Playlist

Recorded

June 24, 2018
Symphony in B-flat, op. 60 - Beethoven - Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan

Tonality as practiced here is not a set of keys and their relationships. It is, rather, constructed from the dynamic ambiguity of scale-degree functions within contrapuntal web-works: how each pitch within the object of discourse relates to all the others as a polyvalent set of latent scale-degree functions :: as an expressive tool or a box thereof :: here's the power-up: an interval pattern is a thing but it can be set willy nilly within any particular portion of the key.

I appreciate how well this recording is engineered to sound like it is being played in an exquisite place. I'm sure it was, but it even sounds like it was. Great timp sound in the 4th movement.

Skid-Dat-De-Dat - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Was his slow vibrato an imitation of old recording instability / spindle speed variability?

Stranded In The Jungle - The Cadets [from Original Oldies From The 50's Volume Thirteen]

silly? check.
fully realized? check.
variety show comic skit song
vaudeville :: minstrel show
place and history
Jungle :: Town
played as
Primitive :: Sophisticated
equally treacherous

Guitar Pete's Blues - Guitar Pete Franklin [from The Art of Field Recording Vol. 1]

His guitar playing is mostly a right-handed strummy picky sort of affair. A robust relation between his right hand and his singing.

voice: diaphragm | vocal cavity
guitar: lh pitch mix | rh articulation

7 O'Clock News - Silent Night - Simon and Garfunkel [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme]

the mistake was in presuming our own innocence
personal note: I was 7 when this came out. It came into my consciousness not long after, probably through the older kids at choir camp. Howsoever faux profound it is, I succumbed to it hook line and sinker.

Track 4 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from my mom's tape of a concert given March 3, 1971]

Sounds Haydnish, perhaps Weberish.

Discipline - King Crimson [from Discipline]

guitar strings are drums
long thin drums
long thin drumheads
pitch is a change in the shape of the drumbody
Learn to Play Guitar with Fripp!

Banned Rehearsal 76 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

perhaps we made a pact

tiny sounds only and yet tape machine conglomerate of sounds
piano as recorded intermezzo in the wild
my how they talk
a very Keytian play
part 2
must have been just before the Ben and Jim concert that Neal and I did
circular texts we laugh less controllably
bells and strums Leiermann BOW reference from the old days mash up Leiermann and Hidden Damage overdriven guitar lobs laser blasts at Elvis back carnival game stack-o-decks at its craziest made possible and limited by the Realistic mixer (it was cheap) the spot I'll seek if the hour you'll find there's that Stranded In the Jungle guy to where we began again at the end

pop pop
dada
thubbup
thubbup
thubbup

pronounced
pronouncement
snort
pronounced

Blue All The Way to Canada - Moe Tucker [from I Feel So Far Away - Moe Tucker Anthology 1974 - 1998]

caboodle convoy chrysler after chrysler to Canada

Yaburebukero (reduction mix) - inBoil [from Sonicabal 2001]

some uncertainty as to origins
all electro I suppose
makes a wicked rattle of it
to vibrate your whole skeletal
really shake it

June 25, 2018

"...woe my road is spoken..." (midi draft 1 060522) - Keith Eisenbrey

my string quartet in an early finished version
unlike some I have the ability to forget details of my own composition
so that though I know this changed considerably I can't recall precisely at which point it veers
sudden nonsequiturs of harmony-timbre, clearly made segments
all there rudely

You Don't Know - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

about as perfect a thing as can be
just guitarplucking, singing, and a wee bit'o'harp blowin' here and there.

Banned Telepath 47 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [April 2016]

for 908 so long ago
a common aspect of BR has become the easy way we can move around the room, with happy dis-regard, or with focused regard, of where we are in relation to the microphones. I have skewed this somewhat in my current setup: 2 stereo channels, one aimed LR, the other UD (Up Down). It rounds it, but the sounds still move scitter scatter playing squeaky mouse nose right up the camera there restless jitters quick and that is all

June 26, 2018
Overture to The Barber of Seville - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

pre-highlights highlights
something is about to happen kids
pay mind

Sunset Cafe Stomp - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five (with May Alix) [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Is the sense of what was meant by "Stomp" in this context derived at all from the Southeastern Native American "Stomp Dancing?" If so, how?

