"The old man uttered a loud yell which rang through the lonely fields like the howl of an evil spirit. His face turned black; the gore rushed from his mouth and nose, and dyed the grass a deep dark red, as he staggered and fell. He had ruptured a blood-vessel: and he was a dead man before his son could raise him."
Charles Dickens - "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Recorded
August 6, 2022
Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen [from Nebraska]
everybody in this song is fitted into a slot
trapped in their life
oppressed
choiceless
Jerusalem - Hubert Parry [from 100 Greatest Classics]
so Anglican and proper
everybody stand and weep
with
Nationalismoid Pride
or not
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Johann Sebastian Bach [from The World's Greatest Choruses]
softly padded and smeared
Telling Lies - David Bowie [from Earthling]
a line of song is chosen for its rhythmic/metrical potential
as much as
for its ostensible meaning vectors
Prelude - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, October 13, 2007 (one version of this recording)]
breath descending through eons of stars
Another Day, Another Dollar - Back Burner [from Simmer On]
bluegrass and bluegrass adjacent musics
remain largely a homegrown
phenomenon
a secret enclave
of the highly competent
with
relatively low commercial potentiality
at the moment
subtitled "the pianistic"
I like:
how I unashamedly move from one
direction to another
do a loop
and catch the first direction
in midprocedure
how the 2nd movement interrupts the end of the
first without so much as a by your leave
the stepped crescendo
the
disappearing act to end it
probably the best long freeform piece I made
it has fewer loose ends
than A Cat's Life
because it has no plot to complete
and I think I
played it pretty well here
but the recording isn't great
Sullivan Row - Merchant Mariner
a sea shanty adventure song
Banned Telepath 87 Roosevelt Station - Steve Kennedy [May 20, 2022]
from Steve's location
the escalators sing from farther off
but
move up close
motor harmonies
Karen informs me
that the
escalators
no longer sing
Alman, Fvb 147 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
dance movements in binary form
a circumscribed social music
the
form is its acceptability in polite circles
Sonata in E-flat Major, Kk 193 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
tight knots
tied in patterned coordinates
within the tonal
function matrix
That Great Day - T.C.I Women's Four [from Goodbye, Babylon]
each short line ends with a slid three pitch ornament
as though honing
in on the final pitch from both its adjacencies
Traveling Riverside Blues - Robert Johnson [from The Complete Recordings]
playing multiple lines on the guitar
by checking in with each of them in
turn
as the need or imagination arises
My First Impression of You - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]
The trajectory of pitch contour/content within the tune she sings
interprets the sense of what she says
and fleshes out the
parallelisms among the stanzas' lines
larger frame is a twelve count
divisible all over
but treated
as an eight plus four
the four
while in it
could be
the first or second four of the eight
thus spilling over
into the
next twelve
an activated ambiguity
It's All right With Me - Peggy Lee [from Dream Street]
uptempo of the uptempo
rhythmically right on
Soul Bongo - Stevie Wonder [from The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie]
got some chops for sure
Group Variations I for Chamber Orchestra - Benjamin Boretz - The Group for Contemporary Music, Charles Wuorinen [archival live recording, 11/24/19868, Town Hall, New York City, from Open Space 33]
unveiling possibilities of
for example
how one might be many
or many one
the chamber orchestra version enlivens a clunkiness within the rhythm scheme
each new moment is utterly unique
anew
uniquely new
especially
the ostensibly repeated notes
it refuses to flow
it simply is continuing
Deportee - Cisco Huston [from The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie]
the problem I have with social justice music
is that it almost
inescapably stops at being just that
music for me
is not
essentially a thing I would want to agree or disagree with
whether I
might or might not
assenting or not
to a sentiment
is not
a musical activity
Carbonara Not Glue - Ramones [from Leave Home]
lines divided among two pitches
Dangerous - The Who [from It's Hard]
sounds so angry
with generic The Who accentuation
Sonatina - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded August 20, 2010]
friction between the strident dotted figures
and the linearly phrased
melodic motions
disfinessed
corners turned peculiarly
paced poking
chord voicing shifts the
center of gravity
it is short but not sweet nor light
Lip My Reeds - P.D.Q. Bach [from Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion]
proving what needed no demonstration
that funny often isn't
particularly
Se Galeas et le puissant Artes, ballade sur Gaston Fébus - Johannes Curlier - Ensemble Organum, Marcel Pérès [from Portrait]
lets play a game of hockets shall we?!!
