the Life of Carl Richard (Dick) Eisenbrey (continued) [recorded live at Langley United Methodist Church, Langley, August 26, 2018]
Karen reads a poem
You're Damaged - Waxahatchee [from Cerulean Salt]
back to just guitar and voice
inter-stanza strumming
reads as a
necessary time
to regroup ones thinking
Listening - Denise Glover [from Gaps in the Stories]
words after an event
in the tradition of current affairs songs
You Feel So Lonely You Could Die - David Bowie [from The Next Day]
giving voices to those left out
Follow That Car - Blazzed [from Blazzed]
matchbox taxi chase
engine sounds like it needs work
Riverside Waltz - No Man's String Band [from Let the Truth Be Told]
not the Seine
perhaps the Snake
or Powder
or Clark Fork of
many crossings
Dreaming in Two Million - Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury [from Ascendant]
begins without starting up
its beginning
has already begun
when it begins
a dream is an experienced mental state
that can be described
(at
least theoretically
because it has been experienced)
before it can be described
it simply isn't
reeds and reverberance
Pretending I'm Well - Your Mother Should Know [from Demo Album]
I'm wondering
if I didn't just find a way to record this all at once?
memory fails
Better By Morning - Kara Hesse
sleeping off disappointment
in anticipation
A que a gente quer - Lois Lancaster [from Possible Worlds 2]
to a jollily rolling beat
 |
| Dry Falls, WA |
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156, Book I "Impressions et poésies": No. 2b, Au bord d'une source - Franz Liszt - Leslie Howard
it was a time of waxing poetic
on what passed by
impressionism by any other name
is a Romantic impulse
an unwillingness to stray from an established figuration
Concerto in D minor, Op. posth. - Robert Schumann - Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, Pierre Cao, Susanne Lautenbacher
1
stern necessity
confronts on all sides
allows no time
to take breath
figurations composed for their tonal meaning
without much regard to violinistic felicity
2
home and hearth
3
an excursion into village life
safely from our conveyance
less a concerto
than a violin solo
with supplemental orchestral
sonority
First Modern Suite, Op. 10 - Edward MacDowell - James Barbagallo
this music is concerned with its pianism
flash and
composed for
concert stage
rather than parlor or salon
each piece is a world to
inhabit
a jolly fugue now
In Session at The Tintinabulary
September 6, 2026
Dover - Keith Eisenbrey
September 7, 2026
Banned Rehearsal 1158 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt
September 11, 2026
Gap 1st Batch, 8, 11, 14 - J. K. Randall
Postscripts
Drops
Keith Eisenbrey 35
Sabbatical Improvisations 2014-2015
Another album of solo improvisations for you.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream.