That's All Right Mama - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

false starts for laughs
takin' care of business
beatnik nerves

Scarlet Purple Robe - Georgia Jean Eversole [from The Art of Field Recording Vol. 1]

immediacy inescapable
punk gospel
you've been preached to up close

Psychotic Reaction - Count 5 [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

somebody is playing with dials at the board
makes it sounds like rubber bands

June 27, 2018
Track 5 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from my mom's tape of a concert given March 3, 1971]

neoclassical, and pretty classy too.

Son of Manhasset - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [from a private tape of a concert given at the Seattle Concert Theater in July 1981]

Does anybody remember where exactly the Seattle Concert Theater was?
me on piano I think
it is a mistake to demonstrate, by what we play, that we have heard what another has played.
hear and do, it is enough

Ferryboat Bill - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

pencil sketch collective

Banned Rehearsal 266 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1991]

some appliance hums and tocks in the back behind guitar mbira ocarina cymbal toy piano (fan in

August?)
disresonantly metalictocky
something vanished
drum shaker vocal like an official whisking compounds to make drum corps
funmaker duly introduced
Aaronsbundler tattered away into old radio land
advanced dance calls for rhomboid dancing
empty brain rattle can
where does the sound come from
did he we mean it to sound like that
behind that drum beat beat beat bidi beat beat beat a moil resolving to their drums at tether length
there's that clavichord consorting with toy piano
tuning the last piece he wrote
we filled those cassettes
crammed them

June 28, 2018
Pay Me My Money Down - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

hitchin' a ride on another starshine
so that no voice other 'cep'n' his can be heard as an individual

Desert Bloom - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga [from Storm Sound Cycle, The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 21, 2006]

music like weather
and the ground

ample time for an interval to be a slough

Falling On Your Face - Ravenna Woods [from Alleyways and Animals]

accelerating subtly then de-accelerating ratchet-like through broad but delineated space
four ways to fill the same space altered

Playlist

Recorded

June 19, 2018
Mona - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

a tinge of string band and blood harmony
later, the center of sound scatters

Banned Rehearsal 908 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt - April 2016

assembled from Banned Telepaths 47 - Aaron playing Wallace in Somerville, MA; Karen, Steve, and me chiming in at the Tintinabulary in Seattle
sounds' seeming mass
moving air
massive instrument objects
to move air in specific modes
Wallace enters the space
otamatone answers
a trio for two pianos and otamatone
Steve provides essential percussion entwinings
actuation centers wander about the space
light percussion takes the field
copper pipe insulation squeak speak.

A Voluntarie - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

an ordered garden path
a path of vistas

Jazz Lips - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

horns dancin' wild

Slippin' And Slidin' - Little Richard [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

piano and drums keep it lively for bouncing voice and horn on

Mr. Ed's Theme Song - Jay Livingston

well there it is

A Poem On The Underground Wall - Simon and Garfunkel [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme]

egregious poeticizing
insufficient song

June 20, 2018
Track 3 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from a private tape of a concert given March 3, 1971]

a little waltz, probably some J. Strauss or other

Two Hymns of Brahma - David Jones - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Michel Singher [from a private tape]

Americana brash, then going for exotic ala Hollywood, in the service of which we find some pretty nice colors

I Know What I Know - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

He writes this from the sound first, then downward into the song. It is no better a song than it needs to be to inhabit the sound from within which it emerges. PS as groove assembulator.

June 21, 2018
Psalm 23 (meditation, responses) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

This 1991 score still intrigues me, specifically as it concerns the question of what small part of the

final performance result is actually written down. The score consists of a small book of page pairs. One facing page contains a verse from the Psalm and the other holds two short fragments of written music, the first fragment of which is always the same. In performance I improvised a path from the constant fragment to each not so constant fragment. This particular recorded realization (there have been several) follows my entire clavichord take with an edited version of Neal's reading. I guess, in some sense, this is the (responses, meditation) version of (meditation, responses). Listening to it after all these years I'm thinking I should do more composing for clavichord.

