Playlist

Recorded

July 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 249 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

Begins with righteous plunk on toy piano. Throughout: a microscopic attention to intonation, liberated intonation, bending cymbal pitch by angle of stick. If there's enough of it, it must be real. (Quick Quaker Quotes). If there's enough of it, and it's night, it must be surreal. On radio intonations of Desert Storm, Dark Hole. When all the candles go out the tape will be over.

July 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 425 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Bells of various whistle and guitar through synth (wahwahtech). This band is at work on stuff, dragging a muck rake into low sinking murkwood. CONCH! Deep bass blow. Relax the grip.

Ms. Found In A Bottle - Keith Eisenbrey

A composite 20 years in the making, digitally recorded textsound (Confessions of a Polyphonist) with aged magnetic tape of synthesized sound (the rotted version of AKU). Wobbly flangiform synthesizary diphthongs.

July 26, 2017
Being, Hearing, Knowing Now - Stephen Dembski - Christopher Taylor, piano

Each sound resets, proceeds only from the immediate. As memory intrudes we don't go back. Back just comes back.

Banned Rehearsal 785 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

How: to design an attack envelope for piano reverb.
How: sounds persists.
What: A bestiary with bell kit beast guide.
What: Gathers at the bottom of the beaker.
What: beings to react, and converse.

Your Face - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A song can be a face of word time pitch time melody time tine time. Is what it says.

July 27, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg, organ

Triplets trip the trap. Bits, hints, and teasers.

Die Jahreszeit "Winter" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

". . . lange dauert." Held back, even the dire chorus building forces underground. Rhythmic hiccups. Nonmotion, a hurried up slowing down. Waiting for, not being at.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Green Lake, Seattle, July 29, 2017

July 23, 2017
Remlinger Farms Steam Train Ride - Keith Eisenbrey

At a corporate picnic out in the country we took a miniature steam train ride. Too many conversations to post in public.

July 24, 2017
Gradus 316 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Some are interior spaces, the caverns of swiss cheese. Some are incrustations, barnacles. Some are iron rigid bars.

Playlist

Live

Your Mother Should Know

Victory Lounge July 21, 2017

July 15, 2017
Alone In Dead Bars
Your Mother Should Know
Arbor Towers
Victory Lounge, Seattle

John Maiello, the lead instigator of songwriter for and singer in Dead Bars, has been appearing solo now and then as Alone In Dead Bars, often when a gig arises to which the full forces can't be mustered. His songs skew toward the conversational: "this band is way to fucking loud you saw me covering my ears . . ." Story fragments one might overhear at, well, at Victory Lounge, presented at a full tilt holler over the bandblast volume. Art imitates life in situ.

Your Mother Should Know, in their second electric show in a while, tightens up their set. I'm still too much the husband of the drummer to comment reliably in public.

Arbor Towers was lots of fun, with some really fine playing and songwriting. One set and I'm already a big fan.

We were pretty beat from having just been out late a few nights before, and we were sorry to miss the two bands from El Paso: Lunas and Medvedi, but Neal reports they were fine, so I'll look up some sound on the interwebs.

July 21, 2017
Your Mother Should Know
Victory Lounge, Seattle

And there they are again, opening Victory Lounge for the Eastlake Block Party. No longer having been on vacation, and pretty much wiped, we limped on home right after playing.

Recorded

July 16, 2017
Confessions of a Polyphonist - Keith Eisenbrey

Words are huge. A Textsound piece I wrote in 2000/2001. Listening I thought of an interesting challenge: What are the chances that any particular transcription would hit on the spelling of the score? A homophoniad - or perhaps a homophone-mare, complicated by the names of letters that are also words and syllables within words that are also words. This may be the closest I ever got to a Boretzian 'text that only a composer could write'.

Gradus 92 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Space to think around each singlemomentnode to linger touch caress lift weight ponder want besotted with each singular that time must be given to grieve its passing.

Castles Made of Sound - Wrick Wolff - Marzena Music Ensemble [from Hendrix Uncovered]

Undulous and otherworldly, in the groovy way.

July 18, 2017
Gradus 284 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a dry lake bed

an occasional stone

or line

aiming

somnient

a shift in underlying geology

leads to a more dreamy sleep

twitchy

July 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XII - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sensory overload split screen cinematography to the end that just is.

