Playlist

Preface

"Skin to skin with sound, emerging in the act of utterance, inceiving a genuine, a genuinely desired conversation with fellow soundmakers, givers of sound to ourselves for ourselves as one does in real not-staged conversations, conversations cumulating temperatures and colors and sensibilities by way of their ostensible subjects and stories and attitudes and opinions, all evolving in the language under immediate construction, its own self-language, saying untranslatably what it is that that language says, can say, finds to say, is the only language in which those things are ever said. That is what happened when, sometimes, it truly happened; habits are hardwired; they usurp the ground of authenticity, masquerade as reality, obtrude between you and your perhaps contaminated hope to achieve transparency with your partners, all of you separately struggling with the same impediments to being actually together, sensing that too much effort to get there imposes the dreaded conscious-of-selfness, but that it takes far more effort than that to tunnel in past the inevitable ennui-boundary at which nothing more is possible but whose surpassing is the moment when everything might possibly become possible. And, then, if it rises, it speaks, becomes the it that speaks, within whose speaking we absorb, not knowing that it is us, us the listeners, us the speakers."
Benjamin Boretz - (un- or not yet published text 2019)

Texts

Recorded

July 23, 2019
Fuck A War - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

Those who have failed to be convinced tell us so.

Sanctus - Maurice Duruflé - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

Prefigurations of the later wordy-bit-pulse pulsate within the pulse of the unfolding of the pulse of the word "sanctus."

It is seamless to a fault, though I'm not sure a smaller, more intimate ensemble would not have been more luminescent.

Gradus 104 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2006]

The simple details of articulation are made plain. The not equal, but inter-commensurate time-span-durations of pitch-articulation-episodes and listening-to-the-space-articulation-episodes operate within a bifurcating field, potentiating a careful articulation of two modes of listening.

aggressively world engulfing

one highish A in particular sets the zither strings to responding - the unstruck strings remembering the struck string

July 24, 2019
Things Are - Eleanor Cory - Jane Rosenfeld, Stephen Gosling [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

experimental modes of conversation:

Let's play dress up
(but more like armor).

I could make up stories in my head about reminiscing that would fit, but none of these words are remotely right, and that feels wrong also.

Banned Rehearsal 916 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2016]



(on the porch in a Summer evening)
texture: brocade of interruptions and overlays,
crud lovingly woven in excessively lively lay lay layers,
the upfront amplified scritchy scratch invites peering through,
scrub and sheer,
clucking p'cawing just at the radar's edge

the activity count is high this evening,
and subtly spiced.

July 25, 2019

Converge - Benjamin Boretz, Michael O'Brien, Lenore Epstein [1981?]

(Ben sent me a sound file from days of yore, and the text that prefaces this post.)

still
held
here

all
inhere

none/

move
until/

moved

tense pliance
bare permeance

reach inside
with a leftward drift

having broken through,
spoken heretowith,

we glow
we glint.

(for keeps now let's get real)

now:

(dense static vibrato textureharmony begets efficient transformation)

the least change to effect the biggest change

haunch shift
for engineered pressure

Dial up the inexorable.
Simultaneously resist and acquiesce.

**

We are solid vertebrates.
internally skeletaled.

In order to in-shed our carapaces
we dis-soften.

(The exoskeletal's other is the that
that we are hid from outside our shell.

The inoskeletal's other is the that
that hides its shell inside.)

We have pulled our carapaces into us,
to reach the other's.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 22, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 986 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Postscripts

accordingly he found his return

berghof building extracts carried most methods

down over the bill with that was my own

soon
the stone
would draw thunder

Playlist

Preface

"Perpetually expectant of the transcendent musical revelations that great performances of great masterpieces are supposed to supply, the music-loving populace submits happily to endless rehearings of that handful of works which constitute the institutional canon of performed concert music. While this constriction of hearable literature contributes to the high visibility of the concert performer as the prime hero of serious musical artistry, it also cultivates a fundamental misapprehension of the essential nature of the "great" works themselves, and of the qualities which actually distinguish a meaningful musical performance. [. . .] For when music is regarded nostalgically, as a pre-fixed collection of "masterpieces" whose "inner meanings" are uncoverable only by inspired "interpretation" under the hands of an authenticated maestro, what is lost is the awareness that every meaningful musical artifact is part of a continuing chain of compositional discovery, that a "masterpiece" is a "composition" too, and that its particular qualities derive from unique orderings of cogent ideas, from its invention of significant solutions to urgent musical problems."
Benjamin Boretz "3.17.62 About Performance" from "Music Columns from The Nation 1962-1968"

