Playlist

Live

November 18, 2017

Finnegans Wake Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Gallery 1412, Seattle

Neal performs this in the dark. It is difficult to take notes in the dark. The dark in which Neal performs this is as much a temporal, Joycean darkness, as a literal, nocturnal darkness. The text itself is so tightly focused on the most immediate statement that the past disappears more quickly than it does in more standard practice prose. We can't see where we've been, and by this we realize that we can't see where we are headed either.

Recorded

November 19, 2017
The Firste Pavian and The Galliarde to the Firste Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Jeweled rings bedeck the downbeats, ornaments that expand their durations. It is an old way of mediating the vertical and the horizontal realms, curving their axis points.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XVIII (alio modo Fuga a 2 clav.) - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

A two-piano rendition of the upside-down-ready fugue.

Two Tight Blues - Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This language of hyperaware body movement flies under the social radar, where much can be said. Tunes mime a dancer. Puppetry.

Ramblin' Blues - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

The verses are single statements, or simple question and answer pairs, repetitious, with no explicit narrative. And yet the narrative is clear, peopled, conversational.

Frantic Antic - The Jumpin' Jacks [a Rescued Record]

Commercial happy fifties kid music from when Rock and Roll was as yet unknowable. Beatnik beach blanket bingo lingo. Tight playing though!

Three Highland Airs - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of a concert on April 11, 1961]

I listen to these the way I would look at an old snapshot, a personally fascinating generational artifact.

I Don't Believe You - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

The power of story telling is the power of persuasion over memory. There's Bob hogging the narrative, betrayed again, or so he says.

My Wife - The Who [from Who's Next]

Bar talk stories men tell each other.

November 21, 2017
String Trio in 2 Movements - Elaine Barkin - Davis Trio [from Open Space 34]

Vaporless, frozen, drifting, weightless, flash-lit, a chorale only audible a few notes in any direction || a stillness moving by partial illumination.

Ein Hundenleben - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improv Ensemble [from Neal's Recital Tape 5/22/1981]

Starts with a high quiet whistling

Maple Leaf 1991

all enter plucking or intoning
(a slow)
(frantic)
or quick response

enter clowns

Suffers I think from too much me on the piano.

Puzzlin' Evidence - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

Tight, clean, controlled. At a remove from us. To hear the song clearly it must be held out at an exact distance. Do not enter! Observe. That drum sound there: the space it is in is too big for you. Squint at it through this crack.

November 22, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 255 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Aaron Keyt [May 1991]

There is no beginning to this. There is where the tape starts to record full of vigorous scribbling. The funmaker with its blank stare tone colonizes the sound - a hippo on an anthill. Don G plays in the background (with tootmentary). The various strengths with which the signal comes through making the stage more strangely real for a while. Multiple Don Gs threaded through. Banned Giovanni. Envelopes of drum resonance striking the room drum bursts of radiated sound. We are, in part, and rudely, a form of music criticism. Having actual musics intrude is, if anything, overplaying that role. It becomes too obvious. Small: 'viva la liberta?'

Playlist

Live

November 11, 2017

Amy Denio
Truth is Up for Grabs
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Pre: Neal tells us that 2/3 of Neal's & Anna's wedding brass ensemble is participating. Packed! All the chairs are brought out. Big enough to be a murmuring, luscious in this space.

The governing vibe is of a pit orchestra, rather than an art orchestra. That is, there is no concerted attempt on the part of the performers to transcend themselves and become else than a group of musicians playing this music.

Full tilt expression, nothing held back, nor humor nor sorrow nor low nor high nor ought nor else.

How they end (the songs): not quite abrupt(ly).

Recorded

November 11, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 620 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2001]


Snare drum springs soften the sax. I revisit an old thought. Weighty massive thoughts dimple the ground. Tattered banners bothered in a chilly wind. Dampers off the strings prolong sax bleats room eloquence. Frivolity kept away. Every thought is a palpable mass.

O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

As (though) recorded live in a big living room.

