Preface
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Herman Melville, from Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale.
Texts
Recorded
February 15, 2026
Sonata in D Major, Kk. 313 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
structuralizing voice motions
Lobe den Herrn, miene Seele, BWV 69 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Ton Koopman
multiple meshing polyphonies
in a mesh
of metapolyphonies
modes of declamation
such as
recitative
aria
chorus
chorale
duet
parts of the rhetoric
of its text payload
as is
its tonal mesh
Kinderszenen: Kind in einschlummern, Op. 15 #12 - Robert Schumann - Florian Uhlig
oh that astonishing dissonance
against a missing other
a masterpiece of tonal poetry
Weber – Preciosa: Einsam bin ich, nicht alleine, S453 - Franz Liszt - Andrey Ivanov
treating its honest simplicity
as a Romantic ideal of self
is it
how anyone
saw themself
ever?
an humble prayer
2 Pieces: Caresse Dansee, Op. 57 #12 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti
sprinkled fae motes
sparkle
drifting
to the least final
sounding
final cadence
of its time
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Symphonic Raps - Louis Armstrong, Carroll Dickerson's Savoyagers [from Hot Fives and Sevens]
practiced togetherness
Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream?) - Roy Orbison [from For The Lonely]
Sha-de-Dah-dab
I like the back up singers in this cut
Charlie Browning - The Young Men [a Rescued Record]
local
college ball
novelty
throw away
Charlie Browning
still first-downing
Burning of the Midnight Lamp - The Jimi Hendrix Experience [from Electric Lady Land]
powered blues
the parties mix it up
in the between
Doctor Jimmy - The Who [from Quadrophenia]
whistling wind flange
(gustless)
the repetitions of stanzas
in industrialized songs
in cyclic loops
become more uncanny
with each iteration
the same blank wall
in each direction
in-terminate
Rosy - Bruce Springsteen [from Live at The Roxy]
vamping through the introductions
goes on and on
life escape fantasy
a disbalancing inset groove
in the bedrock groove
Relentless - T Bone Burnette [from The Talking Animals]
a production
shaped
as a song
might be
Soft Queenie - PJ Harvey [from Rid of Me]
power brag
Frozen - Madonna [from Ray of Light]
were these a real person's anxieties
would they ever seem to be
experiencing them
with this kind of production value?
Sing & Seek - Christian Asplund [from Brainstun]
a vamp
is an explicit point of reference
tonally and metrically
a smooth but firm floor
for dancing upon
barefoot
Thank You - Courtney Marie Andrews [from Urban Myths]
smile for awhile
a way
to not
quite
say it
straight
splitting a statement
in breaths that
don't
match the
sentence structure
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
I'm Not Gonna Worry (Cinnamons Cover) - Acapulco Lips [from Demos]
cooption
of a traditional lyric
for a new abode
Track 2 - S. Eric Scribner [from Free Improvisations Quartets Project]
the construction
in sound
of a platform
for the elevation
of sounds
we conspire
to lift ourselves
with voice alone
Cave Creatures - Steve Layton & Sound-In [from The Many Voices In Our Heads]
hold still
and they
will come
to you
all of them
Me and My Gin - Bessie Smith [from Empty Bed Blues]
she seems to pronounce it "sin"
at first
but that may be an
artifact
of the track's path
to me
here and now
I Walk a Little Faster - Blossom Dearie [from Give Him The Ooh-La-La]
making hay
out of a few different notes
from our first encounter
with
their containing lines
or
in stepwise movements
from
line to line
falling
Sally Go 'Round the Roses - The Jaynetts [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo's Milieu]
warnings
that sound in one's head
on repeat
The Wheel's On Fire - The Band [from Music from Big Pink]
sings
as a steady
beat
of firmly
planted
feet
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting - Elton John [from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road]
a constant
and steady onslaught
firehose dance
TV Party Tonight - Black Flag [from Nancy's Mix]
frat punk
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Clay - Echo and The Bunnymen [from Porcupine]
half-bar or so
of guitar sound
foot in a door
for the song
to push in behind
explaining oneself
in opaque metaphors
Little Fugue in G - The Canadian Brass [from More Greatest Hits]
interwoven certitude
Throb - Janet Jackson [from Janet]
bass layer
of the danceable beat
and its impersonal machinery
another layer
of what might be overheard
from the nearby
booths
another
of what might have been
in your ear
another
of ones imagination
having intimate relations
later
Watch My Back - Aretha Franklin [from A Rose is Still a Rose]
backing singers
hold down the fort
during flights
of
melismatic arabesquery
It Ain't Worth It After Awhile - Bettye LaVette [from A Woman Like Me]
is the purpose
of a projected persona
to allow a listener
to
identify with
or otherwise empathisize
to see oneself in a
situation
or to diagnose another's problems
the blues
being in the form of a
dialog between an explicitly
projected persona
(singing the text)
and a supporting bed of
commentary
shifting
under that persona's body
as it moves
The Shop of Wild Dreams - The Tiptons Saxophone Quartet [from Laws of Motion]
hard contrast
back and forth
between sax sound
and sung
sound
to open
establishes a metrical-rhetorical framework
by
which
the continuation is understood
in small and large
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Chaotic Heart - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at The Comet Tavern, Seattle, March 5, 2013]
enthusiasm
is a reckless game
one of my faves of theirs
in an energetic performance
Like It Anyways - India Glover [from Ur OK I Guess]
the bass and shuffle drum
add body to the sound
but not much to
