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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
"'What's your name, sir?' inquired the judge.
'Sam Weller, my Lord,'
replied that gentleman.
'Do you spell it with a 'V' or a 'W'?' inquired
the judge.
'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my
Lord,' replied Sam; 'I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice
in my life, but I spells it with a 'V.''
Here a voice in the gallery
exclaimed aloud, 'Quite right too, Samivel; quite right. Put it down a we, my
Lord, put it down a we.'"
Charles Dickens - from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"
Texts
Live
August 24, 2023
Outlaw Space
Stephen Fandrich, piano; William Monteleone,
saxophone; Kirill Polyanskiy, violin; Noah Colbek, percussion; Greg
Campbell, percussion
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center Seattle
a red sax
an amplified violin (modestly so)
piano
and two
drum sets
more mics than I care to count
tour kick-off
patient improvising into melismatic
two pieces
similarly
conceived but different outcomes
1 Fulcrum {balancing on the center points} by Stephen Fandrich
elastic relations to a core
knowledge of the core is retained
long piano solo to begin
filling in ample grounds about the core
sonority
a mighty forest
quiet glades
rushing torrents
guileless the violin enters
all guests are bathed in gentle water
eased in mind
each takes an ample time
the red sax wades in
ripple-less
all distress soothed
no hurry in this garden
this is a friendly beehive
the drums rumble at last
piano a
constant presence
evening dance
ample portions of grooving
night
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
quiet drumming with piano
intimating a new day
sax and violin sit down and join
a mellow breakfast
a prelude
now a tale to be spun
showcase arrangements
music as a sequence of performances
a sequence of rhythmic crescendi
in 1 the underlying groove became a quick 5
here a quick 7
each iteration a bit quicker
into a 5 dervish?
break for a relax
and a reminisce
of where we began
Recorded
August 19, 2023
Banned Rehearsal 945 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [October 23, 2017]
pitched sounds string themselves together as we hear them
likewise with
pulsed sounds
is this purely a learned practice
or
as
language appears to be
an innate behavior of perception
guided by
(presumably)
wet-ware filtered propensities?
it is commonly
understood
that learning another natural language
is
to seek
to understand what a speaker of that language means by what they say
is it therefore the proper goal of listening to another's music
to seek
to understand what that other meant?
or
might both meaning and
understanding
be wholly outside the province of music?
what anxiety do I seek to assuage
by stringing pitched sounds together
in a line?
water walker bugs dance
music on the pond's surface tension
shaking
light
Ambient April - Steve Layton [from Excavations 2013-2014]
immediate space
what enters
does so from inside
an inverse
universe
bathed in blue light
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
after having been abandoned
by ones hope
the room closes in
only a question remains
Fantasiestück in F minor, Op. 12 #2 "Aufschwung" - Robert Schumann, Eric Le Sage
the sense of where the melody sings
is mobile within the figurational
patterning of the register
Tema con variazioni, Op. 81 #1 - Felix Mendelssohn - The Emerson Quartet
ties over bar-lines
(inexplicit downbeat)
(accented by its
absence)
weak-beat cadence
a form of harmonic ornament
What's This (first encore to Dynamic Motion) - Henry Cowell - Henry Cowell
volcanic heated
Song 12 - Charles Ives - Kia Sams, Russ Warner
impressionist bones
hymnodic soul
Hotter Than That - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives and Sevens]
we start with the cover
open it up
the pages pull us along
stanza to stanza
just speaking in guitar there for a moment
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
Ludus Tonalis - Paul Hindemith - Siglind Bruhn
the scuttlebutt about Hindemith
back when I was in school
was that
his early works are fabulous and inventive
but that over time he began
to compose from his own theories
and the inventiveness dissipated
this piece is apparently quite explicitly a demonstration of the
possibilities of his system
now if I choose to disregard the
didactic/prescriptive aspect of theorizing
and regard it as being closer
to my own attitudes about theorizing
(prime fodder to creative misuse)
perhaps it will be possible to listen to these
as creative
solutions to whatever musical urgencies possessed him
other composers of
the era were plowing similar fields
(Schoenberg and company, for
instance)
did we object to Hindemith
because his normative
textures are diatonic and fairly empty of strident dissonance?
