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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
"The portmanteaus and carpet-bags have been stowed away, and Mr. Weller and the guard are endeavouring to insinuate into the fore-boot a huge codfish several sizes too large for it, which is snugly packed up in a long brown basket with a layer of straw over the top, and which has been left to the last, in order that he may repose in safety on the half-dozen barrels of real native oysters, all the property of Mr. Pickwick, which have been arranged in regular order at the bottom of the receptacle. The interest displayed in Mr. Pickwick's countenance is most intense as Mr. Weller and the guard try to squeeze the codfish into the boot, first, head first, and then tail first, and then top upwards, and then bottom upwards, and then side-ways and then long-ways, all of which artifices the implacable codfish sturdily resists, until the guard accidentally hits him in the very middle of the basket whereupon he suddenly disappears into the boot, and with him the head and shoulders of the guard himself, who, not calculating upon so sudden a cessation of the passive resistance of the codfish, experiences a very unexpected shock, to the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and by-standers."
Charles Dickens - from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Recorded
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
Mal Sims, Fvb. 281 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
nearly direct repetitions
riddled with wit
Capriccio sopra la Lontananza de il fratre dittessimo, BWV. 992 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Andràs Schiff
nothing left behind
no matter how many steps back
it may have
been
the art of implication
demands what is implied
to be immediately
plausible
Mazurka in E-flat minor, Op. 6 #4 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
implication
a cloud about the key
Lied ohne Worte in A Major, Op. 38 #4 - Felix Mendelssohn - Edmund Battersby
this music knows its station
as a proper accomplishment
for a
proper household
Song 5 - Charles Ives - Carol Sams, Russ Warner
a perfect evocation
of turn of the century
(19th to 20th)
civic boostering
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
slow shuffle parade
being jazz
is a performance
Blues Garni - Erroll Garner [from Erroll Garner on Dial]
it's a game now
beat that square opening
at any game
he
plays this
the game
quite well
She's Got It - Little Richard [from Here's Little Richard]
alternating stanzas
verse chorus I suppose
sung at different
attitudes
toward the audience/microphone
Half as Much - Ray Charles [from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music]
Country goes country club
Western goes Las Vegas
The House of the Rising Sun - Nina Simone [from Sings the Blues]
sung at a masterful metrical syncopation
from the rhythm section
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
Didn't I (Blow Your Mind) - Aretha Franklin [from Young, Gifted and Black]
4 + 4
to 8 + 8
to [chorus]
to [tail of chorus]
to 8 +
8
to [alternately balanced]
a general increase in intensity
up to the fade-out
I Don't Want to Walk Around With You (live at The Roxy) - Ramones [from Leave Home]
flatline intensity
what's left
is a pattern of sizes
measured out by the beat
demarcated by chord changes
a
seamless surface
Lion's Den - Bruce Springsteen [from Tracks]
manfulness brag
perfectly ordinary arrangement
The Vision (Sections 2 and 3) - Richard Karpen
we are offered
an image
of a verbal point of view
spoken
as though announced
tunes full of fluctuating partials
weave about like gulls over a beach
complete with internal bickers and drama
or
have we
descended to marsh
swarms of ravenous infant sea monsters
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
to insert the ear
by way of the eye
by way of the word
into
the sun moon earth triad
The Saint's Hallelujah - The Canadian Brass [from The Essential Canadian Brass]
a clever idea for a quod libet
but
so far
done in immaculate
alternation
the tunes do not share a bed
gave up on the Handel I guess
nope comes
in to build up to
something
another latter-day New Orleansy chorus
Boundaries 3 - Jarrad Powell [from Natural Selection]
entities flit through
quickly sparking notice
Gradus 125 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 27, 2007]
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| Gradus 125 |
Cave Dwellers - Red Ribbon [recorded live at The Blue Moon, Seattle, October 4, 2012]
this was the first time I ever heard the remarkable Emma Danner
looking
back
it wasn't so much the particulars of her voice that struck me
but rather
the total investment of the person within it
and
the songs made no effort to be songy
they did their thing and stopped
Steam Train Mix (futzed) - Keith Eisenbrey [August 6, 2017]
well this is lively
a chipmunk conversation
as heard by the
ceiling fans
I had utterly forgotten about doing this
Meditation 2 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Meditations]
asks questions
and razzes the answers
once we've been softened up
it gives a tour
multi-component entities as notes
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
Munday's Joy, Fvb 282 - John Mundy - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
one presumes
the pun had a different slant
within
the
aristocracy
of pre-industrialized Britain
a 3-meter in its many guises
generally
the first beat of any bar
will not be more subdivided
than the last two
that is
if it
the first
is subdivided
then
the others are
also
A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Frankie Trumbauer [from That Devilin' Tune]
conversation
among thems as is gone fishing
smooth transitions
from one stanza to the next
hurry up ending in two installments
No Cover No Minimum (take 2) - Bill Evans [from New Jazz Conceptions]
question
when a segment of jazz
became
vehemently
a
thinking man's game
(Charlie Parker started it?)
