Preface
Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) - from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Recorded
May 14, 2023
Mandala Side 2 - Steve Layton [from Mandala]
a broad plane
across which
and looming from beneath
and
far beyond
vast numens bellow among their kind
undulous forms
pass through undulous forms
old echoes resonate in eddies of old
echoes
long slow soup simmer
drone worlds muse in tongues
the eternal theory
of being
becoming
the rattle bang
roarer
roars rattles and bangs
doubled reed
desperate
containment
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
that traditional person
was a mighty sophisticated composer
Mazurka in C Major, Op. 7 #5 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
a nice short one
interrupted by supper call
Lied ohne Worte in C minor, Op. 38 #2 - Felix Mendelssohn - Edmund Battersby
bird in a cage
hopping perch to perch
From the Street - Charles Ives - Kia Sams, Russ Warner
Fight That Thing - Reb Spikes [from Really The Blues]
jazz
a contraption music
not invented
but contrapted together
out of scraps
May 15, 2023
Love Is The Strangest Game - Erroll Garner [from Erroll Garner on Dial]
this song has several characters that speak
the melody proper
and the interlinear comment among them
Fabulous Character - Sarah Vaughan [from In A Romantic Mood]
produced pop sound
little room allowed for personhood
Bye Bye Love - Ray Charles [from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music]
pretty chipper for heartbreak
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
more stage orchestra type arrangement
Las Vegas ready
The Long and Winding Road - Aretha Franklin [from Young Gifted and Black]
smaller stage fewer spotlights
bass drums organ piano backup singers
soloist
fitting a more intimate song
California Sun (Live at the Roxy) - Ramones [from Leave Home]
stripping away all intimations of fancy
to get at something
simpler
The Weight - The Band [from Before The Flood]
stanza trajectory
in that the melodic/harmonic development follows
the rhetoric of the words
winding up toward the chorus
reset
around around around
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
Spare Parts - Bruce Springsteen [from Tunnel of Love]
convolutions of story fragments
in a generic flow
goes away
without making any attempt at saying anything
Can't Front On Me - Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth [from Mecca and the Soul Brother]
music with a presumed social terroir
ones origin is ones audience
(true of much including Bruce)
Slip Away - David Bowie [from Heathen]
added bits change our sense of prior bits
at the beginning
feels complete
a fully formed song
framed by space-age
psychedelics
Each and Everyone - Curtains For You [from Heaven's Waiting]
song as an excuse to party within it
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
can a pitch class exist
in a universe
where all pitches are
related
by chains of 2:1?
does our conviction
that these
are all A-naturals
rely on the gamut for context?
or
is
pitch-class not really the same thing
as octave equivalence?
OR
is it the identity of intervals
among these pitches
that
in their cyclic partitioning
of the space in which these pitches
appear
lock the pitches into a class?
although the common first
partitioning interval
is
acoustically
1:2
more or
less
we can't hear it that way
but only as a particular flavor
of interval
nobody
I hope
is counting vibrations
and
doing the math
a pitch class
being
those pitches related
to each other
by a common partitioning interval
any interval
will do
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
is such that
in listening
without knowing in advance
what that difference was
one would probably not catch it
as it went by
in this case
A-naturals 1 2 3 4 6 8 and 1 2 5 6 7 8
is it even a difference
that is
a difference prior to analysis
if I didn't hear it go by
did it go by?