Die Jahreszeiten, Fall - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

This is a well fed music. Oh boy! A hunt! And a dance! Even the passions are part of society's well ordered plan.

July 20, 2017
Who 'Sit - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Is that a slide whistle in there, superbly conjoining with clarinet? Cool!

Joy Bells - Tennessee Music and Printing Company Quartet [from Goodbye Babylon]

My favorite band name this week. Hyper-pingy vowels sung to !pop! on the old-time recording. Wicked fine piano playing back there.

Shoe Shine Boy - Lester Young, Count Basie [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Proto bebop, a sense of orderly motion still traceable within the too fast to follow figurations.

Serge's Urge - Chaloff Serge [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The same, but updated, out-done.

Seventh and Union - Hank Garland [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Wonderfully articulate, flirting just ahead of where you are.

You're My Thrill - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

A stunning confluence of musicianship and sound engineering. You have been taken. Give it up.

Dirty Robber - The Wailers [from The Fabulous Wailers at The Castle]

I'm sure he's saying some words or other in there, but it hardly matters, the sense of the sound is right on.

Absolutely Sweet Marie - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

In accusing another of teasing, exposing his own lyrics as what they are: a big tease with nothing underneath.

10538 Overture - The Electric Light Orchestra [a Rescued Record]

With George Martin-like arranging as a starting point (think Yellow Submarine or Eleanor Rigby), we get this, a dead end.

Babylon - Don McLean [from American Pie]

At least it's short (counterfoil to the first track?). The banjo is nice.

Cook of the House - Wings [a Rescued Record]

A song that's not much more than a groove sandwiched between nouveau Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast fry sounds.

Ein Hundenleben - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisor's Ensemble [May 1981]

IN WHICH: Karen and I were in the same room for the first time ever but didn't have a clue what would be in store.

The UWCGIE performed as the last half of Neal's Spring recital, and this, being one of the three pieces we performed, counts also as among the earliest traces of our collective improvisatory collaboration. I'm thinking there must have been 8 or 9 of us, but certainly don't remember everybody's name: Neal Kosály-Meyer, of course, and me, and Stu Dempster, Joseph Bichsell, Dave Jones, Greg Powers, and several others whose names and faces escape my fading memory banks. We had spent the quarter working on tuning into common wavelengths, and it shows.

Coney Island Steeplechase - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

A test mix of collected contrast bits, mixing room floor scrap sweepings, but not bad for all of that.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 17, 2017
Banned Telepath 58 Coal Creek 170717 - Aaron Keyt
Banned Telepath 58 Seattle 170717 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 939 170717 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Composing Camp - Alaska

Playlist

Live

Black Lodge

July 13, 2017
Victory Lounge / Black Lodge, Seattle
Anxious Arms
Choke The Pope
Ease
Pity Party
Listen Lady
Ramona

I haven't much to say - the sheer number of bands, all playing various versions of that Ramones-y "we're a happy family" beat, ever faster ever louder, overwhelmed my ability to keep track of which memory was which. Lots of fun though! Out among the beautiful people.

Recorded

July 10, 2017

Peggy Sue - Banned Rehearsal [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Another post-session "hey let's play . . ." in which I managed to hit record first. It is spirited, but Neal's vocals are lost deep in the fuzz.

At The Funhouse - Fe Fi Fo Fums [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

It's only a minute forty, but still seems a bit padded.

July 12, 2017

Gradus 186 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]

Playing very softly, the highest A natural only emerges gradually as a pitch. Prior action noise could have been most anything.

Deep History - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A bit didactic, but with a fine and intricate string band behind it.

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

This is the first of the canons, filling every nook and cranny of experiential space.

Die Jahreszeiten "Summer" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

Languid near to a fault. Great storm though. Just a few years before the thunder in Beethoven's 6th Symphony - or in Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, for that matter.

I'm Gonna Gitcha - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Dixieland rhythm but with a focus on LA's solo sound. What an odd sort of act he was: singer and trumpet player, top of the game in each.

Cab Calloway

Kickin' The Gong Around - Cab Calloway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Is this the first mention of Smokey Joe? A kind of journalism, giving us a peek at the seamy undersides of society without our needing to go for ourselves.

Derby Town - Old Ced Odom and Lil Hardaway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Late night vaudeville wink wink nudge nudge song, veering away from the dirty words just in time.

Don't Worry About Me - Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson Octet [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The song eases down the scale and slinks back up.