because
his phraseology and figurations are familiar to anyone familiar with
European-derived concert and church music since forever?
that would be
true of many of my teachers and older colleagues whose musicality I deeply
respect
(and often my own practice for that matter)
so
this
music is clear and direct
it doesn't hide what it's doing
all the
notes are there for a purpose
it is clean as a whistle
every
detail polished up shiny
a sense of a newly angled plane between
horizontal and vertical
between the counterpoint and the harmony
not quite just like vertical
between the counterpoint and the
harmony
not quite just like anybody else's tonality
witty and
cosmopolitan
one might even say
dare we
almost French
no hot-house flower is Paul Hindemith
if you revel in following
along with the clockwork of music as it goes
this guy is for you
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
in full sass mode
showing off
the bump bump bumpy road of love
You Win Again - Ray Charles [from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music]
the back-up chorus is hilarious and spot on
Save Me - Nina Simone [from Silk & Soul]
her vocal persona sits within this music as on a throne
it gives power
but she is it
Curriculum Vitae - Lukas Foss - Lukas Foss, Foss Festival Players
accordion and muffled snare drum
a two-person play with abstract
dialogue
the rest of the drums wake up
they posture and prance
jaw harp!
don't hear one of those often
all of these
instruments sound like the sorts of things those old carnival automatic music
machines could use
it continues after the end
a postlude extending
past the end of the fact
stops with a BANG!
P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) - Michael Jackson [from Thriller]
a dance
why do we want to hear the sexual fantasies of a teenager?
or a product that is sold as such?
The River Between (excerpt) - Benjamin Boretz, Richard Teitelbaum [from Open Space 33]
I question the stereo separation on this (piano off in a corner)
the two
instruments (piano and synth) already have a built-in contrast
in the
spaces their sounds create respectively around them
their virtual
acoustic
spatial separation is too obvious
quibbles aside this is
lovely
my issue above is solvable
I just stand up and move around
and the image of LR vanishes
or
listen sideways
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
Shake That Little Foot Dinah-O - Mike, Peggy, & Penny Seeger [from Animal Folk Songs for Children]
whatever words fit the guitar figure to dance
one could read some of the
stanzas as nonsense dance calls
Boundaries 6 - Jarrad Powell [from Natural Selection]
scanned as passed
surveilled and logged
you're all done
you
may enter
Magic - Bruce Springsteen [from Magic]
working with a less than stadium sized arrangement
a manufactured space
none of which really improves the song
which isn't among his worst
by a stretch
Fluorescent Desert - Brendan Byrnes [from Micropangea]
born in a programmed device
settings have been set
and remain
invariant
for maximal adherence to industry tolerances
Bag of Bones - Shallow Lenses [from War Poems]
news from the strip mall waste land
Ponoi - Sascia Pellegrini [from Epidemics]
we are observing it closely
piano figure embeds a trajectory set on the
fourth beats
proceeding just out of reach
its steadiness vanishes
suddenly scraps scattered beyond the perimeter reassemble
without
uniform pulse
layers of pulses trace a rounded form
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
unfussy crystalline texture
traces its line with delight and light
coquetry
It'll Be Me (fast version) (take 3) - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Rare & Rockin']
jalopy tempo
shocks could use adjustment
Never Gonna Let You Go - Little Richard [from The Explosive Little Richard]
metrical modulation!!