Banned Rehearsal 787 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2011]

bits of sound barnacle the border
hints of vastness in the near distance
held back
drums guitar and bass a rock band
in the same sense we were ever a jazz band
"banned rehearsal" pronounced "scribble scribble"
eloquence feeds back has been trying to escape into glory
irreproducible results Neal sings!
It Was a Monday Evening
narrative church rhythm thank you very much
done found some groove we never found before and never will again
pure

Bulleya - Amit Mishra, Shipa Rao [from Bollygood Volume 2]

Values production value. What is this without its bells and whistles? Full throttle is the base line setting.

November 12, 2017

Your blogger, ca 2001

Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Recorded so that, or is it always that, harpsichord sound is more specifically localized than piano. It is lighter, pointier. Immense intellectual heft, lightly borne, tales within tales within could finish and be done several times but then continue on, again, into ravishing beauty.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

To be inside this fuguescape fuguemare fugeuedral aware of the granular harmony of the spirit.

2nd fugue like a chapel echoes the cathedral and looook! we can open up this wall and create a third midsize space - and finally 3rd fugue here's the choir with our Orgelmeister Kappelmeister - an architectural tour, all the sites singing. Surely if this had gone on JSB had a grander weirder place for it to get to than any such place as it had already been.

Karen and me, 1986

November 13, 2017
Lazy Drag - Thomas Morris [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Light touch on the beat at the start, allowing them to fatten it up or thin it out as needed. Patterns of same.

Columbia's Waters - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Conceit: this song is a job application in which many of WG's stock phrases are trotted out again. A window into a process of making.

For Minors Only - Chet Baker, Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Clearly, this track is a product, an object, quintessentially commercial.

Far and Wide - Brahms - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from A Musical Souvenir: The Lake Washington Singers Spring Concert (April 11, 1961)]

Some fine piano playing there, Joanne!

Hymnen - Stockhausen

Karen and Isaac, 1996

What is a theme within such a thicket?! A prop, a focus, a thread to follow, a placeholder: NOT THE SHOW.

I think to myself "this is the Stockhausen that got on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's." Extreme Ivesian quote festival. (I started composing about 10 years after this was made, and it only took me about 4 years to find it, for it to find me.) I spent a lot of time with it back in the day.

Sounds we follow as they variously incarnate and morph toward other veering incarnations.

Electronic music was what it is now, a bunch of folks playing with new toys. What sounds can we get on this? What are its sounds? Its voice? As it concerns radio: radio waves, invisible light, dark light, another dark, another sleep, another night, another wake. Front loaded: an active eventful texture, signals in transit, the harrowing descent, breathing human sleeping.

". . . nur eine Erinnerung": What does that actually do as an excuse for the böses Blut es gibt?

Some events are discrete moments, note-like - hard edged short events. Others are episodes of flange and sweep - long events. Flange-y buzz-hum-y waves rhythmed syllabically. We hear the timbre shift as a quasi-vowel shift. Thuds of war episode in third region where whistlers imitate the whole of what they are of in mimicry, in mimicry as a kind of abstraction. A full range of immediacy(ies) articulating murk.

November 14, 2017
Trust Me - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

The plea goes on and on circling inside around the instrumentals, pleading never ending changes.

Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

In a warm keyboard bath. Is it just me or did I really catch a partial quote of Bridge Over Troubled Water in the strings?

We're Desperate - X [from Wild Gift]

Structural density of the guitar/bass complex: leave space in the verse for the words, leave none in the chorus.

Banned Rehearsal 67 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]

In the little Greenwood half house, sneezing, heater, hooting: slide show? Conversational, sort of, in that we are doing activities and also being with each other as just folks a little bit. Bumping around is up front, music as such, in deep background. Woozy but not unpleasantly so. Making spaghetti, it sticks good. Slow swing dinner in B-flat minor. This is our trademark DING! from a junkshop in Kingston NY. The tape machine has an eraserhead button (still does, long unpushed). "I hope that was intentional or not." My dad shows up, must have been something to do with my passport. Karen may have moved up to live with Neal & Anna while interviewing. Tri-doxology, para-para-doxology (hindsight) a hindsight. It is very nice it just slips underneath the skin. Berry-ness is discussed. Wild sound on acoustic guitar.

