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 Eisnbrey, 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

Playlist

Preface

"...does a musical image incandesce because it flashes forth by a twinkle of surface the full depth of the pool of reference on which it floats? Floats: The twinkle is the depth's edge, ultimately depthlimiting. twinkle at poolbottom, and there will be only flat bottom perceived; but twinkle at top, and there is a pool to float over felt, surface, depth, bottom, all together. So the experience of riches of musical depth comes by way of the acuity not the complexity of the musical surface; all is conveyed by the explicit sparkle of that twinkle: high atop a deep or boiling or tranquil or shoalfilled current; or just a map of the bottom of something or other. Still waters evaporate, vanish in sands, leave perception high and dry; to keep buoyant the flashes must flicker evernew dimensional senses (not another pool over there, but another depth, an unpremeditated cove, an elusive channel, connected within a timespan of spacesense: the pool reshaped as twinkles unveil newfolds, eddies, islands, inlets, changes over time become part of what it is: roiled, glossy, ripply, sparkly, gloomy, gleaming, reflected invert blueskybowl: time, shaped over time; space, shaped over time; (leafflutter: a still image that only a movie camera can record).) And if the texture datasaturates, repletes unto itself, color neutralizes, drains: demorphizes. If the reference is the surface, then the incandescence never glows."

Benjamin Boretz "Mirage - benjamin boretz notebook entries 1974-1976"
from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

Recorded

November 24, 2019
Cricket - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

a rhythms three be these:
one | first | too fast to count the clicks || tempo flexible
two | second | not quite too fast to count the clicks || tempo stable-ish
three | third | too slow to count a tempo at all

Deathwish Moss Lawn - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



Syd Barrett in #Electronic #Ecstatic #Bath

Thanks Everybody - Karen Eisenbrey [St. Rage Book Launch, August 2016]

the legend of the magic hat

Sonata in C minor K. 56 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

uses every part of the meter
every portion's part
even the oink

to build above the meter
a stunning over-arch

soaring

Secret Love - Billy Stewart

pan placement:

left || right

space between | |

a countable set of locations
from which sounds are presented as coming from

Edge of Seventeen (Early Take) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

The words can mostly be understood,
which ends up being neither here nor there.

the lines are chosen by their phoneme mix and pattern
symphonic projection a given

Clairvoyance - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

tightly held affectual range
from part of verse to part of verse
so that the very simple is
HUGE
within its context

Symphony in G Major (#8) Op. 33 III. Allegretto grazioso - Molto vivace [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

music harking back
symphonic music as such

what an extremely odd thing to have ever occurred to anyone to do
19th Century Synthesizer
Berlioz Model

ZFP All 110917 - Keith Eisenbrey [September 2011]

exploring the notion of signal
the dragon of cyclicity itself
lower to higher

meta instrumental

[I wanted a wide and dense frequency band to play with]

we make sense of music with the same innate desperation with which we make sense, or attempt to, of talk

long range translation of transformed duration pattern

I waited out the reverberation of the strings

we hear these events differently for having heard them before differently

Skateboard - Low Hums [from Shine Rock]



hiding behind an effects wall
compressed

skate
board

definitely two words

November 26, 2019
Sonata in B-flat Major K. 57 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

Keep each phrase in its own pocket.
(to show how it's done)
motoric continuity honored in its breach

Is there a music more tempting to analyze than this?

Strawberry Fields Forever(demo sequence) - The Beatles [from Beatles Anthology Volume 2]

an image behind
what we now all know it became

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

brief
a relief

November 27, 2019
Banned Telepath 7 San Diego - Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Yvonne Meyer [November 1986]

This was part of what was eventually assembled into Banned Rehearsal 105. I was amused that I was listening to it on November 27, 33 years to the day after it was made - if Neal labeled it correctly. Karen and I made a tape in Bickleton on the 28th - see below. Later in December Aaron was visiting us in Seattle so we made a third Telepath. The whole was finally put together early in 1987.

guitar (acoustic): the tongue drum (now living in the Tintinabulary, beneath the xylophone, next to the little marimba): kitchen implements. A song (Neal), sudden: Just Another Thanksgiving

Either Neal is bending pitch habitually or there is some variability in the tape mechanism's speed. Flute holes are blown across. thudding drumming - as might be box or suitcases: lip vibratories, tubes activated, running water into a sink in the distance, tiny rattles up near, occasionally steady pulse gets going, but low key not unduly coercive

The Telepath Project was, socially, a binding mechanism. It gave us, even before all the marriages, a way to continue to interact with loose coordination across distance and time. In this session no intense energy is expended on the task of performative projection, and yet it wanders by now and then.

cornet
with mute object
in water
blurbling

An A-list Novel

Crow Call - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

conversational
as with JKR's pine cones

caw
and response
and grapple

Into The Night - Ancient Warlocks [from The Superwizard 7" Single]



the live version
was heard recently
this being
one of their songs
(as in songs)
it's a whole thing

pronouncement production
accent accentuation
pitch:
all led by the beat or rhythm section

beat factory
pulse grooves
surfers' waves

That's just how you have to say it to stay in the tube.