Track 7 [from Eisenbrey 2002]
from an otherwise unlabeled archival CD of music from a Chamber Music camp my Mom attended in 2002
a galant keyboard
performed on piano
with clarinet as solo
and cello
I think
filling in some sound here and there
Haydn or ilk of Haydn
all the As are written down someplace
the second rung of these
is a single A
a low one
but I may
be wrong
as now there are three
and there are no firm signals of
articulation between rungs
perhaps he just hung there for a while
there's the teakettle
back when it still whistled
prior to
popping its stopper
how might one climb stairs upside down
Gradus
Rectus
Gradus Inversus
proportions of extents
seen from an
angle
at which the extent
can't be perceived
the piano
creaks like an old house
Out of Control - Broken By Clouds
slow build of forces into the song proper
a signifier of industrial
production
start with this
add a layer
add another layer
Bowie notwithstanding
it has become cliché
Real Sick Maniac - You Mother Should Know [recorded live at Victory Lounge, Seattle, April 27, 2017]
making a dream seem true
Don't Let It Bring You Down - Denise Glover [from Dreams of the Butterfly]
what needs saying spills into the breaks
The New Sa-Hoo, Fvb 148 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
short and sweet
but now I want to hear the Old Sa-Hoo too
Hey Lawdy Mama Papa - Harvey Hull and Long Clove Reed [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
what he actually says is Hey Lordy
the R is quite clear
the title
is in fact little more than a rhythmic riff
as used herein
Hello
Heaven
Daddy wants to use the telephone
They cut down the old pine tree - Carson Robison Trio [from Evans 78s]
mule cart tempo
couldn't go home again
back then either
it
gets worse
to make a coffin of pine
to bury that sweetheart of
mine
Black Diamond Express to Hell - Rev. A. W. Nix [from Goodbye, Babylon]
many there be that go in thereat
really getting enthusiastic about going
to hell
Ready Teddy - Little Richard [from Here's Little Richard]
the style range is viciously narrow
sells it with full engagement
Besame Mucho - The Beatles [from First Live Recordings, Volume 1]
cha cha boom
a construct makes its way through a sticky environment
helmet on
probing
sampling
edging on
Free Four - Pink Floyd [from Obscured by Clouds]
such a dour fatalist sentiment
anticipates Animals in that
No Compassion - Talking Heads [from Talking Heads: 77]
the industrial production of music enforces overwhelming strictures
to
the point where professionalism becomes the sole arbiter of quality
punk
was a pushback
but prey to the same mindset
it had difficulty
imagining anything outside
and this ain't punk
I Love A Man In Uniform - Gang of Four [from Nancy's Mix]
I love a man in four four time
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2 [from The Joshua Tree]
Romantic posturing
a small song bloated out to stadium size
Toccata and Fugue in D minor - Johann Sebastian Bach - The Canadian Brass [from The Essential Canadian Brass]
brass sound proceeds from a specific location
organ sound situates
itself in space independently of its origin field
translating the latter
into the former
transforms the experience
but also
the
energy expended by the performers to make it happen
is
in each
case
of a different magnitude
and bodiliness
Latura tu et nennin dea - Antoine Bruhier - Teilman Susato Krummhorn Gesellschaft [from The Glory of the Krummhorn]
dividing longer fixed time spans
in twos and threes
the old
proportional notation
Tower of the Sun - Shonen Knife [from Brand New Knife]
what of this might be capable of transcending its production
the
charming accent possibly
not much to work with
against the music
recording industry's straight jacket
Prelude - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, October 13, 2007 (another version of this recording)]
descent on a tether
into the deepest dark
chapter one
The Story - Brandi Carlyle [from The Story]
vibraguitar
goes all stadium on herself
for no discernable reason
from within the song
beyond a generic desire
it would seem
to heroicize oneself
as a dedicatrix
of an unnamed you
Banned Rehearsal 817 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2, 2012]
must have been first day with some phones or other
ring tone choices
chatter tubes
buzz buzz buzz
impervious sounds are exhausted
quickly
a limited speaker reduces its output to a single sound
whose individual qualities rarely transcend the singleness of its limits
especially when contexed by more robust devices
when the signal's sounds are located within another more global signal
or when the source and the signal
are a single self-exhausting
gestalt
transparent and opaque media
a relative notion
but
as real as anything
opaque:
entirely contained within the media
transparent:
fills the listening space with precise
coordinates
we wisely tire of opaque devices
That Oregon Trail - Pharis & Jason Romero [from Roll Columbia]
salvation is in the Promised Land (the West) for the taking
Banned Rehearsal 1051 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 23, 2022]
I think about notes
question
are notes
not the kind on pages
but the kind one hears
the sort of thing
that can only
properly be discussed
in their own language
i.e. that language of
notes
 |
| #Mohai |
and other small keyboards
can one think about notes
and not compose
or are they the same
activity
as in real life
Karen keeps my feet on the ground
it is a good
thing
this may be when I realized
that the tam tam tams a C natural
(naturally)
the country zither is awakened
Neal calls late in the game
but
there he is
phoning along some 1920s jazz sound
via 2020s phone
sound
In Session at The Tintinabulary
August 10, 2022
Joshua Tree Prelude 19 - Aaron Keyt
I almost had this one the week before but realized late in the game that I needed to fix an out-of-tune F-sharp so I finally got it
Anybody's Fingerbook 7x7 (augmentational) D A B - Keith Eisenbrey
August 12, 2022
Anybody's Fingerbook 7x7 (augmentational) A B C D - Keith Eisenbrey
That's all of them. Oof!
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
some listening journal doodles from 1989
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