Polly- Nirvana [from NevermindWordblurbs in exact syllabic count fitted into soundblurb segments with pitch trajectories, a partial song. (Schumann's inescapable ghost.)

Banned Rehearsal 432 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 1986]

Paradise

We try to get something to work. Got those wah-wah tech blues. Aaron's synth, I believe, we struggle with the extent of our tech-savvy: this has an "in" that fits the guitar patch cord, therefore if we plug in the guitar to it we will automatically get magnificence. At the time it seemed, oddly, that nothing was happening, that the guitar strumming had no effect on what was coming out of the synth. The jury is still out on it, but the sounds of us struggling with it are fabulous. "It is my firm belief that with five more synthesizers we could achieve total silence." And yet, between the synth, the Mighty Wurzlitzer, and our direct to cassette mastering, I wonder if any prog rock band has ever sounded as good? the Tintinabulary at its finest. We don't do nicety.

Banned Rehearsal 621 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2001]


Nothing to hear but you. You make the sound. In our digitally produced era there is more air between the sounds, which allows more expanse of surface with which to mess, more coast to invade. Plunks and hums tiny sounds of extreme interhearing. Down to pianississimo violin tremolo and small frame drum, ocarina moving between their soundboxes' resonances, articulating a shiver whistling in the dark.

November 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 698 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2006]


Testing the waters. It generally doesn't take much to get it going, inert as it is, (though it be), just takes the right gentle push prolonged just so long. After several false-like leads: snare drum, flute and buzz, but that also falters . . or wait, now it's moving. Reasons to hang in there. Seeping into other sounds groundwater invisible under cover of underground it sneaks past the carousel skimming the feedback fence, flirting with skimming it under cover of skimming past it we flirt under darkness with the broad light of it, of past days.

Goodbye Amsterdam - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

Relations among people occur in landscapes. How much we leave - its expanse of sorrow - when we leave each other. Gentle stutters in the guitar figures.

Banned Rehearsal 906 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2016]


Neal learns himself speaking. Tiny construction workers hammering miniature hammerings. Wallace watches o'er, duets across the continent with cowbell. Lightweight sphere rolls the texture of the drumskinhead amplified by circular tension applied. Copperpipe in syntheticfoam insulationtube squeak like balloons.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 12, 2017
Rain Traffic Crabby Crows - Keith Eisenbrey


Our best guess is that the crows were complaining about the rain.

November 14, 2017
Kitchen - Keith Eisenbrey


For the record: I didn't break anything.

November 15, 2017
Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey

I finished composing the first eight Études d'exécution imminent in May of 2014. In terms of the original chart this was the half-way point, but I needed a break to re-think myself, to consider where the composition of these had gotten me, so I took a self-imposed sabbatical from composition - indifferently observed: news of the death of J. K. Randall brought forth a response in the form of J, (September 2014), I was asked to contribute to Ben Boretz's Festschrift (Another, December 2014) and I arranged a traditional hymn tune for Karen to sing just after Christmas (Hail the Blest Morn) - altogether a fairly productive sabbatical. In the spring of 2015 I started working on these disassembled piece parts, which together constitute the 9th Etude, finishing in August, 16 months later. That was a long time for just a few notes, but I flatter myself they are densely packed. Arranged as in this (not quite perfect) performance, one after the other, the piece parts play out the re-writing of memory as it is remembered and its eventual, inevitable, loss.

Playlist

Recorded

November 4, 2017

The picture I made

Gradus 94 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Uses dampers as filters to extract partials
silence is resilient
behind me Karen purees pumpkin
time out of grid
a car stereo drives by outside
sidebar tea ceremony
that a sound could seem to happen Now is a demonstration of how wide a span is the apprehension of Now

Thursday After - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

adding elements one after another in stepped sequence
within song structure serious phrase length rhythm play
blood harmony could almost be the Fleetwoods at the end (just a hint)

Gradus 285 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I made a picture.

November 5, 2017
The Hunts Upp - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

ringing echoes
signals passed on hills
familial tales
courtly tales

Der Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVII Rectus / Inversus - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

strong vertical leaps up? down? contribute to the effect of utter duplication
is it the direction of the leap or its mere distance that tells?