You Tell Me Your Dream - Eureka Brass Band  [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One imagines this sounding somewhat old-fashioned in 1951, but then it may have been some of those same old dudes playing that same old Dixie they had always been.

Love Me Or Leave Me - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

A study in the careful placement of voice within tessitura. Sounds to me like she was gunning at Sinatra.

Wailers House Party - The Wailers [from The Fabulous Wailers At The Castle]

That completely unmistakable fat guitar with B3 sound. Brilliant.

Temporary Like Achilles - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

The first song on the album that doesn't leave a bad odor in the air.

The Grave - Don McLean [from American Pie]

They were sincere times I guess, but this spends a lot of energy saying words with lots of meaning, then grinding the meaningful into the dirt with a boot heel.

CIA Dope Calypso - Allen Ginsberg, Stephen Taylor, Jon Sholle, David Mansfield, Arthur Russell [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Torn from the headlines! The fun of the word play overpowers the disgust we feel we ought to feel.

Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

The whole sound sits at a level, like the surface of a lake, like a J. J. Abrams lens flare, nothing beneath, nothing above. Cool and sheer.

Banned Rehearsal 64 - Banned Rehearsal [Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]



Cornet overpowers the equipment but not the sound, sheared away, skidded across, re-writing itself
onto the tape from the tape as it cooks on the reel. Steadfastly not entertaining. About 30 minutes in there is a truly wonderful collective chord that emerges with drums and bells, like bootsqueek in fresh snow.

July 14, 2017

Night Of The Subaru - Infamous Menagerie

There is an extra partial beat thrown in there just to knock the whole thing out of plumb.

Sonic Brilliance 16 - Banned Rehearsal [John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Aaron Keyt, Kia M, Neal Kosály-Meyer - May 1996]

Banned Rehearsal spent much of the 90's negotiating our continuance in the face of parenthood. For a while we had the kids join us for a pre-session. This was one of the more successful sessions, because the kids essentially made their own game of it. Life of the Dragon, accordion slain. To say we'll say something is to have done it (for the 5 year old crowd). Then Neal takes them outside but was somehow broadcasting back inside the studio, and interviewing Aaron and Anna from in the house. Too many minors on board to share the sound, but if I were to share a Sonic Brilliance this would be the one.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 10, 2017
Gradus 315 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal invited a fellow blogger, Kent Karnofsky, over to listen. He curates Community Noise. I believe his article will be posted shortly before Neal's upcoming {August??} performance {at the Chapel??}.

Neal composes with raw subtleties, pursuing the inflections of distinctions as they arise.

Playlist

Preface

"And it works; the world works, even if it seems to work in frequently deplorable ways. Without judgment, the world doesn't work; without distinctions, there is no world. But of course we're talking about music; and the question is whether that chaotic disparity of sensibilities which underlies the orderly uniformity created by conventional wisdom is not crucially the realm precisely of the aesthetic; the place where the distinctions are precisely the ones that matter at the heart of the enterprise of creative expression. That the well-tempered effort to hear conventionally, in terms of the givens of musical culture, of the distinctions and judgments ontologized within their defined terms, is in fact sensitivity training in the service of a certain particular register of sensitivities, a powerful homogenizing agent which makes possible the conduct of musical life, its way of sorting out issues of performance, of composition, of description, of opinion, as if they all made mutual sense - and thus enabling the intelligible continuity of the cultural institution that enacts and reproduces itself as music, as the reality of what music is.

But . . ."

Benjamin Boretz The Universe of One, And, the Music of the Other Open Space Magazine Issue 15/16 fall 2013/winter 2014

Texts

Live

July 7, 2017
Seattle Composers' Salon

Clinton, Washington - July 9, 2017

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jessi Harvey - Eden Untamed (selections)

Massive, dense solo piano writing that loosens into an odd narrative || that involves lots of shoving things around, things unwilling to move at all, across surfaces that fight back with dogged persistence.

Jeremiah Lawson - Guitar Sonata in d minor (selections)

The sort of music that speaks high of lowbrow and low of highbrow: Southern Harmony hymnody in slide-guitar arrangement halfway toward dulcimer Appalachian if it weren't so completely guitar, Haydn thinking in the new world.

Jay Hamilton - Out

man with block head wooden seated bare foot on chair || poly-log from speakers voice of neural chaos. Existentially instructive in the language of prosaic doings stop start up down out.

