Preface
 |
| Mr. Pickwick in the Pound |
Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) - from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Recorded
March 11, 2023
Everything Is Fair - A Tribe Called Quest [from The Low End Theory]
any scrap of anything
can be hip hop fodder
a collection box of
pulse parts
Telling Lies (Feelgood Mix) - David Bowie [from Earthling]
exactly measured durations
with multiple internal durational pattern
layers
Now Evening After Evening - Milton Babbitt - Nina Berman, Steve Beck
simplicity of surface
like Stravinsky
of
The Owl and the Pussycat
but at the service of a denser textual
statement
Lids Film Layer B - Keith Eisenbrey [June 24, 2007]
the first sound was me
bumping around
I sit in a chair while listening sometimes
this file has long durations of zero signal
so
sometimes
I
am mostly sitting in a chair
listening to zero from the speakers
another bump around
then
an announcement
there's a jet going by
up high in the modulous sky
any place one can be sitting in a chair
has a sound specific to it
the ambient sounds that inhabit it
(the heat pump fan)
the
sounds that infiltrate it
(the traffic)
and the ways those sounds
respond to the space psycho-acoustically
rudely interjected with bumpings and janglings
in the zero signal durations
one becomes aware of oneself
sitting
in a chair
which nearly any sound
will distract us from
to
some extent
Trust Us - Tyrannosaurus Grace [from Much More Than A Story]
argumentative attack attitude
makes no friends
Jerseyville, Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Victory Lounge, Seattle, June 15, 2017]
Legend of Eden
a restorative fiction
an awful lot
of woe woe woes
and sha la la la las
Daughters of the Autumn Wind - Steve Layton [from Ending to Begin]
cyclic regularity soothes
spreads out ones sense
of now
relaxing
into its substrate
Coranto, Fvb. 241 - William Byrd - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
history project
origins of binary form
from song or dance?
Mazurka in A minor, Op. 7 #2 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
in the same room as
but not squarely in
the key
step into the kitchen
but don't talk to the cook right now
they're
busy
back to the room with our key in it
sit in the chair
Honolulu Blues - Miff Mole [from That Devilin' Tune]
sets itself up like a Couperin Rondeau
but freely skipping the internal
returns
in favor of giving everybody a solo turn
clever codetta
More Than Somewhat - Danny Polo [from That Devilin' Tune]
dramatic opening with clarinet solo
the pianist has an ear for off
kilter voice leading
bring it to a close with a trumpet clarinet duet
Hot Blues - Erroll Garner [from Erroll Garner on Dial]
seamlessly steps out of the rhythm section
into solo mode
but
he plays like a drummer anyway
infantalizing women
this dude's got a thing or two to learn yet
When They Ask About You - Aretha Franklin [from The Electrifiying Aretha Franklin]
negotiating the tail end of a break-up?
Hello Goodbye - The Beatles [from Magical Mystery Tour]
inventing a happy future
now
hippie pop
for happy hippies
See You Sometime - Joni Mitchell [from For The Roses]
another break-up negotiation
Blitzkrieg Bop (live) - Ramones [from Leave Home]
I think the bass was a tidge behind the beat for several bars
hey ho
let's go
Fodder In Her Wings - Nina Simone [from Fodder On My Wings]
shaker and marimba
a music that isn't a pop song
then harpsichord
not a typical leap
to piano
out in pop song land indeed
even a synthesizer
like a history of keyboards
all at once
hell to pay
Here We Lie - Bonnie Guitar [from Dark Moon and Other Country Favorites]
negotiating
a stay together
in spite of it all
Man's Job - Bruce Springsteen [from Human Touch]
I don't think I could say that
and keep a straight face
a very present hiss
perhaps even an enhanced hiss
the fact that those opening durations
came up
not for expressive
reasons
but simply
because that's how I designed the chart
just toots my horn
drama had nothing to do with it
one could view the process
as that
of eschewing the point of view
of music
as it goes
while
composing music as it goes
in favor
of a more global point of view
outside of
music's bailiwick
of going how it goes
but
I say
music's bailiwick
is much more extensive than we commonly give it
credit for
to me
it feels like I'm composing music
from
within a corner pattern shop
working out patterns
of how sounds
might play out
so that
I can hear how they play out
but
I am composing while doing this
I'm making the music do
what
I want it to be doing
while one is in it
I'm enjoying the sound of this mix quite a lot
it preserves much of the
cassette tape's unmistakable character
personally
I could get lost in there
a symphony having a
futurustic dream
making the acoustic interference throb and dance
move about the space
ends with lone tones
intoning a tune
from my setting of The Peaceable Kingdom passage
from Isaiah
Summer - The Hope [from In The Deep]
words fit to a melody made of single notes |
in small groups
with