X-Communication - The Sub/Con Group [from Sonicabal 2001]

industrial-like sounds
between sci-fi Foley sound and music sound
unfortunately it wanders into  recognizable beat stuff
if it is a drum machine then it is making a point about drum machines that didn't much need making
if not, then ditto
a paucity of color

Nocturne Interruptus - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy / Interstellar Pianos]

honest cheap sounds thrills naked non-finesse

Consort of Voices - S. Eric Scribner - Clifford Dunn, Keith Eisenbrey, Matt Kocmieroski, Dale Speicher [from Storm Sound Cycle {private recording}]

the tempo is somewhere in the single digits per minute, and mostly whole notes
some minimalist stratagems wander through to reveal, briefly, the spirit that had hovered throughout
I believe this was the final piece in Steve's 9+ hour live epic Storm Sound Cycle, performed at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, in May of 2011. I don't remember what instrument I was playing.

Animal - Ravenna Woods [from Alleyways and Animals]

interval :: production-distance between overdubbed tracks :: vocal/piano drums/synth :: reverbillumination
artpop

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 18, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 961 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We gathered on the porch for the first time this Summer.

We note that it is pretty close to the 34th Bannediversary (June 24, 1984).

Playlist

Recorded

June 5, 2018
Psalm 23 (meditation, responses) (vocal take) - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 1991]

I made this quasi-setting of the 23rd Psalm in 1991 for speaking voice and clavichord, intending the

Eastern Washington

finished product to be some sort of recorded rendition. When Neal read the Psalm for me that August I wasn't entirely certain how the text would fit in with the clavichord commentary. Eventually there were two finished versions, the first accomplished with analog dubbing, and the second, realized some years later, with digital. Listening to my verbal instructions to Neal I find that my concept of how texts ought to be set has not changed much over the decades. I want to hear the sound of the words going by so that they mean what they mean, with minimal dramatic characterization or word-painting, and always being cognizant of the poetic structure.

Coffin and a Six Pack - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

vintage sounds
sample-ready

Thirty-Three Seconds - Storrs Barrett Booch-Williams [from Sonicabal 2001]

apparently a Cage tribute track

Shenandoah - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

Baker City, Oregon

Of all the various ilks of americana out there, I think I mistrust the overinflated rural-sentimental the most, as it winds so close to icky ante-bellum nostalgia.

Circle Song - Steve Scribner - Ivan Arteaga, Mike Sentkewitz (?) [from Storm Sound Cycle (live on May 21, 2011)]

against a backdrop
augmenting the distance to the lively made sounds
nocturnal
during
sleep

Good Friend - Ravenna Woods [from Alleyways and Animals]

careful and organized arrangement
buttjoints
greeting card sentiment

June 6, 2018
A Fancie - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

imitative
proto-fugal
any passing place can generate all things new
routes kept open
civilization seeps outward

Big Butter and Egg Man from the West - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five with May Alix [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

vocals occupy a lesser place within the song structure
it is a song, but the instrumentals are the show, the vocal bits are present only enough to register

Since I Met You Baby - Ivory Joe Hunter [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

another greeting card
an illustrated letter
it is what she wants to hear so it is what you tell her

River Line Blues - Shirley Griffith [from The Art of Field Recording vol. 1]

guitar and voice are one
pitch/meterpoint syncopation // guitarstringtimbre voice word confluence and retrofluence

For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her - Simon & Garfunkel [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme]

I can't help but think Paul was as frustrated with Pop as with folk rock - but that the full on blues had been foreclosed by Mr. Dylan. He had to futz around for a bit before he really hit his song-writing stride.

Track 2 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from a private tape of concert given March 3, 1971]

bass booms out into a time warp
affects not just the EQ but also the rhythm sense, as in organ music

June 7, 2018
Terminal Preppie - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters]

feeds off some of the same misanthropic sophomoranticisms as Saint Zappa.

Readings of a Sonata - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Neal and I dink around with another old score of mine, Sonata 1979
We trade-off readings to use up unused tape footage
We accomplish 3 full readings and the first part of a fourth

It's a graphic score so all the notes and rhythms are different, to varying degrees

sounds great, in that cruddy way we had, all the way

8-Ball Deluxe - 7 Year Bitch [from Kill Rock Stars]

Batman rhythm with a slippery bit
quantitive meter in action as rhythm

C'mon Jenny - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

what surf rock sounds like sitting in the rhythm section

Tokyo Fist - Alex Keller [from Sonicabal 2001]

radio signal morsey sound
(love it!)

