Playlist

Recorded

August 14, 2011
Banned Rehearsal 568 - Banned Rehearsal (from April 14, 2000)

My index shows the participants to have been Karen, Aaron, and me, but I'm not sure Anna and Neal weren't there as well judging from some of the sounds. This session, though often wonderful and getting to a lovely peaceful plane at the close, brings up one of the perennial discussion points that makes Banned Rehearsal such a lively argument (and I admit to framing that discussion point to skew): Is falling into a groove, even when it feels good, likely to lead us somewhere unexpected and unexplored, or is it a retreat to the familiar and the known? From my standpoint the other side of this argument comes across as: What have you got against music? For me, in the context of improvisation especially, but for that matter in a more global compositional sense also, it isn't music as such I have a problem with, it is the known, the too easy, the facile, and the clever. All of these things tend to blind us to more strenuous possibilities.

Sounds of the Underbrush 2/28/2005 track 2 - Keith Eisenbrey, Mike Marlin

Two distinct parts: the first clattery and the second luminous and pretty.

Extracts 9 - Keith Eisenbrey

Part of a midi-enabled music analytical experiment based on Scriabin's Prelude op.74#4. If a piece of music is considered to be based on or derived from a certain pitch set, then it would be interesting to find a way to hear exactly how that pitch set and its transformations sit within the rhythm-scape of the piece. If we were to analyze a piece of music as being "in C-Major", for instance, then we could play through the piece but only play the notes within the C-Major triad. One could then make different versions using each different triad, differentiating them by timbre, and also combining them together in sets. One set might be the C-Major and G-Major triads , to hear how the Tonic and Dominant harmonies interact. Each set or combination of sets would be a unique abstraction or analysis of the piece. This is essentially the idea I was using in Extracts, though I thought Scriabin's Prelude might better be analyzed as being based on the (0,3,4,7)-type tetrachord (C-natural, E-flat, E-natural, G-natural is one transposition). I made one version of 12 runs through the prelude, once on each transposition. Then I made eleven more to combine all the possibilities of combinations of bi-tetra-chordal sets in all their transpositions.

Augst 16, 2011
Careless Love - Bessie Smith [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]
The Old Ark's A-Movin - A.A. Gray and Seven Foot Dilly [from Dust to Digital's Goodbye, Babylon]
Dinah - Ray Noble [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Ends as a completely different song than what it starts out being.

I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me - Roy Eldridge [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
Aviary - Charlie Mariano [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone (slow version) - Elvis Presley [from Sunrise]
Bye Bye Johnny - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

In Session

August 17, 2011
Your Mother Should Know - recording Ask Your Question at the Tintinabulary, Seattle

Your Mother Should Know is a two-piece rock and roll band made up of Neal Meyer (vocal, guitar, and bass), and Karen Eisenbrey (drums). This is their first attempt to record a song, and my first attempt at multi-track recording of amplified sound. Due to time and equipment constraints, we are going about it in an other-than-standard method. First I had them play it together for a guide-track. Then we recorded the drums separately, followed by guitar, vocals, and finally bass. I'll be spending some time mixing the tracks, but hope to have a listenable version in a couple of weeks.