That Last One - Karen Eisenbrey [St. Rage Book Launch, August 2016]

I like how my recording picks up the audience reaction, Nan's laugh.

November 28, 2019
Sonata in C minor K. 58 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

chromatic fugato passing through the diatonicscape

Strawberry Fields Forever (take 1) - The Beatles [from Beatles Anthology Volume 2]

The metrical flow of the text drags against the friction of the one two one two one two one two of the instrumental/vocal pitch partitioning

Think About It (Alternate Version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

a letter of support and advice, set to a generic tune

O Little Town of Bethlehem - London Symphony Orchestra [from Listen to the Joy]

a perfectly good singalong song overencumbered with orchestration

First Contact - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

flute and drum support a single unison tune
never straying far from each other

Gradus 197 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2011]

register
is not as simple as
high tone low tone in between tone

there is more audible sound signal in the low
i.e. the low contains or includes high, while the high does not include or contain the low

moving from one extreme through the middle to the other, there is a shift in depth

obvious stuff, but worth bearing in mind when relying on register as a compositional determinate

squeaky pedal

If: the point is to compose
and if: the point is to not compose a piece
but to compose without composing a piece
then: Gradus is a systemic solution attempt
an experiment

Shizukasa - Paul Kikuchi [from Autonomic]



so let us wallow
in low tone roll around
mid tones enhance
observe
float

November 29, 2019

Sonata in F Major K. 59 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

the fine and politic art of hijacking an answering phrase

Sonata in D minor Wq. 62/15 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

cobbled together from un-like-to-be-fitting parts
phrase elision: the sense that a note not the beginning has become a beginning
its form identity elided
a never was, except as an anticipation of a now narrowly avoided

La Forqueray - Jacques Duphly - Christophe Rousset

a graciously lyrical continuity, so civilized!
then another, for distance

Roll Up The Ribbons - Harvey Schmidt - Mary Martin, Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]

a little waltz for two
waiting for you

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

a strong song for DK, benefiting again from incomprehensibility

Banned Telepath 7 Bickleton  - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [November 1986]

Karen reads from Barbara and the Rage Brigade
Neverending Bookshop, Edmonds

thump

upon guitarbody

nudge
the dragonbody
snoring in the corner

layers of armored scales
dragonsleep

tempting the dragon
to peer through
a tiny aperture

to appear
partially

little drummy sounds on the guitar or som'm

Karen's drums were still in Bickleton, perhaps we brought them back with us that trip?

Intent on composition the same way that Gradus is (see 197 if\and if\then above)

drum whispers
in dragon's ear

dragons sure are stage hogs

oh and now we sneak up on
yes
once again

The Aaronsbundler is
>ANNOUNCED<

:: at which silence falls

goes elsewhere
back to guitar
Karen bumps the drum
drawing down to its
scaly bed sleep

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 25, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 994 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt



Neal is home rehearsing for an upcoming Finnegans Wake Chapter. We carry on. Beatnik Blanket Bongo.

Postscripts

it into little shouldn't give does tell

i'll show you minister into orange

crates he nails bookcases aside all the

it is violet now and I am not

der Mond scheint

the time

Playlist

Preface

"We, in other words, presume to decide and create what reality is to be, while you presume that what you decide and create is what reality is and must be. Ladies and gentlemen - metacolleagues - I submit that we are both at the very least insufferable, and share a common stake in concealing from the innocent world our social unsavoriness. That, in fact, is why we both need humanists and journalists to misrepresent us publicly as if we had permissible manners and redeeming social value. Lord help us all if they ever turned on us the sharp critical tools of our own methodologies, in place of the nice soft soap they have been accustomed to use. Until that fearful juncture, at any rate, we can share at least the tranquil joys of that impunity which comes uniquely of being thoroughly misunderstood, even by one another."
Benjamin Boretz "Musical Cosmology For the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, 2/19/76"
- reprinted in "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

Recorded

November 17, 2019
Selections from The Sound of Music - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director; JoAnne Deacon, piano [April 1966]

with interludes
to take us one song to another
JoAnne in fine fettle

Hey! That's my own Mom singing Lonely Goatherd and Edelweiss !!