Banned Rehearsal 702 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2006]

geography of inhabiting

how where and across what extent do the determinable agendi specify their place or their vectors or their circulations

never quite settling for a trio for long

though the constant xylophone (all hail!)

sound assembly takes time (give it)

and so delicate

because it isn't what it is without how it got to be

In Session at the Tintinabulary
June 5, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 960 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 11, 2018
Yellowstone 180611 - Keith Eisenbrey

I skipped blogging last Saturday because Karen and I were on the road by mid-that-morning to make a week's long loop among the five northwestern states: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, in order of our arrival in each. At the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone, on a windy day (hang on to your britches, dear, it's pretty gusty) I made this recording of our footfalls on one of the older boardwalks.

June 13, 2018
Phillipsburg 180613 - Keith Eisenbrey

10 years ago, during a similar road trip, we passed through the lovely little town of Phillipsburg, in

Montana. The memory stuck in my head all these years as "wouldn't it be nice to spend some time here?" So this time we did. After supper at Silver Mill Restaurant & Saloon (quite nice!) Karen and I opened the balcony windows of our room at The Kaiser House (the Mural Room) to take in the fresh air. I quickly grabbed my recording device to pull in the bird songs and the hominine shouts and the motor roars from the magic hour far from home.

Playlist

Live

May 29, 2018
Daniel Webbon, composition
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Bridal Veil Falls, Washington - ca 1971

The confessions of Saint Augustine - Ben Sieben, piano, Danielle Sampson, soprano

tones painting a theoretical statement

To square a circle - Sarah Pyle, traverso and percussion

a delicate solo duet
I enjoyed this immensely

An infinite number of others - Emily Acri, violin; Janna Webbon, violin; Andrew Stiefel, viola; Isabella Kodama, cello

into a past evoked by and returning back from . . .

This vast southern empire - Daniel Webbon, piano, melodica, vocals; Sarah Pyle, flute, hammer dulcimer; Janna Webbon, violin; Andrew Stiefel, viola; Abbey Blackwell, bass

. . . a heady melodic sensibility

St. Helena - Matt Carr, drumset; Alethea Alexander, dance

a film of dance chopped up and all the bits and frames rearranged in a shuffle edit

Recorded

May 30, 2018
Mr. Shadow - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2006]

"hey what do you think of this weather?"
thought eliding the blank spaces in the meter
makes for a troubling implication of regularity that isn't and never was

Follow The Leader - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain]

shimmy shimmy dance infection

Stillness, Concentrate (a recital) - Keith Eisenbrey [April 2016]
1. Welcome to my planet. I come in peace. - Eisenbrey
2. Another - Eisenbrey
3. J - Eisenbrey
4. "...such words as it were vain to close..." - J. K. Randall

nice job Keith of the recent past!

Lake Serene, Washington - ca 1971

May 31, 2018
The Tennthe Pavian "Mr. W. Peter" and The Galliarde to the Tenneth Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

intimate space somehow cooked up out of huge polyhedron phrases
more downbeats than one could hope to choose from

If You Follow Jesus - Rev. W. M. Mosley [from Goodbye, Babylon]

let us sing with uplifted voice
arranged > agreed upon > talked through > practiced
but never not uplifted

Simple Gifts - Aaron Copland arr. by Virgil Fox - David di Fiore [from Grand Music for a Grand Castle]

gently done, the sense of meter is most wonderfully an everpresent question
(where)
will it land?

Maggie Campbell Blues - Shirley Griffith [from The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

tilt voice
to fit the slant
of the tunin'
of the bluesin' tunin'

A Simple Desultory Philippic - Simon & Garfunkel [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme]

Desultory is right, this joke falls flat.

Track 1 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from my mom's tape of a concert on March 3, 1971]

a petite and various suite struggling toward pomposity

Corral Pass, Washington - ca 1971

Symphony No. 2 - Andrew Buchman - Seattle Symphony, Michel Singher [from a private tape of a concert in Spring of 1981]

clearly drawn
what it is
nothing fancy
but wanders into clarity
I remember back in the day this seemed so puzzlingly conservative
but now: partial, neo-unfinished

Cuyahoga - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

overlapping revolutionary impulses
start over where we always were
I've heard this song many times, and never listened to the words before, and certainly never wondered what the heck he was saying over and over. Now I see it is the title of the song, and of a fiery river. I looked it up.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
May 28, 2018
Gradus 334 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

pitch is a symptom of resonance
resonance conversing with the mechanism
mechanism is the clatterwork qualities of dissonance
dissonance is the size of the reverberent space it creates
as it creates the specificities of its regions