Texts

Live

July 13, 2019
Gradus for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler (Three Rungs) [351] - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

no lights
just windows
doodles follow

the mind in beginning
memorizes tangle
holds it

my face is in my hands
shadows are an evidence of an interaction of forces and ideas
intermittent shadowfall throughout the evening

sirens mockingbird
into the distant landscape
brick wall from below

new
as earth shatters
your e-guide cannot help you here

Recorded

July 14, 2019
Sonata in G minor, K. 30 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

that opening sequence of pitches, redolent in reverse of J. K. Randall's Gap First Batch pieces
a lovely descending suspension sequence framed by crossing hands

Hava Na Gila - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon

I'm remembering JoAnne, Mom's longstanding accompanist and friend, and the fruitful cooperation in music that was theirs.

Fish 'n' Chip Paper - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

of tomorrow, for the news of yesterday
playing with keyboard toys

Assembly Rechoired 5 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [August 1986]



were we back in Seattle by then? quite possible. given the instrumentation, so probably still the half house. [N.B. Karen says we moved into the big house on Labor Day weekend, which makes sense]

making a music with what we have
you strum the dulcimer I clack the sticks

And what is that hymn tune Karen is strumming back there? That hymn tune that Karen is strumming back there is Hyfrydol - the Rowland Prichard hymn tune we had chosen to sing congregationally at our wedding in a very few months, to the Charles Wesley text "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." It means cheerful in Welsh.

bells! tintinnabulating! tintinntabulating!

What harmonic language does the music of clacking sticks speak? Waxing Hendrix there on that dulcimer back there dear.

or rock
or boan
rok
ore
bone

I must have tried to sing and play ocarina at the same time. Then I imitate an eloquent hound at great distance and in fine detail (wag!) (it!)

that muttering in tongues thing we do
hummingbirdyippiedog
listen up Siegfried
Klangfarbencontrapunctus

K&I fit together like Love Divine and Hyfrydol 8 7 8 7

Gota Let Your Nuts Hang - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

instructions for patriarchal business majors

Bogoroditse Devo - Serge Rachmaninof - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

a kind of Royalist
bliss pill
well sung though

Frozen Eyeballs - Love Princess (Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K) [September 2006]

Smidgen (a nibling) and me
they strum a mighty sound

The Way It Was - J. K. Randall [from Milton Babbitt: a Composers' Memorial]

conversants transcribe competitively
then it gets down to business
to the point where one is unsure which of what one is hearing is pitch and which is partial

Volunteer Park - Keith Eisenbrey [August 2016]



still as amazing as anything as an accident
back then I wrote:

"Karen and I got to the park early for Steve's guerrilla music session, so we hoisted ourselves up the stairs to the top of the water tower. While we were enjoying the view and the space we were surprised and delighted to be suddenly serenaded by four young women singing Bulgarian and Croatian folk(?) songs arranged in parts. By their second number I had my recorder out and captured this mini flash performance. Hoorah Seattle! - If any of the performers happen upon this, please let me know who you are so I can give you proper credit."

July 16, 2019

Sonata in G minor, K. 31 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

There is a typical flavor of relation between the minorish harmonies within a key and the majorish harmonies. These types are here utterly eschewed. Scarlatti, as a composer, is the righteous shit.

A Well Known Fact - Harvey Schmidt - Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]

a convenient patriarchal misapprehension

The show is a staged picture book of Modern Marriage 60's style, as though each stage of a marriage was lived through in the 60's. Time never passes, the characters, though, age throughout time's never passing.

I Am the Owl - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

sneeritude
uppity contempt
content free!

Crazy Love Vol II - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

light touch brushing a texture of sheen somehow at odds with something
don't want no part of

Black - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]

not a wide tessitura
but lots of tonal and rhythmic control within it

I'm not sure what this is about, as a text, but it could be the idea that one way to get over a breakup is to pretend you helped the other to grow - letting them go was (is) in their best interest. hm. Might have been, but was it really you that let go?