The Highwayman (Remastered) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

the likes of those
country watershed, denizen of

gaudete, gaudete - The Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

a concertante (quasi)

Across Lapland - J. K. Randall [from Open Space 39]

fitting for variations of the theme and kind

composer in the works

Ask Your Question Mix K - Your Mother Should Know [September 2011, remixed January 2013]

2 3 four
quite fine in many ways

Circles - Ease [from Roots]

Gothic Buzzcocks go ro co co
sci fi action adventure
very guy

November 19, 2019
Sonata in G Major, K 55 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

How do these disparate tonalities seem to go together
with each other?
How is this a piece?

image of an intricate mechanism

Symphony No. 3 - Aaron Copland - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Aaron Copland

a panoply with motor pulse stand in for tour guide
all gung ho muscular Americana
with a pudgy sentimental filling
orchestrated to sound fine in the cinema
bright and brassy

Copland tries on Shostakovich's glasses

Hey hokey folks! Let's tip cows!

activity above all
motor it!

Also sprach Captain America

for all the bombast, fails to deliver

November 21, 2019

Arkansas Traveler - Louis Riendeau and Larry Reindeau [from The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

what language is that? Swedish Cajun patois?
music interloped with crazy talk story talk
tight knots of pitch work
learned that in Canada

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

true colors for the preacher man
pablum for the disaffected 13 year-old

Assembly Rechoired 9 - Alison B, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Nan H

homely and meta
subdued stereo spread
rattles ease it open

each of us
does the best
we can
to transcend
all of us together
and still be each of us
each of us gathered

holy bone
a relic
from a

Holy Cow!

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 17, 2019
My soul doth magnify the Lord - Karen Eisenbrey, soprano; Keith Eisenbrey, composer/piano



I have been working for many months, in fits and starts and putterings, on a setting of the passage in Luke known as The Magnificat. Karen and I will be presenting it at the 10:30 Service of University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, a week from this Sunday, on December 1, 2019. The modifications to the King James version of the text are mine.

November 18, 2019

Gradus 359 - Neal Kosály-Meyer, composer/piano

single time of attack
of instantiation
start point

temporal order doesn't interfere with registral order or dynamic order (though d.o. here tends to also
be flat (unordered) or believably so.

register determinate
material
segments bundled

can stick in a register
or wander
or reach out from
or pulse
or slosh

figuration matrix:

| single pitch || single start |
| duple pitch || duple start |
| single pitch || duple start |
| duple pitch || single start |

November 21, 2019
O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig - Keith Eisenbrey, composer/piano

Postscripts

it begins to sing in the second verse

fired with love's urgent longings 1 of the

first stanza concerning this dark night and it

stones
time
blunders ahead

Playlist

Preface

"The kind of analysis undertaken in connection with such constructional systems as those of Carnap's Aufbau, and The Structure of Appearance also represents an intensely practical matter for art, since the very identity of an art entity is a theoretical construct quite remote from the pragmatics of object-identification in the physical world. Art entities, in fact, may be said to have identity as entities of their types just by virtue of being identifiable as interpretations of a general notion of entityhood within that type. Therefore, the extent to which they can be determinately recognized as particular entities of their types depends first of all on the generality of the concept of entityhood they are regarded as interpreting. And secondly, the degree of their particularity depends on the number of intervening concepts that can be, or that are, invoked between the atomic and the global levels, concepts which distinguish and order subentities as the ultimate determinants of the global structure. Thus the salient characteristic of an art entity may, most generally, be considered to be its 'coherence'; and the extent of its coherence, and hence of its particularity as a work of art, may be considered to reside in the degree and nature of determinate complexity exhibited in the ordered structure of subentities of which it is a resultant."
Benjamin Boretz "Nelson Goodman's Language of Art, from a Musical Point of View
(for the Sixty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, on December 29, 1969, at a symposium devoted to Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art.)"
- reprinted in "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 1: 1960-1978"

Texts

Live

November 9, 2019
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Carson Farley
Garrett Fisher
Clement Reid
Satchel Henneman

Two Movements from Mirror Sonatina - Carson Farley
Clement Reid, piano

has a map
we build congruities and how
Satie and silent film pianistimism

Clement played magnificently. This is a huge sonatina.

Seven Raga ??s - Garrett Fisher
GraceAnn Cummings, piano

we are introduced to, and led to believe in, those cadenza cliches because they are masks, clever and attractive, somewhere between Short & Johnson
experience sharing

Explorations (excerpts) - Clement Reid

Clement Reid, piano

My issue: I was having trouble hanging with it, mostly due to exhaustion (long week at work). However, I do have some stray thoughts about playing "inside the piano" that don't necessarily pertain to this piece exactly.

A. The mechanism of a piano's action is a technology that has been fussed with for over 200 years, in order to maximize the flexibility and transparency with which an operator can manipulate the hammers and pedals. The scaling and voicing is adjusted meticulously to provide a believably homogeneous sound across its range.