Gatemouth - Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

sliding around the pitch, glisswise
a dance of them


this music is not dance music
this music is dance

Roll Columbia, Roll - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Progress celebrated, collective progress, progress to benefit us'n'all.

For Miles and Miles - Art Pepper, Chet Baker [from Playboys]

phenomenal playing full of subtleties to be sure but something bluesy has been buffed out if it, refined in an almost pretentious way, if they weren't getting away with it pretty bossly

Echo Song - Orlando di Lasso - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from A Musical Souvenir: The Lake Washington Singers Spring Concert (April 11, 1961)]

humored up? or just oddly translated, odderly arranged? or maybe that's just the way it is

Hold On I'm Comin' - Sam and Dave [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

thought: jazz is about its rhythm; rock is about its song structure; blues is the glue
these boys have heard some church singin' and how

The Song Is Over - The Who [from Who's Next]

praise chorus
testimony
psalm

November 7, 2017

Song of Fifty Cents - Jack Bean [from The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

another function of demotic music
actual advice in humorous guise
(not that, but like dirty jokes as ad hoc sex ed)
how it is learned: those life lessons
quite the accent, one needs to pay more than fifty cents of close attention

Improvisation - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [from Neal's Recital Tape]

Conversation wordlessly, as musical exercise.

You Get What You Want - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

this tries so hard, but I have trouble giving it the benefit of the doubt. The problem is not his singing voice, but something like a lack of roots.

November 9, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 254 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [April 1991]


testing 1 2 3
now we have begun
at Toad Hall some crud in it
John 'plains, but 4 weeks old
strenuously lame we thus arrange the possibility of brief moments unlike any others
drill bit into bedrock inexorant
on my wall
there hangs a purple trout
continues on through
metabolism enhanced
be- words auf Deutsch
bell rings for train coming in

Hail Hail - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]

propelled
engined
til the fuel runs out
the ride is over

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 6, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 946 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Aaron and Neal duet on trumpet and cornet, Karen drums an ocean, Steve tunes in, and there is me with banjo on my knee

Playlist

Live

September 11, 2017

Jim Hurst

Jim Hurst
Fireplace Room, University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

I was reminded of keyboard virtuosi: Jelly Roll Morton or Liszt, in the seeming ability to be all parts of an imaginary ensemble at once, and of Arthur Rubinstein in that miraculous efficiency to do it all without moving his fingers. But it isn't just the mind-blowing technique, it's the poetry with which that imaginary ensemble is evoked - Art Tatum quicksilver magic. Thank you Dave Campbell for inviting Jim out to Seattle!

Take-away line: "Edsel still runs but my turntable quit."

Recorded

Elizabeth Farr

September 10, 2017
The March Before the Battell - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Phrase balancing balanced with energy release in overlapping sequences, each voice taking its turn to unwind.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

We do not dissipate energy, we exhaust it.

Messin' Around - Cookies' Ginger Snaps [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

More than a hint of that ol' razzle dazzle minstrel show showmanship. Theory: jazz landed in highbrow territory because it was so woke to its roots. Its aspirational trajectory had force behind it. So much of the old practice makes us uncomfortable (as it ought), but the musicianship is for real.

Echo In The Dark - Original St. Louis Crackerjacks [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Already (1936) moving toward becoming a meta-music, journeying toward the abstract. See Theory above, its roots are its subject matter.

Standing Outside - Wade Maines [from Goodbye Babylon]

The arrangement is absolutely professional showman, but here, where the verbal portion is the point (gospel before music), the music portion sticks more firmly to the demotic, doesn't push forward to become its own thing.

Crazy Arms - Ray Price [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Somewhere back there in time, a singing movie cowboy sensibility.

Tragedy - The Fleetwoods [from Come Softly To Me - The Very Best Of The Fleetwoods]

They nailed this one: overblown teen drama and their patented soft-porn harmonies. A heady mix.

Swingin' Medallions

Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love) - Swingin' Medallions [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Not a heady mix, just good drunk dumb fun.