Dies Irae - Giuseppe Verdi - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

God's Wrath makes great theater.
OK
we know what it's about, but what does it say?
does the subject overwhelm the statement?
weirdly curtailed for this best of album

Just Like a Woman - Bob Dylan  [from Key Arena October 13, 2006]

O Holy Night slow compound rhythm rocking (rock-a-bye baby not rock out) arpeggio guitar figure
Bob may not have much voice left, but he does as much as it can
takin' care of business

The Day I Heard Shelby Sing - Your Mother Should Know [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

8 years ago. Imagine.

Charge - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]



optimizing presence electroacoustically
melody and rhythm (together "the beat") hothouse collaboration
cymbal sibilance

not just loud
but tuned loud

July 17, 2019
Sonata in D minor, K. 32 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

now let's be logical and stepwise
oops that yarn is disentwined
not binary form, but nearly only almost just a theme

Don't Look Away - The Who [from A Quick One]

no moment without eyes on me sound begging attention

In This House That I Call Home - X [from Wild Gift]

the party's downstairs
keep your arms out just enough
to balance

July 18, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 102 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1986]

your blogger and his fiancee tip hats to you

obo roi
dulcimer
clavichord

Aaron was up for a visit, so we made two tapes, this being the first, these two being the last we made in the Half House of Greenwood, Outpost of the Tintinabulary, Department of Banned Rehearsal.

clacking sticks and funmaker
an unmistakable impendingness of Aaronsbundler
deflected
but then
around the corner there it is
but we overshot
we infiltrate and explode from within

we shut it down
start again

bone fragments all over the rock
Aaronsbundler back again from the Bickleton organ (see #100 from back in June)
calling card
Leitmotif
idée fixe
ritornello
obsession
touchstone
in joke
slogan
battle cry
standard

then our National Anthem
Take Me Out To the Ballgame

An attempt may be made to play the Bestiary through the Speaker of the House.
We shall hear or not.
We shout hellos to Neal and Anna as though they might hear them. {Hey guys, if you listen to this you will! hellos from the past.}
Birthday greetings
happy happy sad
A beast of some kind snores in the undergrowth.
How far away you seem to us.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 15, 2019
Gradus 352 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

working the high D into position, like tuning
lower D tolls quietly

Postscripts

sweet spouse who is substance saying now past

the rains has been heard this voice of may sing

speaks with her arise make haste my friend and

as threatened
the wizard
inverts

Playlist

Recorded

July 7, 2019
Sonata in E Major, K. 28 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The immediate congruence of material is not essential
partly due to the global congruence built into the style and syntax
but also because Scarlatti will make it congrue
will work out its last congruencies.

Nobody's Perfect - Harvey Schmidt - Mary Martin, Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]

the rent and the corned beef hash
you chew in your sleep
accusations mutual

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

the lines lurch into their end feet
does
but does not desire to
fit into its meter

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day - London Philharmonic Orchestra [from Listen to the Joy!]

glockenspiel provides the glint of toothy grins
cherub dust

I'm Not A Gentleman - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

upfront misogynism
mask of terror
(character sketch soliloquy)

Banned Rehearsal 707 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer


fifth or fourth?
moantubes yacking at each other
slide whistle

spirit of Stu Dempster (on his birthday no less! number 707 heard on this the 7 of 7)

sound of suiting up

armor on for battle drum
serious doings

type writer
genre writer
tip writer
tip righter
cow tipper

(big tipper)

cow righter
tip rite

amplified moan tubes and feedback cetacids

reports must be typed up

On hearing the closing of the drawer I am brought mindful of the chest of drawers itself, all of it, each of its four drawers and their contents, the stuff on top (toy glock, little angklung), its pressboard
singing into the feedback ring washtub ring of the washtub
(left a).

soupcan or coiled wooden clarinet
(Doug Palmer made it)

O Fortuna - Carl Orff - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

It sounds like moviemusic because it coexisted with and crossfed in the same Teutonic culture, i.e. Orff, Korngold, and the like.

I Just Cried - Your Mother Should Know [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

Unhitched from drumming of any kind his sense of rhythm on the fly has a Banned Rehearsal perfection about it.