Clement Reid - Theater Piece #2 (selections)

for toy-piano || in the treating seriously of which (which he does) foregrounds the relation of conceptual size across realms: big piece, little instrument. The theater of it for me is the dynamic question of whether the bigness of the piece overwhelms the littleness of the instrument. Even money.

Keith Eisenbrey - Ghosting Doubles (second sighting)

Thank you, Amy Denio, for permitting the use of your tune.

Carson Farley's question hit things brilliantly on the head (thanks! that's probably why it took me aback so effectively) - and I had already chosen the prefatory quotation -  something like (paraphrasing for my own nefarious ends) "why not compose the trajectory from theme to variations, instead of bluntly starting with the finished thingy?"

comment after the fact one: To do so could be another performance of the score. I'd love to hear it.

comment after the fact two: presenting it as I did, in quasi-theme&variations sequence, was an ad hoc decision, since in my thinking about this project all the versions (and others) exist within each other as doubles, ghosts, unperformable as a whole.

comment after the fact three: Scores could be for exploration not performance.

comment after the fact four: Dunno.

comment after the fact five: I didn't.

or less snarkly: This simply was what came out when I started working. Your possibility did glance through my thought process, but this is what finally got written out.

comment after the fact six: In my thinking about composition projects this is a single complex score within a set of three complex scores, which set of three is the eleventh in a set of (probably) seventeen complex complexes of scores named Etudes d'execution imminent upon which I have been engaged for several years now and expect to be so engaged upon for a good bit longer. I take the overarching title of the project with deadly serious intent.

Recorded

July 1, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This fugue is being shucked, like an oyster, a strongly resistant oyster, an oyster of many shells.

Die Jahreszeiten "Spring"- Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm

A phantasmagoria of kinds of singing and singing groups. As in movies it has special effects: word painting: music bits standing in for representation, representing representation.

July 5, 2017

Dropping Shucks - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

loose bolts on this chassis

jalopy rhythm

bumpety b'bump b'bump

After You've Gone - Benny Goodman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

first: shambling around the house moping blues
then: celebrating around the house not so blues as you think I'm bluesing

A bit of a comic version of what I understand to be a traditional jazz funeral rite: solemn to the grave, then shout to the skies.

Until The Real Thing Comes Along - Snow Valaida [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Soloist: "Talk to me, boys". Turn-based conversation as structural stratagem. The titular hook low low in the tessitura each time but the last (see BG above).

I Found A New Baby - Don Byas [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Water ski pull along thrill speed til flip free and soar.

Weary Blues - George Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This music is having more fun than you are.

(Ah The Apple Trees) When The World Was Young - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Never a shiver of a moment more than she needs to make the statement. Tight as a Scriabin Prelude.

Shtiggy Boom - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Flutter-tongued harmonica!!!! Yowza!!!!

Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Another kiss-off song from Bob. Is the whole album like this? They get over it better in most of the songs noted above, or at least with better humor.

Sister Fatima - Don McLean [from American Pie]

Almost too precious for sensitive tummies.

Golden Years - David Bowie [from Changes One]

An undetermined count of songs in there, a broth bubbling roiling them through each other to the surface. DB at his best doing what he does best.

KCBOL (draft studio recording of June 2009) - Keith Eisenbrey

As cockamamie as the scheme was, there are many features of this 1980 piano piece that continue to be of use to me. As originally conceived there is a theater bit that goes with it, involving stacking alphabet blocks and ringing finger cymbals (which idea came back as whacking an oil drum at the beginning of Five Movements as performed at Bard in 1984). The original performers were Andrew Buchman and me. The midmost movement of the five is a two-note piece for piano four-hands.

July 6, 2017
Ride Me Into The Sun - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

They'd been working on some stuff and this is a page from their sketchbook.

Banned Rehearsal 248 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Bill Meyer, Marilyn Meyer [February 1991]

small sounds close up moments gel but between gel moments fleeting liminal passages

what passes for a steady rhythm here is the jounce of an overladen wagon hugely wheeled downslope in self abandon bump stop in ditch shake

Banned Rehearsal 424 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

The so-called "Acronymiad", intent on filling the space with sound the acronyms are partially effaced.


In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 3, 2017
Banned Telepath 57 Anchorage 170703 - Aaron Keyt
Banned Telepath 57 Seattle 170703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 938 170703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

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

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.