Bargain - The Who [from Who's Next]

The parts of this song push against each other, far from working together they storm into separate rooms. But hey! they have a synth!

Rich Bitch - The Stooges [from Metallic 'KO]

Using anger words to incite an angry energy then ride the wave. Sorry Iggy, this one just comes across as bad tempered.

Track 1 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [from Neal's Recital Tape]

Bach, Sinfonia from the C-minor Partita.

Adam Raised A Cain - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band Live 1975-1985]

Bad boy booster.

September 12, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 252 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [March 1991]
On a personal note, this was the last session before our first son was born. At Toad Hall, a pitchscape of surfaces. Metal. Drum. Bells. Folded. Hinged. Can-bottom Diaphragm. What might remain in that big red bag of fun? The rim of the brim can. Toot Chorus.


In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 15, 2017
Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge 170915 A - Keith Eisenbrey
Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge 170915 B - Keith Eisenbrey

We stopped by in the afternoon to reconnoiter. Mostly it was pretty quiet except for a tiny chipmunk that barked at us for several minutes. Its little tail would jerk out with each bitty bark. Not much got on the recording but general wind noise. I did another recording while we took a short walk but had some audio problems. I'm not sure the B session is salvageable.

September 16, 2017
Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge 170916 A - Keith Eisenbrey
Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge 170916 B - Keith Eisenbrey

Back again the next morning, the birds were slightly more active, and the breeze was less. The B session was also a walk and also has some audio problems here and there, but not as bad as the day before. I think I recorded too hot. Be that as it may, it sure was chilly at that hour! The site is not entirely quiet of traffic noise, but it's pretty darn remote.

Playlist

Live

August 19, 2017

Gradus: for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler (318) - Neal Kosály-Meyer

breeze soughed leafy trees released pedal resonance counterpoint thrown back upon listening alone with one head nudges only from the front to take seriously roundabout by proxy but seriously invent a model of seriousness model one's own serious intent on the model of seriousness invented lying in bed as a child and playing how far away can I hear music the more distant sound

move to two notes simultaneous presentation of two one-note things sequential/cyclic presentation of two one-note things and/or joint presentation of 2 notes as a group joined

microphone hair competes with neal hair

more distant sound because the source is within another

to approach composition in microlayers by means of composition in regard of itself

with music of many more than two it is more difficult to isolate the interior strands of each single pitch they tend to glom onto each other glomgroups experimental glomming onto the mathematical quantificational underpinnings of the effectively infinite possibilities of music and of how narrow a subset we have explored

neal writes big

Recorded

The Trammps

August 20, 2017
Hold Back The Night - The Trammps [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

That sound they are all after - just so balance, just so orchestration - is a focus of collaboration. The fact they're in it for the money takes away nothing.

Untitled Track 2 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

The wacky bad transfer sound (from vinyl to tape how exactly?) nearly overpowers the music they thought they were making.

The Loft 2 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, and kids at The Loft [February 1986]

This was the second of two sessions we did at a group home for middle-school aged boys who'd run afoul of one thing or another. We gave them encouraged permission to shout and shriek for 30 minutes. They manage quite energetically for quite a while before they begin to fade back, vocal production being work.

snakepit - Infamous Menagerie

If a tricked out madmax car with all its enormities were a sound.

August 22, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 427 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, John H, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1996]

fill the tape or else.

August 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 613 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2001]

Jug band on the porch banjo guitar frame drum washtub bass blowing things. Twined sounds at rest.

Gradus 93 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2006]

number: countable, graspable

Rachel Harrington

the vastness will never be heard amounting to what may as well be all of what there is given our inability to grasp the ratio

to the point that hearing them playing them any one of them or set of them within a life's span spins those heard into an other sphere alters them irrevocably as observation does of anything could be so fundamentally shifting as to render our hypotheses of the remaining nature dodgy at best

Little Pink - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

This song has been knocking around for a good while to be nailed by RH.

Banned Telepath 44 Somerville - Aaron Keyt

Drumming and knocking pitch and resonance narrowly considered, then Wallace the spinet joins the discussion.