during the same
post-war period
that saw the rise of the Beats and Abstract
Expressionism
did it also
become more misogynistic
expelling
the chanteuse-artist
toward pop and lounge?
nice touch there Bill
Eos - Ornette Coleman [from Ornette on Tenor]
the chordal structure must be gleaned
from the conjoined melodic
structures
vertical derived from horizontal
it is explicitly
absent
as a direct presence
in all the ways
the horizontal
is not
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
hymn book straight
Seattle - Benjamin Boretz, J. K. Randall [from Inter/Play]
start
a C on the Crumar
and a B on the Baldwin
(if this was
in Red Hook)
they mix it up
but not much
not an essay on a
limited pitch-class set
but a corporate sensibility
emerging from
the play of pitches
within that determinate pitch-class set
a slow
growing tree
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
Homily - Milton Babbitt - Peter Jarvis
modes of irregularities
within a tight type
precisely bitten
Old Fox - Mike, Peggy, and Penny Seeger [from Animal Folk Songs for Children]
strophic saga of hunting success
or thievery
or neither
Mr. Clean - The Jam [from The Sound of The Jam]
rehash of Paul McCartney's verse in A Day In The Life to start
Comedienne - The Tripwires [from Makes You Look Around]
compact
dense
Listful Thinking - Ask The Ages [from Ask The Ages]
slow moving
cyclic pitch rhyme
from which base
we accumulate
a plod dance
insistent return to ground
new place to begin again
home is never far
Sorry - Ease [from Letters]
the more I push my voice
the more sincere I must be
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
circling
open strings
like a fiddler
but thoughtful
and
freed of any need
to keep a lick going
to dance to
fiddlo
profundo
Rosseter's Galiard, Fvb. 283 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
a sequence of four or five notes
at a particular metrical position
is enough to hold the ear
and remind it
Creole Love Call - Duke Ellington [from Really The Blues]
whoever recorded this
sure knew how to use the space
to balance
the group and individual sounds
Blues For Pablo - Miles Davis [from Miles Ahead]
a new class act
Down On Me - Big Brother and The Holding Company [from Big Brother & The Holding Company]
relatively controlled for Janis
Highway 61 Revisited (Live) - Bob Dylan [from Before The Flood]
does any song benefit
from the need to shout it?
more into the
rhythmic delivery anyway
shout the hook so everybody knows the name of
the song
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
Silent Night - London Symphony Orchestra [from Songs for the Holidays]
inoffensive
except possibly
to the extent
that the
ultra-trained voice puts the listener at a disadvantage
Just a Man - Los Lobos [from Kiko]
beats come in a variety of flavors
this one
a heavy blues
sparely drawn
Track 7 - The Humidiflyers [from Humidiflyers 2002]
a live track with keys drifts
off a bit into jam land
In Session at The Tintinabulary
May 29, 2023
Gradus 382 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
I have been informed by reading
that at the end of many pieces of
keyboard music
printed at the time of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
a block chord
was scribed
following
what would
typically be regarded
as "the last note"
there is some
disagreement among scholars
as to whether this was intended to be played
or
whether it was merely a typographical flourish
or
whether it served some other arcane or unmentionable use
however
if played
it can be heard
as a sort of summary
of the
contents
of what had immediately preceded it
much as Neal's verbal
listing of the notes
to be played
serves
as a summary of
what is to follow
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| Fort Steven State Park, Oregon |
as a structural marker
thought paths of partial affinity
pause to take bearings
being
well out to sea
I guide my attention to interest
what guides
interest
whimsy
vis a vis the concert last Thursday
this music (Gradus) just out and out
thinks with its own doing
that music (Thursday) went to lengths
to
restrict its thinking
to matters of craft
its thinking never turns
back
to consider
critically
the doing
of its thinking
June 1, 2023
Corollaries - Keith Eisenbrey
I had made a bunch of recordings of these pieces in 2017. Since then I made a few changes. I took the opportunity of a freshly tuned piano to record new versions
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
some listening journal doodles from 1994
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