the song
which
perhaps
didn't need them
being plenty
bodily
with just the voice
and the simple guitar figure
Ward - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [October 15, 2023]
prying open a tight meter
Let Jesus Lead You - The Jubilee Gospel Team [from Goodbye, Babylon]
subtle pressing forward in the tempo
only gradually
becoming
clearly
apparent
fancy cadence
just for nice
Aren't You Kinda Glad We Did - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin]
morning after
less than sorry
outcast
doubt cast
Dialogues for Violin Solo - Eduard Steuermann - Paul Zukofsky
the layers
have been pressed thin
razor
stairs
for violin, 4-strings
Jugband Blues - Pink Floyd [from A Saucerful of Secrets]
adrift
in a bay
of lines
from songs
Cleotha-March and Two Step - Scott Joplin - E. Power Biggs
gears of like size
turn cams
on spindles
sparking a motion
through the various stanzas
You're The One - Yoko Ono [from Milk and Honey]
some flavor of fame
requires one to make statements
like
confessions
and mass produce them
Surrexit Christus Hodie - Cambridge Singers [from Brother Sun Sister Moon]
setting a most proper tone of celebration
Dumb - Nirvana [from Unplugged in New York]
a tune of alternating short spurts
articulated by a repeating phrase
that ends differently on each iteration
wrapped up
with a
cycle of
I think I'm dumbs
Pack Up Your Sorrows - James King [from Bed By The Window]
social prowess
fair ground
Track 7 - Eckstein Middle School Bands, Moc Escobedo [from Mach 6]
tricky counting
with duet
for piccolo and bass clarinet
End This - The True Bugs
a moment
in a time poem capsule
Lips and Limbs - Waxahatchee [from Cerulean Salt]
the simplicity
of singing the song
with a noncompetitive
accompaniment
U Don't Know - Black Dresses [from Hell Is Real]
anxiety
industrialized
puts on ferocious face
Mutes and Overtones - Tom Varner, Neil Welch [from Out of the Mud]
start over
the distant shimmer of it
was drowned
by the heat
pump fan
Music Drowned By Fan
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
1928 mouth drumming
key in the door
introduce
to each of the
folks in turn
them's over there's
the lovelies
lively dance
with carnival tricks
Why Was I Born - Morgana King [from Morgana King Sings The Blues]
the existential feminist query
why was I born
to love you
cuts both ways and back
Love You Madly - Ella Fitzgerald [from Love Songs: the Best of the Verve Song Book]
finds some hip slang swing
light on its feet
An Orange Grove in California - Rusty Dedrick Orchestra [from Irving Berlin: All By Myself]
my dad grew up on an orange farm
in California
his dad
died
of a heart attack
trying to run it
through the
Depression
what bird flies West again?
streets paved with gold dossier
Love Train - The O'Jays [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
this train
has been through a sermon or two
altar call department
Live - Mrs. Whitehead [from Bard Sampler 82-83]
thrash and hop
Stand - REM [from Green]
orientation ritual
Cold Mountain Is A House - Robert Morris - Deborah Norin-Kuehn, Margaret Kampmeier [from Open Space 30]
descriptive
of several architectures
walls
floor
fences
boards
I Learned From The Best - Whitney Houston [from My Love Is Your Love]
cottage industry
in romantic revenge fantasies
last laughs best
Samples - Excess Time - Steve Kennedy [from State's Exhibit]
office of liquid machinery
stay on walkways
do not cross yellow
lines
Intermezzo in midi: DanceSquares - J. K. Randall [from Open Space 22]
the articulations
by silence
require precision
more than
heft
so that
the parts
are merely listed
never
promoted
Seven Months - Red Ribbon [recorded live at The Comet Tavern, Seattle, March 5, 2013]
all heft
Astotas - Triptet [from Slowly, Away]
arrives like weeds
or moss
at night
under cover
of
damp Winter
fibrous
unyankable
earthclenched
firmly belonging
Create Desolation and Call it Peace - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [from Keith Eisenbrey 5: 1984-1988]
halting steps
reluctant words
solemnly spaced
repetition
is rhetorically required
always moving on
always sinking more deeply in
In Session at The Tintinabulary
February 15, 2026
Warwick - Keith Eisenbrey
February 16, 2026
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
a new note!
what joy!
it is the note
that is not an A-flat
but rather
the note
a semitone above G-nat
(natch!)
any note
can send a Morse-ish message
a note
is
in that space
a valueless token
that is
its value
as a pitch
is immaterial
to its time points'
patterning
any other pitch
would serve as well
be that as it may
and nevertheless
and notwithstanding
the
particulars
of the pitch in question
as being meaningful
in
regard
to the time point structure
of its rhetoric
any pitch
has a suchness about it
that suchifies
anything
it
touches
the modes
are helpless against each other
|Rung|
new rung
a second pitch
added to the last
so
we have the time point patterns
of each pitch
and the
time point patterns
of both pitches together
and the time point
patterns
of their interactions
all reckoned
with the
suchnesses
of each pitch
and the suchness
of their
intervallic effects upon each other
the acoustic relations
among pitches
are perceived
as
effects upon
changes within
by virtue
of their particular
proximities to others
Postscripts
Drops
Keith Eisenbrey 30: Sabbatical Improvisations (part 1) 2013-2014
In 2013 I had reached an inflection point in my big project, Études d'exécution imminent, and took a sabbatical (indifferently observed) from composing written-down music. I filled the time with various forms of improvisation, both "in-the-moment" composing, and sometimes puttering about with multi-tracking and other digitally applied effects. Here are the first bunch of them.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
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