The George Fox Song - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]

the 17th Century Dissenter, that is

July 9, 2019

Sonata in D Major, K. 29 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

let's start with scales
let's nonsequitize with aggression
see where we go
tries to break it
can't

Cobwebs and Strange - The Who [from A Quick One]

theme music for some goony show clown band

Track 13 - Empire Brass [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

parade music

What If We Gave It Away - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

not pop high into gender uncertainty (Stevie Wonder, for instance)
but rarely straying out of the back of the head
yes, occasionally to end a phrase
but, balanced by nearly falsetto ends
as occasioned

Alive - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]

fits the words in as best he can
not the glitter thicket of REM's guitars,
but more like taut bridge cable thrumming

The Heavens Are Telling - Franz Joseph Haydn - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

chorus verse chorus verse fugue of course
Beethoven never could get this sequence out of his head as an ideal.

July 11, 2019
Gila River Sunrise - Robert Tree Cody and Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

Who is it that thinks (thought) this needs (needed) this sort of reverb?
it becomes part of its outward face,
also a shell.
carapace reverb.

Rocks and Glass - Your Mother Should Know [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

unfettered by beat as she is practiced in professional circles
voice and guitar can dance free
sudden songness extended into its imaginary social facts

Into The Night (Live) - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live!]


character is tiny
inconsiderable
within the dense undercurrent riptide power undertow magma pull groin aim

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 8, 2019

Banned Rehearsal 985 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith ‪Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer


We gather on the porch.
Neal discovers that the wheelbarrow has a part that rings like a bell.

July 12, 2019
Empty Shelves - Keith Eisenbrey


HVAC rumble,

empty shelves rattle, 

footsteps recede

Postscripts

samaritan the and the water pot

because of words since holy on horseback

exactly king merchant shut up compass

the bird exterior
flitting about
the interior crowd

Playlist

Recorded

June 29, 2019
Sonata in A Major, K. 24 - Domenica Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

climb the ladder
tumble down
oscillate down
rocking yaw

it need not be a big change to be a telling change

Love Isn't Everything - Harvey Schmidt - Mary Martin, Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]

Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey near the Blowout, WA

the beginning of chaos
goes by so quickly here
gives you the money blues

Shot With His Own Gun - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

going a bit artsy, presenting sophistication and song smithery

People Like Us - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

In this poetics the text only needs to hang together enough to support a plausible reading, or to seem like it might.

Another N----- In The Morgue - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

big talking might get you through
the thrill of action, the thrill of fear

(Clearly I altered the title. You know what it is and don't need me to tell you.)

You've Got A Lot Of Nerve [?] - Bob Dylan [Key Arena, October 13, 2006]

Chaotic Heart - Your Mother Should Know [Live at the Funhouse, July 18, 2011]

end rhyme: its power
its hold
once grabbed

is a sticky adhesive, it will not willingly release

Shut It - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



threats
demands
hip hop aestheticizes braggadocio (fear)
punk poeticizes anger
(provisional theories)

Later that same day

June 30, 2019

Sonata in F-sharp minor, K. 25 - Domenica Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

artifice laid bare
even laid bare
difficult to hold
much like a greased pig

Heatwave - The Who [from A Quick One]

surfing on it
Entwhistle eats this for breakfast
thank you Martha and thank you the Vendellas

Bleed For - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

These guys would be great if the front man would just shut up.

Assembly Rechoired 3 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [July 1986]



tambourine or jangly bells and harmonica and the sound of the walls subduing into ambiance land jangly bells set aside bug guitar taken up or the monochord the one that didn't last yes my guess: karen on harmonica, me on jangly bells and monochord.

your blogger in situ

Jangly bells make big slashing arm arc marks across the page
elbow grease in the ear canals
braked it

softball ocarina
we readjust

long long breaths out strolling || so quickly Karen and I were on the same page, she entered the perimeter of improv wisdom almost, if not, immediately.

the joy of a closely tuned ukulele
one saying a thing and one saying a thing
one commenting upon a thing one saying a thing is saying

and one

saying: commenting and saying
cooperatively simultaneous

Minds don't read each other, but they can converse.

Chuckie - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

practicing their tough guy Cagney movie line skills

Just The Start - Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2006]

Neal's song about his folks and their adventures in the old America
migrants to the wild west
went back East to find a bride
as told in the American Folk Vernacular
as she is spoke

Spangles - James Harley [from Hendrix Uncovered]

this must be done with loops
fruity loops or of that ilk
tightly packed layers
it's kind of fun
happy noise! O happy noise!

at the Blowout, near Bickleton, WA

Gradus 295 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2016]

Karen cooperates: !! I may have been elsewhere.

hear it as a prolonged penultimism
and so longingly prolonging that the penultimicism begins to be where we are here
oh how it penultimiscisizes until penultimiscicism is the eternal now
how much of now?
how much of almost? of next most near?