B. Most pianists spend countless hours in the practice of playing the keys (outside the piano) and the vast majority of the literature is designed to be thus played.

C. Pianos have an exciting quantity of long wires, a huge soundboard, and all sorts of other ways to make sound upon them.

D. While the piano keyboard itself has become largely regularized, the parts inside, both the actions and the frames upon which the wires are stretched, exhibit a surprising variety of designs, such that a pianist can't rely on finding that the harp practiced upon will be the same as the harp found at performance. Especially at the lower end, where the wires cross over each other, a needed note might be found to be inaccessible at performance time.

E. The confluence of the above has possible consequences, among which might be: A performer might be less comfortable, and thus, possibly, less effective, playing inside than outside; The awkwardness of reaching over the keyboard and pinboard into the innards can be a fraught theater.

:: I have written reams of piano music, and only once*, long ago, indicated anything that wasn't "fingers on the keys." I haven't found a need for it yet. I am not a purist however, and willingly improvise in and out and all over anything I can find, pianos included. ::

*Well, twice, if I count clavichord scores and include the suggestion in Another that the performer might try playing the piece without first filling the instrument with ping pong balls.

X (where X = Your Name), thus: Trevor O'Laughlin - Satchel Henneman
Trevor O'Laughlin, double bass

specific
co-intonations
if there were more frames
with a yell and story

this was quite lovely

Recorded

November 10, 2019
Sonata in D Major, K. 53 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

We delight in the ease with which the charge can be communicated through the medium of the structure of the diatonic collection.

remapping

What exactly is this tonal meaning overlay that we so easily call forth
and to what deafness does it tempt us?

Symphony 3 "Camp Meeting" - Charles Ives - St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin

an honest attempt is made to write the National Music of America
his stated aspirations surpassed his executive capabilities

we sure do like a rousing march

dense with implied intent
surreal metrical modulations

Disguises - The Who [from A Quick One]

music
in a box
in a box

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

an eruptive

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



Isn't this what all newlyweds do?

(getting a hum in one channel or a buzz)

Is that the bugle? It would have been new to us, from Coupeville
(Freudishly mal-typed Coupleville)
 a Honey Moon bought antique.

the sound this projects to us is not the sound one could possibly imagine as somewhere from which a professional would deign to record. Our habitat.

A new bell?
Possibly, this is that time in my life when I no longer knew all that I had. I was rich. I play duets with myself as a way of keeping my brain active, like crosswords.

What is the acoustic structure of the dreaded 60 cycle hum? discern within the Fourier transform which perturbations arose mathematically and which evidence outside influence.

Our neighbor comes by for a favor and a cat skritch. We leave it to the cats. Anarchy and Amnehitabel. Listen close. We hear their purr. We show sounds to the tape. Those cats are making noise at us. We demonstrate how making coffee sounds back in the day. Espresso spaceship landing. That was Amnehitabel purring. We were so pleased we could make espresso together in our own home.

cast a nets
the Funmaker makes fun in the big house out front

Karen castanets
OR
was this elsewhere???

Anvil - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

an underground conspiracy of metals
longest delayed ever of the fourth fugal entrance
at the end
the waiting for it game

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs - Nate Omdal [from Seattle Jazz Composer's Collective Volume 1]

improv rudiments
the drumming

November 12, 2019
St. Rage Book Launch - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer et al [August 2016]

open with a song
Carol Anne would have been ready to go.

this book's sequel will come out in just a few days!!
What's in the bottle?
Fairy tale flavor
the sequel in the works even then

November 14, 2019
Sonata in A minor, K. 54 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

such fragile thoughts
pried apart
evaporate

rhythmic relations among the augmentations of contrapuntal rates of sequencing
oo la la! Eat that, Brahms!

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff - San Francisco Symphony & Chorus, Herbert Blomstedt, Lynne

Dawon, John Daniecki, Kevin McMillan

admirably articulate, dynamics less compressed than often on recorded media. An actual stepped continuum. lighter sound smaller forces allow crisp quick tempos (not always exactly together, alas, but usually so)

demonstrates how little gargantuanism does for it, it-ness-wise.

Theater of tempi of time rates
pulsish.

In Session at the Tintinabury

November 11, 2019

Banned Rehearsal 993 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt


And then there was pear apple crisp

November 14, 2019
Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich - Keith Eisenbrey


My 2017 chorale setting.

Postscripts

away somewhere weeping and wailing and

panting for breath sonia and polenka

rushed bring stupid behind policeman with

(arranged my tapes in three neat little stacks)

carrying a sack of gold

a bird flutters through the sun