repeating interval contours
Chaotic Heart/Forest of Thorns - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Sound Effects Coffee Shop, Seattle, October 26, 2012]
rhythmic shouting
approximate pitch
energy purge
stand back
once the tank is drained
and cleaned
the burners can be
reignited
Ready For It? - Taylor Swift [from Reputation]
sexual infatuation
so that
the fandom knows
that
the
singer has sexual infatuations
and
or
so that
the
fandom
knows how to have one
should it come up
Monsters - Aaron Keyt - Jennifer Chung, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, November 17, 2022]
these would be wonderful pieces for intermediate students
lively
colorful
tricky
but not utterly virtuosical
in short
fun to play and hear
full of tight little tonal knots
Up Tails All, Fvb. 242 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
immovable ground
vines may twine
but this spot
moves
not
points out a trope of later music
that
it starts and ends in the
same spot
but gets somewhere between
this
starts
stays
and ends
we can walk around it
but if you sit in it
that's where you'll stay
Every Time I Feel The Spirit - C. Mae Frierson Moor and the Four Aces of Harmon [from Really The Blues]
stars of the revival circuit?
tent meeting favorites?
My Little Lady (Hadie Brown) - Roy Rodgers [from That Devilin' Tune]
extravagant yodeling
he needs his ladee-ee-ees
to have an ee-ee-ee
for their final syllable
so they'll fit in the song
an odd
fetish
you can't yodel on Hortense
On The Sunny Side of The Street - Charlie Parker [from That Devilin' Tune]
a song we can all bounce around in
without damaging
Israel - Miles Davis [from Birth of the Cool]
lively in the low horns
bowed bass solo with high hat paying mind
takes more than the drummer to
keep the sax in view
everybody gets room to play
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite - The Beatles [from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]
within an album advertising themselves as another band
a song
that
is an advertisement of an act you won't see
Champs - Pink Flag [from Wire]
rebound in the final syllable
for : fo-uh
more = mo-uh
Stage Fright (live) - The Band [from Before The Flood]
heavy accents in the vocal
drumming song
Banned Telepath 14 Bickleton - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Marilyn Meyer, William Meyer, Yvonne Meyer [November 26, 1987]
we must have brought some toys with us
whistles mostly
there are
also metallics
such as pots pans mixing bowls
some sticks
bells and the monochord
wiggling within a narrow ambitus
a chiming clock chimes its quarter hour
hanging out with small noisemakers
and making them make their
small noises
within a family
to elicit
an other
understanding
of the interactions among that family
investigative
a music for the social purpose
of documentation of living life
a-performative
old hypothesis
music is structured sound
falls apart
when it
becomes evident
that any structure that sound has
is entirely
contingent
on what we
as hearers
ascribe to it
(consciously or not)
it is not structured
until we
understand it that way
and the particulars of any such ascribed
structure
are entirely dependent on
the utility of those
particular structural attributes
to us
(consciously or not)
it is structured
only to the extent we desire it to be
all
sound is structured
in that sense
might it be better to say
that music
is that sound
that we structure
as we
structure music
yes
but do we want music
to be anything we
want it to be
it clearly is
but is that what distinguishes it from
anything else
does music cohere in our consciousness
through a path
other than some high-falutin' raised consciousness blather
or does it just do it
before we know what it is
as language does
that is
is it
a relatively distinct
innate
arena of consciousness which
we are free then
to expand
should we so wish
or to limit
if it serves our desires
shake that tambourine
strike that drum
with flutes and kazoos
we do Amazing Grace
the humanatone
world's most disgusting
musical instrument
it's a small world music box
Bill is offering
us a large cone
Low Beat - The Young Fresh Fellows [from It's Low Beat Time]
the state of the world
as seen from the blues
then a celebration
Boundaries 1 - Jarrad Powell [from Natural Selection]
a resonating machine
for isolation of specimens
Lids Film Layer C - Keith Eisenbrey [June 24, 2007]
more specimen isolation
extracted episodes
defined by
the
audible
to me
at the
to me
extent
of a single
sound
such as
a bell
before another such single sound begins
since some of those sounds were small
and since I have normalized
each specimen
so that
their respective greatest amplitudes
are equal
they each have a different level of system noise
associated with them
the question at issue is
in what manners
and at what points
in any process of composition
do the
structures we compose into a music
by whatever processes we choose to
compose with
become audible
or even theoretically audible
structures
within the composition
as we are hearing it go by
later?