relatively modest means
drums bass horns and
vocal
the slower tempo allows him to trot out some of his gospel
chops
Hold On - Carole King [from Simple Things]
the vocal moves from singing her words to anthemizing to the skies
the
song remains here with us
earthbound
Elementary - Boogie Down Productions [from Criminal Minded]
lines in pairs and groups of pairs
four feet per pairs of lines
with end rhyme
Funeral Song - Sleater-Kinney [from One Beat]
a jeer
catty
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
Zither Film 2 - Keith Eisenbrey [December 8, 2007]
bursts of sounds of variously certain provenance
the first idea I had
for these Music as a Film projects
came while editing sound files
I noticed that the short bits of sound
(less than a second but
enough to register as more than just a digital click)
were often pretty
interesting as sounds
even if the track itself was nothing special
I decided to see what it would be like
if I made music out of
those short bits
constructing the sound
bit by bit
like a
Brakhage film
tedious in the extreme
but
the general idea
was good
so I found more efficient ways to chop and remix globally
much less tedious
and I played thenceforth
with inventing
ways
to make the final results have particular textural characteristics
I also generated working files of various lengths and spreads of bits
across the duration of the file
this one gets very spaced out indeed
Funny How We Got Here - Tyrannosaurus Grace [recorded live at The Rat and Raven, Seattle, August 9, 2012]
good times get drunk party song
The Boospook Story - Karen Eisenbrey [recorded live at The Tintinabulary, October 27, 2017]
told at the dinner table
near to Halloween we are not scared Boospook!
Hard Times Come Again No More - Robin Holcomb [from One Way Or Another]
narrow variance of the keyboard figures throughout segments
but always
with delicious spices added just so
The Theme (live) - Miles Davis [from 'Round About Midnight]
just the jingle spot
The Twelve Days of Christmas - The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble [from Festival of Carols in Brass]
several days elided
though I'm not counting
nope
I
think they're doing the whole thing
fill in your own gifts
lets
the arranger show off
Two Lives - Bonnie Raitt [from Sweet Forgiveness]
from a folk song vibe
into actual non-ironic gospel witness
but
that original vibe may have all been in my head
this is a straight
gospel preaching anthem
Burning Hell - REM - [from Dead Letter Office]
if this album is a collection of stuff they were trying out
but that
they rejected as unsuitable at the moment
then I surmise
it paints
a pretty clear picture of what their actual culture was like
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
everybody loves you when you're funky
quite the mouth
the jewel of
the tape
The Snails - Curtains For You [from Heaven's Waiting]
fun with filters
ersatz old-timey
love the blood harmony singing
Hero Town - Andrew James Robison [recorded live at The Rat and Raven, Seattle, August 9, 2012]
working class hero is something to be
man microphone and strumming
strumomancer
strummers sing from their bellies
Silent Night - Three Fingers [from Stocking Stuffers]
with attitude murderous
sleep in heavenly peace, punk
Snow On The Beach (featuring Lana Del Rey) - Taylor Swift [from Midnights]
woman of the hour
old type pop goes on just wrongly
America's
nightmare flashback movie montage girlfriend
plays the siren
Finale - Meredith Wilson [from The Music Man, Original Cast Album]
librarian meets ad man
says good night
time for a march
yee
haw!
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
If You Could See Me Now - Bill Evans [from California, Here I Come]
phrases fall off the backside in steps
bump bump bump
Love That Man - Whitney Houston [from Just Whitney]
woman as helpmeet
in return for man as security
sisterly advice
from another time
Dirty Mack - Ice Cube [from The Predator]
brag and taunt
who can
and get away with it
Zither Film 3 - Keith Eisenbrey [December 9, 2007]
each of these iterations begins more thickly textured than it ends
by a
process of progressive completion of constituent layers
which are
stacked toward the front
there was some anxiety on my part
that it
would be a difficult listen but
1 so what? and
2 perhaps it won't
or needn't be for use as standard practice listening fare
it occupies
the room
mostly hidden
like spiders
corner of the ear music
Careful With That Axe - The Ancients [recorded live at The Rat and Raven, Seattle, August 9, 2012]
it's about Vikings
the white man's image of a proper he-
man no
time for subtlety or nuance
wail away freely
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| Gradus 324 |
Pa Mis Muchachas (featuring Nathy Peluso) - Christina Aguilera [from Aguilera]
danceable in any language
August 24, 2023
The Man I Love - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]
decor for sophistication
floating
skill honestly plied
Glittering Girl - The Who [from The Who Sell Out]
girl pearl
bald rhyme
underlined
servicable vocals
narrow scope
tacked on ad for Coke
for the service of a lame
(sophomoric) concept
Paid In Full - Eric B. & Rakim [from Paid In Full]
business arrangements
as something to talk about out loud
Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 - Pablo de Sarasate - Ruggiero Ricci [from Masters of the Bow]
is there a tradition
among the Romani
of virtuoso violin playing
or is that entirely an artifact of Paganini, Sarasate, Joachim, &
Co.?
