Preface
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| Gallery 1412 Groundhog's Eve |
Might have told more, but all the eyes of Argus,
He saw, had closed, and he made the slumber deeper
With movements of the wand, and then he struck
The nodding head just where it joins the shoulder,
Severed it with the curving blade, and sent it
Bloody and rolling over the rocks. So Argus
Lay low, and all the light in all those eyes
Went out forever, a hundred eyes, one darkness."
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)
Texts
Live
February 1, 2020
Banned Rehearsals 999 and 1000
Gallery 1412, Seattle
Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
It is truly amazing where persistence will get you. Banned Rehearsal made its first tape on June 24, 1984. It was just Aaron, Neal and me, gathered in my upstairs room in Bellevue. I think Neal had brought along an electric bass and an amp. There were probably a few recorders, rattles, and I forget what all else.
And here we gather at Gallery 1412 nearly 36 years later to make our 1000th numbered session. I am grateful and honored to have been a part of this project, this "continuing argument in creative expression," this vast array of musical junkyard art, this laboratory for basic research in listening.
Thank you to those who came to hear us make our little bit of history. And thank you to my fellow band members, Jennifer, Karen, Steve, Aaron, and Neal, to our sometime and occasional regulars Anna K and Pete Comley, and to all those who have joined us for just a few or for many sessions over the years. It has been, for me, an intensely gratifying and rewarding collaboration. There have been some struggles, and there have certainly been some abysmally lame moments, but when it is at its best it is as good as any music gets, ever. And, anymore, it is, consistently, at its best. We don't know what we're doing, but we have become quite good at it.
We don't know what we're doing, but who ever does?
Onward to elsewhere!
Recorded
Sonata in G Major K. 75 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
grasps a figure
won't let it go
no matter which key
or mode
grabs away at it
Bella Donna (Demo Version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]
a possible statement, read through a stencil
only the bits that hint enough
without saying
not in frame
not in world
not in utterance
E la don don - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]
soloists sprinkled around the lines
an arrangement that was probably not in the score
perhaps it could be heard as an attempt to arrange it as they might have done
but without benefit of the mindset with which they would have done what they did
Symphony in D minor (#7), III - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos - The Very Best of Dvorak]
slowish performance tempo allows some detail through
but lacks verve or bite
10xoxxoxxoxx - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]
note-y
flat affect
raw and blatant
thumb piano
toy piano
electric guitar
possibly processed
certainly compressed
any roundness
is an effect of mixing it up among the partials
bracing!
scours it big time!
Corollaries (with introduction and questions) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [at Seattle Composers' Salon, November 2016]
into the speculated void
brings out familial similarities
end when transmission fails
data points as what you get
is all what you get
hiding in plain sight
the notion that what you were measuring is the between the points
where the interval
is
Golly, but I got a bunch of excellent thoughtful questions! I love Salon!
I am the Webernizer
bow before me
Sonata in G minor K. 76 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
In The Wizard of Oz
the Munchkins passing rumors along in the chorus are thinking like Scarlatti
information spreads though the community
Munchkin chorus
mic check
in flagrantly invertible counterpoint
Paint - J. K. Randall, Wally Shoup [from Inter/Play]
when Wally visited Jim
in 1981
sound is behaving as though recorded by boombox or dicta-phone
dynamic leveling by automatic compression
I am a compendiator
the background machine noise affects this sound-as-a-music
to the point where
because of it
the set of all the sounds that aren't in it
(in the background machine noise)
would be
well
different
really really different
different at a near primal level of determinate feelingness
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contrapuntal elaboration and prolongation is a form of fancy chord voicing
extending voicing through time and dissonance
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Jim working on an extension of the sound examples for that part of Compose Yourself that charts the placements of focus within the mouth cave
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scattish
food coloring
glue
gets in everything
yup! ya start monkeying around
with free improv and pretty soon you'll be
speaking in tongues
doesn't everybody?
what is speaking anyway?
{}{}
fly on wall
when Wally
visited Jim
provided
to you
herein
Noh
scatters
Cadillac Ranch - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]
young men with that top of the world feeling
from the long line of rock and roll car commercials
commercial music is a genre
preacherin' agin
re-do
with kazoo
Lightning Over Sonora - Robert Tree Cody / Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]
Atta Boy - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]
showing off chops
portrayed as: how cool! A-list classical dude gets down and pawrtees!
but, could be another take on highbrowin' up the vernacular for polite society
like as many a beloved 19th & 20th Century composer has done
that is, cultural appropriation (oh the horror)
the emotional edge of societies meeting
they do play mighty well
Corollaries (Down's Down) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [September 2016]
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| Aaron and Jennifer |
these are the sounds the probes returned from the void
when down was set to down
the minimalist face of what I do is the tool to get at other things
in this version of this composition it is so that partials will be laid bare (all those harmonic tones that pulse and roll in the decay)
you can hear them coming
a new pitch-time correlation discovered on the fly
(but not Jim's P-TC)
learned from Neal
applies here
the time given is time for thinking
 |
| Karen and Steve |
February 4, 2020
Sonata in D minor K. 77 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
This would be a most excellent clavichord piece!
that lovely espressivo tempo
clavichord would be all over that
it lives in precisely weighted touch
clavichord's game
another multi-movement, faster after slower
Gold and Braid (unreleased version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]
narrow ambit vocal line
a fifth I think at most
Two Fantasies on "Une jeune fillette" - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]
start here
end there
get to the end there
as best you can
don't jostle
William Harry Holmes - Whiting Tennis [from Three Leaf Clover]
a song can be a mood setting movie scene
Preludes in B Major and D-flat Major - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [at Langley United Methodist Church, August 2015]
messed up more than I should have
Walk On - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]
the slow dance
with the
power waltz
in it
In Session at the Tintinabulary
Gradus 363 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
open with a big brush
to free a space
(compositional strategy)
then get out the fine tips
composing with minimal generalization
registrally compact ideas
or mixes of registrally compact ideas
inter-registrally enunciated ideas
are relatively rare
but potent
Postscripts
sie konnten ohn grab wer lay lore auf
dem tiefen rhein da kommt sie in den kahn
turning through the window
the bird exterior
flitting about
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