Who Wants To Go Surfing - Mud On My Bra [recorded live at The Sunset Tavern, Seattle, April 18, 2017]
an instrumental
like a Ventures tribute
that's nothing like The
Ventures
Deeply Lodged II: Hold - Tom Baker - Cristina Valdés [from Deeply Lodged]
solo piano
a position that changes underneath itself
investigations surround it
accreting commentary
the
evening is lovely
still time to put all this away
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
Pavana. Canon, Fvb 275 - William Byrd - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
refined pleasure
for the pleasure
of refinement
and
pleasure
Bob Lee Junior Blues - Memphis Jug Band [from The Anthology of American Folk Music]
kazoo or comb harp
doubling down on the homespun
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Rare and Rockin']
dance call
Mapa - Ornette Coleman [from Ornette on Tenor]
a quartet of tempos joined
urgency to keep it going
motorized
travel
the road
the scenery
the vehicle
the
attentions
what everyone sees of it
going by
as it keeps
going
The First Love In Life - The Irish Rovers [from The Unicorn]
cultural diplomacy
from the land of troubles
May 18, 2023
In Which - Benjamin Boretz, J.K. Randall [from Inter/Play]
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
prod it
push it
it reverts to shape
approximately
poke it hard
it snaps back
holds forth at length
unfurling its thousand arms
its vining way
tendrilly twining
luscious malintonation
harangue the heavens
it tires of being poked
but for a few stray winks and fidgets
A Squirrel Is a Pretty Thing - Mike, Penny, and Peggy Seeger [from Animal Folk Songs for Children]
I suspect this piano arrangement is one of Ruth Crawford's
somebody
has been studying their Stravinksy
Monkey Say - The Young Fresh Fellows [from It's Low Beat Time]
jumps right in fully formed
dive bar attitude spill
Piano Trio Movement - Franz Schubert [from Eisenbrey 2002]
starts with chunk chunk piano and cello solo
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
dialog
between a music and a song
or
a thorn-filled wood
in which
a song transpires
or
into which
a
song draws us
the lines tighten around each other
we are left in
the midst
Slug Queen - The Ancients [recorded live at Rat and Raven, Seattle, August 9, 2012]
there is an element of self-parody to this band
that's not
unappealing
Footprints - Aaron Keyt - Katie Cox, Mara Mayer, Andie Springer, Charly Akert, Joe Bergen
its sense of self develops continuously throughout
activity and
stillness
observe each of themselves
Hypnoi - Sascia Pellegrini [from Epidemics]
the channels chatter
as tones overlay
a calming in the
chattering
as tones accumulate
brightly glaring
they
converse
my boys complained about the high end
one of the
blessing of old age I guess
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
each set of three
builds from the others
raising itself
step by step
as it pulls the rest of itself behind
each
step takes more steps
Vol Stevens' Blues - Vol Stevens [from Turn Me Loose, White Man]
banjo and guitar
though the banjo has a ukulele like sound to it
no clear indication that there are any resonating strings
and plays a smaller tighter resonator
{NB: not banjo but
mandolin}
Mary Ann - Ray Charles [from Ray Charles]
a piano rhythm figuration
whose melodic aspect
helps to shape
the feel of the accents
in the groove
The Scarecrow - Pink Floyd [from The Piper At The Gates of Dawn]
all the resources of 1967 studio production
brought to the service of
an actual compositional idea
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
at the piano - Elaine Barkin - Dan Poynton [from Open Space 12]
then from then
looking back looking back
disruption inherent in
action
erasures
scrubouts
Strati in Angelaka Daumasche - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir, Philip Koutev [from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Volume 1]
each segment of text
individually sculpted
of homophony
and a single decorated line
to push the end
Pick It Up - Guthrie Family [from Woody's 20 Grow Big Songs]
instructive
for categories of dropped items
start and end with
silly
dropped my thumb dropped my head
(interlude) - The Humidiflyers [from Blue Ducky]
a vocal texture that comes and then goes
Apollo - Antique Scream [from Sink The Sun]
vocal
as instrument
what he says
isn't part of the song
as such
its just one of the solo instruments
that gets out
front
and struts
Here to Hear - Swearin' [from Swearin']
occluding an epistolary
behind a rough carapace
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
an epistolary
not hiding behind anything
aside from
the
anonymity
afforded
by being on stage
such as it
the
stage
was
at the Victory Lounge
Samādhikāya - James Falzone - James Falzone [from So Far So Still]
that pitch and the others
that pitch
of which
the others
are others
never moves to another
among the others
it is
never other
In Session at The Tintinabulary
May 13, 2023
Oregon 230512-13 - Keith Eisenbrey
a quickie collage of sounds I recorded while we were in Oregon
May 15, 2023
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| Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon |
notes in pairs
or groups of notes in pairs
and groups of pairs
interlaced
pairs of pairs
repeated out of register
deregistered
inversions skew symmetry
softly subtending
::||::
professionalism:
the art of making every sound
sound like you meant to make that sound
and no other
the
illusion
of transparent intention
if a simultaneity of multiple notes
is the simultaneity first
in experience
prior to any possible resolution
into single
notes
is it properly part of Gradus?
combos of notes
but also
combos of notes with sonorities
only analyzable as notes
rather than notes
as such
or:
is a note within a melody
still
properly
a
note?
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
some listening journal doodles from 1994
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