 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
"'But wot's that you're a doin' of -- pursuit of knowledge under difficulties
-- eh, Sammy?'
'I've done now,' said Sam, with slight embarrassment;
'I've been a writin'.'
'So I see,' replied Mr. Weller. 'Not to any young
'ooman, I hope, Sammy.'
'Why, it's no use a sayin' it ain't,' replied
Sam; 'it's a walentine.'
'A what!' exclaimed Mr. Weller, apparently
horror-stricken by the word.
'A walentine.' replied Sam.
'Samivel,
Samivel, said Mr. Weller, in reproachful accents, 'I didn't think you'd ha'
done it. Arter the warnin' you've had o'your father's wicious propensities;
arter all I've said to you upon this here wery subject; arter actiwally seein'
and bein' in the company o' your own mother-in-law, vich I should ha' thought
wos a moral lesson as no man could never ha' forgotten to his dyin' day! I
didn't think you'd ha' done it, Sammy; I didn't think you'd ha' done it!'
These reflections were too much for the good old man. He raised Sam's tumbler
to his lips, and drank off its contents."
Charles Dickens - from "the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Live
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
Peter Nelson-King - No Place To Go
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Code of Un-Silence: A Prayer - Richard Cameron-Wolfe
a slow grow garden
check back each night
roots tangle
foliage clots
8 Pieces for Melodica - Aaron Keyt
short-line poems
...and brought it away... - Aaron Kirschner
such joyous leaves
the poem
describes the music
Warm Waxing Wail - Robert Carl
whistling
singing
humming
playing
music rooted in voiced chords
and home base
but stretching out
No Place to Go - Peter Nelson-King
short poems
recited into the piano's teeth
winds blow
{this was a lovely program full of strong music played well. There was a good deal of spoken and sung vocal involved in many of the pieces, and my only concern is that the acoustic balance made it difficult to hear the words - a problem because as soon as amplification is introduced it changes the whole vibe of the experience}
Recorded
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
Worried Mind - Ray Charles [from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music]
soft blues as to topic
gentle arrangement
On Green Dolphin Street - Bill Evans [from California Here I Come]
meter and tempo at play in a bouncy house
The Summer Knows - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan with Michel LeGrand]
flexing her contralto range
some interesting details in the strings'
twisty tight descents
like aeronautical spins
Thankdewe - Nina Simone [from Fodder On My Wings]
clearly she knows for voice leading and contrapuntal practice
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
Cautious Man - Bruce Springsteen [from Tunnel of Love]
back to Nebraska-style songs
telling a story
of an everyman
who did things right
by the rules
his whole life
is it a disaster
or what
one of Bruce's strongest songs
Nebraska's survivor
Little Bird - Arlo Guthrie [from Woody's 20 Grow Big Songs]
Arlo turns this into one of his songs
Pay Now, Play Later - The Humidiflyers [from Blue Ducky]
this song's people
are like unto Bruce's songs' people
Louis Collins - Rachel Harrington [from The Bootlegger's Daughter]
news travels slow
if it's spread by song
but it travels wide
Urentaea - $.99 Dreams [from Brood of Bau]
progressless wave form
endless swells
this is a ritual dance
not a social mixer dance
Breaking A Picture Frame - Anxious Arms [from Never Was]
they use heavy machinery
and shouting
and pounding
and power
chords
punk rock is a tool used to obscure the singer
Mole Hills and Mountains - Daniel Husser [from 1 Month Challenge]
another ritual dance
upon what am I basing the distinction?
lack
of words?
static feel that builds intensity slowly?
 |
| Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon |
bravura transcriptions
like unto Liszt
jumping logical steps right
and left
then we play our scales
it occurs to me
that the image we have
in our culture
about
who Paganini was
to the early Romantics
may be under-valued
what did they see in him?
a hero?
a type?
a model?
(aside)
Paganini's Caprices were
to him
(Paganini)
what they are:
some pieces to play
to Schumann
they are roped into a hyperliterated concept album
concert finger exercises
composed to play in public
not for
private purposes
Schumann has a peculiar relationship to both meter and repetition
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
Nocturne in A-flat Major, Op. 32 #2 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
the chromatic passing tone (F-flat) in the opening salvo
colors the rest
a mantel-piece gun on stage
the conversants forget the time for a time
Sonate in G minor - Clara Schumann - Susanne Grützmann
{an aside:
to the extent the early Romantics regarded a "Sonata Allegro"
format first section
to be an "exposition" of material to be developed
anon
rather than
the beginning of through-composed development in
two parts
is when
perhaps
the need to repeat it waned}
clear thinking
the final is approached warily
feinting right
feinting left
middle two movements
proper and playful
fourth
from all holed up
gets outside and runs across the
countryside
but must return
though not happy about it
Scherzo, Op. 81 #2 - Felix Mendelssohn - Emerson Quartet
the older idea
that a figure displayed
or stood for
its
tonal function
has evolved here
to where an entire group of
figures
displays a complex of tonal functions
which complex
nevertheless
is a clear group
a tonality of tonalities
In Autumn - Charles Ives - Paul Sperry - Irma Vallecillo
doggerel art song
in plain garments well made
 |
| Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon |
life is good
all is well indeed
banjo back strum
and its absence
(a structural marker)
(on
the stanza level)
Erroll's Bounce - Erroll Garner [from Erroll Garner on Dial]
composing ones own theme song or leitmotif
Can't Believe You Wanna Leave - Little Richard [from Here's Little Richard]
dances from the hip
release of breath
sweeping into head voice
Silent Night, Holy Night - The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble [from Festival of Carols in Brass]
actually
what with all those angels singing
I'd say it was a
rather noisy one
but seriously
the silence is an image for the
divine presence
the center that is everywhere
Thriller - Michael Jackson [from Thriller]
high production value
comic skit
as I recall
the video
included a disclaimer at the beginning
that clarified
that he
didn't actually believe in the reality of those horror-type characters
would anyone have seriously thought he did?