a kind of quasi-black-face act?
the exotic in our midst
No More Words - The Hope [from In The Deep]
a quiet moment between lovers
Kenosha - Swearin' [from Swearin']
rhythm of saying
forces itself into the way the tune goes
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| Airmforms Part 2 |
long
ringing
tones
and
pretty
dew drop
pings
Sleepless Nights - Robber's Roost [from Rage & Reason]
his guitar playing has acquired some significant discipline
since Karen
and I encountered him busking on an Ellensburg street corner a decade or so ago
August 25, 2023
He's Mine - The Platters [a Rescued Record]
Wop!doo(d)lyWop!dooWop!
Flaming - Pink Floyd [from The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (digital)]
rainbow fantasy
ever so high
past
Lucy in the Sky
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
moving
as part of worship
conceptually
works fine
but
it seems it would need to have arisen within a congregation spontaneously or
culturally or both
or it risks being a self-conscious act
pretending being moved
Wanksta - 50 Cent [from 8 Mile]
hesitation on the rhyme
accent by pitch
duration
and dynamic
Banned Rehearsal 730 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 10, 2007]
reeds and a drum
a free-reed electric toy organ
one of the
clarinets
now a toy piano
a xylophone
the big Uncle W
rumbly grouch
ruts are wonderful
until you are stuck
leave before that
recognizing them for the attractive
nuisance they become
nice collection of warm wooden sounds
puntuated by metals
the physical sound of the xylophone
includes the resonances of its frame
and of the room it is in
by means of the quick envelope
gets out of the way
so its
space shows
the rafters are rung
or those that from the rafters
are hung
are rafter-hung ringers
gets celebratory toward the end
here
In Session at The Tintinabulary
August 20, 2023
Wunderland - Keith Eisenbrey
This week's arrangment of a tune found in an 1846 shape-note song-book
Sinfonia 8 - Keith Eisenbrey
a midi draft
August 21, 2023
Gradus 387 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Is there a way to distinguish up from down in pitch space
that
doesn't rely on reference to partials
id est
a pitch is above
another
if and only if they don't match
and is embedded within the
set of partials {bad}
or . . .
and there are no partials below it
{nope, that's no good either}
the metaphor high/low
has a physical connection to the feel of producing
pitches with our vocal apparatus
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| Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument |
that one pitch is higher than another from more primitive concepts?
or is it embedded within the notion of pitch itself
that pitches are like locations in a geometry
the pitch-field is perceived as being oriented
prior to our logical construction of it
id est
the high/low metaphor is an analog of an immediate experience
vector A and vector not-A
+ and -
one way and the other way
neural structure in the cochlea
(the sensory epithelium)?
harmonic cyclicity is a pun on same-ness
at the extremes they fade from
audibility in different manners
on one end toward pulse
and on the
other toward
what?
the ineluctable imperceptibility of partials
as soon as one points at
one
it is as a pitch that we point to it
as a partial
it is
not a pitch in and of itself
but
is part of the whole of what we
hear as "the pitch"
my gut hunch
is that the orientation of pitch space
is a primitive
to perception
though it can be
and often is
twisted
compositionally in multitudinous ways
August 25, 2023
Sinfonia 2 (clavichord) - Keith Eisenbrey
I redid my clavichord version to make a correction in one note
Postscripts
Drops
Keith Eisenbrey 1: 1979-1981
I decided to start sharing collections of my compositions in albums on Bandcamp. These are the keyboard works I composed while an undergrad at the University of Washington. It is free for download.
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
listening journal doodles from 2007 and 2008
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