August 24, 2017
My Ladye Nevels Grownde - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

A spiderweb music :: once caught you're dead meat. Lutish sensuous delight.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Featuring my favorite rhythmic transformation of the subject. Why? Because it is so entirely designed not for it's own sake but so that the music springing from it can do that thing he then makes it do before he ties it up in a fancy knot.

Can't Sleep Blues - The Pebbles [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Completely overwhelms the recording device, there is much more there than could be captured, just a hint of a pounding upon sharp unyielding skin.

Ahmad Jamal

Shoe Shine Boy - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

bebopbigband

Up A Lazy River - Benny Goodman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

All over the map piano backdrop to be answered :: over before you realize what they just have done to you.

Will You Still Be Mine - Ahmad Jamal [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

high and butcher knife heavy accents bright with bite.

Canticum Sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nomines - Stravinsky - Los Angeles Festival Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinksy

Every note tells.
In which: loins are girded.
Gaining entry ain't easy and ain't gaining either.
Each approach, though nearer, is less nearer than the last or any.


In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 21, 2017

Gradus 319 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

B[ ]ginning. Or H, I suppose.

Playlist

Recorded

August 13, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Two roles: fast note role / slow note role. The voices switch. The action is all in the handoff.

Schöpfungsmesse - Haydn - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Ruth Ziesak, Bernarda Fink, Christoph Pregardien, Oliver Widner, Susanna Spicer, Peter Butterfield

Within the larger ritual of any mass are subrituals of affect: where the fugues are; the play of solos, ensembles, and chorus; what sort of music the et incarnatus is; how to set up and word paint the et resurrectus. Haydn had this stuff down cold and played for keeps. It is this example, no doubt, that kept Beethoven looking over his shoulder.

August 15, 2017

Count Basie, most righteous hat

He Likes It Slow - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five with Butterbeans and Susie [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Yep. It's about sex.

Business in F - Gene Kardos [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one too, but on top of the fine playing is a subtly organized harmonic rhythm.

Lady Be Good - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

Suggests the tune, then riffs on the suggestions as though they had been the song all along.

Lady MacGowran's Dream - Woody Herman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Prog jazz? Classy and upscale at least, nothing jolts. A table in this joint will set you back friend.

Denial - Miles Davis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

No past for lingering, no time for it. This boat moves.

C.T.A. - Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Harry Partch, as a beat

Sound so dry and studio controlled it's as though there is no room in which this music sounds. Kind of creepy.

Water! Water! - an Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble, John Garvey

It strikes me that HP is, as a theater composer, heavily invested in the Wagnerian ideal. The music and the theatricality are irretrievably intertwined zusammenkunstwerklich. That and he clearly wants this music to transform you, radicalize you. He fairly shouts it. He offers music criticism in the form of music theater. The subject matter is everything classical, everything of which he is ostensibly not in favor. And it's fabulous too.


Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Playing the jongleur, quite well too.

Echoes - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

The anthem that could have been subsides into bluesy noodles, not unpleasantly, but it strikes me now as distinctly less weird than it did back in the day. Boys taking their gear out for a jam.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 14, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 941 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

July 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 249 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

Begins with righteous plunk on toy piano. Throughout: a microscopic attention to intonation, liberated intonation, bending cymbal pitch by angle of stick. If there's enough of it, it must be real. (Quick Quaker Quotes). If there's enough of it, and it's night, it must be surreal. On radio intonations of Desert Storm, Dark Hole. When all the candles go out the tape will be over.

July 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 425 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Bells of various whistle and guitar through synth (wahwahtech). This band is at work on stuff, dragging a muck rake into low sinking murkwood. CONCH! Deep bass blow. Relax the grip.

Ms. Found In A Bottle - Keith Eisenbrey

A composite 20 years in the making, digitally recorded textsound (Confessions of a Polyphonist) with aged magnetic tape of synthesized sound (the rotted version of AKU). Wobbly flangiform synthesizary diphthongs.

July 26, 2017
Being, Hearing, Knowing Now - Stephen Dembski - Christopher Taylor, piano

Each sound resets, proceeds only from the immediate. As memory intrudes we don't go back. Back just comes back.