from this?
I mean
he's in pop music!
who takes the subject matters
of pop
music's lyrics seriously?
as though about real things?
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
a dance school song
instructing children in the practice of dancing to a
caller
After Lalon - Allen Ginsberg [from Ashes & Blood]
don't follow my path to extinction
July 25, 2023
A Gloss on 'Round Midnight - Milton Babbitt [from Erik Carlson's Slowly Expanding Milton Babbitt Album]
any given segment is lively with gestural clarity and ephemeral threads of association
Banned Rehearsal 728 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 5, 2007]
pitches emerge from other sounds
intervals wander among the combinations
we float on our own harbor
piano
electric bass
acoustic stringed instrument
being
scraped along a wound string
autoharp I believe
piano moves to drum and tam tam
intentional sounds
/accidental sounds
/imagined results
/unexpected
results
night has fallen
the world slumbers indifferently
(some critters
are busy knocking about)
Eventually - St. Paul de Vence [from St. Paul de Vence]
guitar and banjo to start
squeeze box of some ilk
to add body
for the stanzas with drums (snare)
and bass
and his band of
harmony singers
 |
| Gradus 321 |
Eagles - Kaley Lane Eaton [from Cedar]
seagulls and eagles
interior intoning
within a shorescape
to
bring the tides
Turn Around - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Rare and Rockin']
wears its rural proudly
the hick southern accent and lazy tempo
All Is Loneliness - Big Brother and The Holding Company [from Big Brother & The Holding Company]
a blues
on top of a collective vocal swell
question:
when they performed this live did it extend through more
iterations?
Urtext - Benjamin Boretz, Sarah Johnson [from Inter/Play]
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
intersecting
nonlinguistic verbal
or at least verbal without
explicit referential language markers
with sound
incidental to the
manufacture of a visual object
surface rubbing
marking across
language
the occasional phoneme cluster breaks off
and then
adrift
words
last ever
d'y'suppose
drawing
an only occasionally quiet activity
Polegnala e Pschenitza - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir [from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Volume 1]
similarities to what little I have heard of Eastern Orthodox sacred music
careful pitch placements
against a drone
articulated by a
homophonic coda
Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead - XTC [from Fossil Fuel]
it is essential
that the snare drum hits on 2 and 4
be exactly
equal each time
violators will be canned
these folks are putting
on a practiced show
 |
| Seaside, Oregon |
Pop Tort Reform - Dubious Duo [from Children of Siberia]
spirited
people who need people
who need pop tort reform
ends with extended flatulations
and a tag
Spins The Wrong Way - The Tripwires [from Makes You Look Around]
a string of words spills past the stanza break
Morning Spirit - Low Hums [from Low Hums]
descending lines
in firm steps
opening
of a long
slow
mood movie
Glass Bottom Guitar - 5-Track [from Trio]
spacious
floating
sailing past the moon
slow burn
Piano 3 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Five Piano Fantasies]
transparent planes
near and far
inscrutable parallax
constellating on the fly
embedded study points
 |
| Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon |
July 24, 2023
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
Gradus 385 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
gather all the announcements of notes
if one were to midify the bare
combinations
as simultaneities
of each rung
of Gradus
so far
it could have an interesting rhythm
of gathering
complexity
but
would it be Gradus
without the ordeal of
someone actually doing it?
time travel is a risky gamble
constructing the keyboard the hard way
we gather notes on a string in our minds
and imagine it
as a voice
singing
page turn
new rung
a lesson in low note tonal ambiguity
using Do Re Mi as the ground
is a rung
a piece
or is it a set of possible pieces or
non-pieces?
then up high a similar lesson
July 25, 2023
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
July 26, 2023
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
July 27, 2023
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
July 28, 2023
Invention in C Major - Gavin Borchert
that's all of the C Major of them
in this set
of 30
Inventions
half-way through now
15 more to go
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
listening journal doodles from 2001 and 2002