for example
if I choose to compose a piece
of two
sounds heard in sequence
and determine the content of those sounds
independently
of my choosing to have two of them
then
for
the listener
the music is
or might be surmised to be
first
an experience of a sound fully determined
followed by another
also fully determined
the determinate feel of the first sound
is independent of the fact that a second will follow it
and the
two-ness of the composition
emerges only with the onset of that second
sound
in its fully determinate feel
in other words
the
process of sound-making or sound-surmising composing
need not be the
same process
as that process of composing what we are hearing
as
we are hearing it
the gap between the two processes
can be made to
seem small
or opaque
or intriguing
or labyrinthine
or
inviting
or many other things
mind the gap
epistolary confession over a guitar figure
the story circles around
Don't Black Out - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Victory Lounge, Seattle, July 15, 2017]
more fun as a closer
than Forest of Thorns
and
reasonable advice
Water Lilies I - Kurt Rohde Stephanie Lamprea [from Quaking Aspen]
electronically enhanced voice
sprechstimme
full voice
and
more
at shifting presences
or proximities
and reverberation
states
Jhonson's Medley, Fvb. 243 - Robert Johnson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
frameworks of simple parts
easily grasped and varied
Barrelhouse Man - Will Ezell [from Really The Blues]
measured tremolos
hammered out sustained sonorities
a light touch
cuts off in the middle of itself
a pity
Bill Coleman's Blues - Bill Coleman, Django Reinhardt [from The Devilin' Tune]
gentle mellow muted trumpet
and walking strum
I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Billie Holiday [from Songs for Distingué Lovers]
moves that come across
in the immediate
as extemporaneous effusion
folded
into clear intent
carefully tended melodic scansion
Stop The Music - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]
oh the sweeping strings
and pounding keys of teen drama
Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]
man woman father son God
fades into its mood
March 17, 2023
BAB KEE 820715 - Benjamin Boretz, Keith Eisenbrey [July 15, 1982]
turning corners well and ill
lash out
slow quiet descent
pitches catch on ledges
luminescent
a new critter emerges
from the ledges
receded to a distance
not much doing
thin
light
grumbly rumble
heavy objects
shoved bodily
a scamp appears
loudly asserted
leaning toward
ledge
edge
giddy
vertiginy
peaceful slumber
staying still
hangs out in the territory
in
which it is found
occasionally restless
bit chomping
spontaneous brief outbursts
no reason to move
this is another session tape that I had forgotten about completely
until
Ben sent it to me a week or so ago
made in the first weeks of my time at
Bard College
her voice had dropped into alto territory by then (1987)
less reliance
on the flash and dazzle
Rain - Madonna [from Erotica]
one of the various stanzas explains the story
one is the aria
and
outs the inner state of the singer-persona
verse/chorus/bridge
are types of a single thing
chord-change
stanzas
that can be repeated in various schemes
mix and
match
thunder effects are unnecessary
too obvious by half
In Session at The Tintinabulary
March 12, 2023
Banned Telepath 98 Hoonah Morning - Jennifer Chung, Aaron Keyt
There may be some bird hoots in there
hooted all the way
from
Hoonah AK
I certainly hope so
March 13, 2023
Banned Telepath 98 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 1072 - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
some listening journal doodles from 1993
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