July 2, 2019
Sonata in A Major, K. 26 - Domenica Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

sizes of bits in disbalance angry bends minorward
how meter skews size or size meter
the perfect flaw
accelerating trill from the fundament with turn to end it

Mother Mother - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

implicating a surrounding tale to be filled in later

When Our Love Passed Out On The Couch - X [from Wild Gift]

misjudged dosage? same trick as Mother Mother, just enough text to implicate a clue

Strange Out Here - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

through many distant doors and takes a train

Sometimes It's A Bitch - Stevie Nicks [from Timespace]

what might it be?
Life Advice big sister greeting card
sometimes it runs out of its size
a 2 minute song turned 4 plus

July 3, 2019
It's All Right, Ma! [?] - Bob Dylan [Key Arena, October 13, 2006]

a very particular grouty accent of blue
which is to say: the rhyme of how a line sews through the matrix of rhythm
that was some sweet blues singin' Bob

Ask Your Question - Your Mother Should Know [Live at the Funhouse, July 18, 2011]

Fun Facts! :: 1. eventually this was the first song I would record for them. 2. they are rehearsing right now out in the garage. the snark! I am sorely tempted. do it, Neal!

Only Friends - Dræmhouse [from Only Friends]


using finely drawn lines to circumscribble the deep particulars of feeling

aestheticized sensibilities of sorrow that isn't sorry
(Emma Danner kills on backing vocal.)

Sonata in B minor, K. 27 - Domenica Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

deflection
surface
smooth

start the second with
play it back
statement startling

phraseology forever
pulling back into its back story

lessons
serious lessons
composer types, listen up

The Best of Luck to You - Earl Gaines [a Rescued Record]

serious fancy singing there Earl
zero sum game
proverbs from maternalism
maverbs

What A Day - Throbbing Gristle [from Greatest Hits]

see Dræmhouse above but not sorrow but excretion of testes' brutal cruelty
four vowel sounds in two vowels three for one vowel one for one vowel:

whAt A dAy O

July 4, 2019
Assembly Rechoired 4 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [July 1986]


We are just back from Toy Story 4!

pitch in a rock pile

Assembly Rechoired on patrol at the Blowout (from whence the rock) on the edge of the Yakima Indian Reservation north of Bickleton, WA, where Karen grew up. From the pictures it looks like we were recording on a boom box, which might explain better the ghost sound low in the mix. boatswain's whistle, harmonica, rocks and ubiquitous low running water engine room roar. Occasionally a buzzing flies by.

The rock's voice hovers between ceramic and metallic
yelling and whooping
talking in rocks tick talk
more an inflection like vowel production than pitch

taking measure of the sound of the rocks in terms of whether or of how present the pitch of that sound is within the sound of the resonance of the body of the rock

[N.B. The Blowout is a volcanic feature, something like a burst gas bubble.]

Mind Playing Tricks On Me - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

anxiety
paranoia
fear
regret

a set of stories

Gradus 103 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2006]

only the toe tips ever always touch
weightless on ripples
send other ripples to touch the ripples
even the toe tips of ripples

the audible world is dark and very like plunking rocks for tunes

The Memory of All That - Benjamin Boretz - Megan Berti, mezzo-soprano; Zuzanna Szewczyk Kwon, piano [on Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

supercharged as to the interval in the mind between the experience of pitch
and the experience of pitch class. They are clearly not the same thing at all, barely containable in the same mind's experience.

Tree Stone Session - S. Eric Scribner - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey Bruce Greeley, Aaron Keyt, S. Eric Scribner [August 2016]

Volunteer Park, Seattle

warm summer day under the trees in a park
all the sounds we brought with us
nice little drum!
and a ghostish sound like an ice cream truck jingle

Entering the world with a unique intent turns it quite suddenly strange.

we upload it to the void while discussing the fuzzy rug of the device

indeterminate pitch is my favorite kind

we arrange ourselves for the piece in which we did little more than shake the leafy tree branches
no telling if any of it would be audible
and tapping rocks
as next to nothing going on as can be got
we play the breezes in the trees

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 1, 2019
Gradus 350 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Postscripts

else which bears to his mind an official

way to breakfast in the sanatorium

character inmate being owner of

it's not a door, she says
it's a false assumption, she says
an impulse of the tree