Banned Rehearsal 785 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

How: to design an attack envelope for piano reverb.
How: sounds persists.
What: A bestiary with bell kit beast guide.
What: Gathers at the bottom of the beaker.
What: begins to react, and converse.

Your Face - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A song can be a face of word time pitch time melody time tine time. Is what it says.

July 27, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg, organ

Triplets trip the trap. Bits, hints, and teasers.

Die Jahreszeit "Winter" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

". . . lange dauert." Held back, even the dire chorus building forces underground. Rhythmic hiccups. Nonmotion, a hurried up slowing down. Waiting for, not being at.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Green Lake, Seattle, July 29, 2017

July 23, 2017
Remlinger Farms Steam Train Ride - Keith Eisenbrey

At a corporate picnic out in the country we took a miniature steam train ride. Too many conversations to post in public.

July 24, 2017
Gradus 316 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Some are interior spaces, the caverns of swiss cheese. Some are incrustations, barnacles. Some are iron rigid bars.

Playlist

Live

Black Lodge

July 13, 2017
Victory Lounge / Black Lodge, Seattle
Anxious Arms
Choke The Pope
Ease
Pity Party
Listen Lady
Ramona

I haven't much to say - the sheer number of bands, all playing various versions of that Ramones-y "we're a happy family" beat, ever faster ever louder, overwhelmed my ability to keep track of which memory was which. Lots of fun though! Out among the beautiful people.

Recorded

July 10, 2017

Peggy Sue - Banned Rehearsal [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Another post-session "hey let's play . . ." in which I managed to hit record first. It is spirited, but Neal's vocals are lost deep in the fuzz.

At The Funhouse - Fe Fi Fo Fums [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

It's only a minute forty, but still seems a bit padded.

July 12, 2017

Gradus 186 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]

Playing very softly, the highest A natural only emerges gradually as a pitch. Prior action noise could have been most anything.

Deep History - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A bit didactic, but with a fine and intricate string band behind it.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

This is the first of the canons, filling every nook and cranny of experiential space.

Die Jahreszeiten "Summer" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

Languid near to a fault. Great storm though. Just a few years before the thunder in Beethoven's 6th Symphony - or in Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, for that matter.

I'm Gonna Gitcha - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Dixieland rhythm but with a focus on LA's solo sound. What an odd sort of act he was: singer and trumpet player, top of the game in each.

Cab Calloway

Kickin' The Gong Around - Cab Calloway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Is this the first mention of Smokey Joe? A kind of journalism, giving us a peek at the seamy undersides of society without our needing to go for ourselves.

Derby Town - Old Ced Odom and Lil Hardaway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Late night vaudeville wink wink nudge nudge song, veering away from the dirty words just in time.

Don't Worry About Me - Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson Octet [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The song eases down the scale and slinks back up.

You Tell Me Your Dream - Eureka Brass Band  [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One imagines this sounding somewhat old-fashioned in 1951, but then it may have been some of those same old dudes playing that same old Dixie they had always been.

Love Me Or Leave Me - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

A study in the careful placement of voice within tessitura. Sounds to me like she was gunning at Sinatra.

Wailers House Party - The Wailers [from The Fabulous Wailers At The Castle]

That completely unmistakable fat guitar with B3 sound. Brilliant.

Temporary Like Achilles - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

The first song on the album that doesn't leave a bad odor in the air.

The Grave - Don McLean [from American Pie]

They were sincere times I guess, but this spends a lot of energy saying words with lots of meaning, then grinding the meaningful into the dirt with a boot heel.

CIA Dope Calypso - Allen Ginsberg, Stephen Taylor, Jon Sholle, David Mansfield, Arthur Russell [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Torn from the headlines! The fun of the word play overpowers the disgust we feel we ought to feel.

Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

The whole sound sits at a level, like the surface of a lake, like a J. J. Abrams lens flare, nothing beneath, nothing above. Cool and sheer.

Banned Rehearsal 64 - Banned Rehearsal [Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]



Cornet overpowers the equipment but not the sound, sheared away, skidded across, re-writing itself
onto the tape from the tape as it cooks on the reel. Steadfastly not entertaining. About 30 minutes in there is a truly wonderful collective chord that emerges with drums and bells, like bootsqueek in fresh snow.

July 14, 2017

Night Of The Subaru - Infamous Menagerie

There is an extra partial beat thrown in there just to knock the whole thing out of plumb.

Sonic Brilliance 16 - Banned Rehearsal [John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Aaron Keyt, Kia M, Neal Kosály-Meyer - May 1996]

Banned Rehearsal spent much of the 90's negotiating our continuance in the face of parenthood. For a while we had the kids join us for a pre-session. This was one of the more successful sessions, because the kids essentially made their own game of it. Life of the Dragon, accordion slain. To say we'll say something is to have done it (for the 5 year old crowd). Then Neal takes them outside but was somehow broadcasting back inside the studio, and interviewing Aaron and Anna from in the house. Too many minors on board to share the sound, but if I were to share a Sonic Brilliance this would be the one.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 10, 2017
Gradus 315 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal invited a fellow blogger, Kent Karnofsky, over to listen. He curates Community Noise. I believe his article will be posted shortly before Neal's upcoming {August??} performance {at the Chapel??}.

Neal composes with raw subtleties, pursuing the inflections of distinctions as they arise.

Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.

Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sequences establish a rhythm of (usually) stepwise motion, allowing cross-rhythms of modulations and quasi-modulations - as though another music were going by in the background at a different tempo.

I love how the grandness of the denouement is fully established within what is really a quite thin texture. We hear it as grand because, in order to hear its logic, we imagine each note as sustaining at full volume - virtual grandiosity with virtual sustain.

Quartet in E-flat Major, opus 76 #6 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Not sure this is really what's happening, but what I wanted to be happening is a sequence of variations occurring within single iterations of a larger theme and variations - both T and V constructed out of shorter Ts and Vs.

June 14, 2017
Birdwell Blues - Nolan Welsh, Louis Armstrong [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

A tale: police harassment. "You know I been here before." Truth.

Don Redman

Trouble Why Pick On Me - Don Redman, Red Allen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Unexpected wonders: that voice, those perfectly executed parallel trills thrown in just for fun, showy tonguing, a tightly organized arrangement.

Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Keeping it lively, everything is slap. Slap guitar slap vocal.

I'm Through With Love - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Nothing wrong with this performance (it's flawless) but it fails to convince me, it never lifts off.

Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill - Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper [from Goodbye Babylon]

The Passion according to just folks.

A Woman Alone With The Blues - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Sung as a single thought, a through-composed line. Tubular bells!

Now Is The Hour - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Rather bizarre, but it sounds like he was quite an interesting guy - trying to make the harmonica acceptable for the hi-fi crowd. The 45 that found me had suffered considerably, with much of the fi scuffed off the top.

Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Kind of a mean-spirited blues when it comes right down to it.

Everybody Loves Me Baby - Don McLean [from American Pie]

In spite of his apparent attempt at humorous self-laceration, this still comes across as narrow and airless.

Young Americans - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Thick and taut, a line pulled past where it ought to break but that just won't.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 12, 2017
Gradus 313 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 15, 2017
Etudes - Keith Eisenbrey

These are five little pieces from 2000 that started life as clarinet duets: "Coiled", "Fragment", "Dance" "Air", and "Misterioso". I arranged them later as piano fingering puzzles. I was in the early stages of working with mod-17 pitch sets, essentially asking myself the question "What would regular music sound like if the modular interval were 17 instead of 12?" So, yes, this is what I think regular music is like.

Jerseyville Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [Karen Eisenbrey, drums; Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocal and piano]

In anticipation of a hoped-for pro-studio recording project I recorded three demo takes.

Playlist

Preface

"So when I ask myself a question about thinking about music it devolves naturally into questions about the relationship between understanding and experiencing: not questions, for me, of either/or, but of hierarchy, of the direction of implication, and, to put it crassly, the most basic questions of personal goals and values. Are the ontologies of understanding-structures intercompatible with the ontologies of experiencing-episodes? Are they contingent upon one another, mutually, or in either direction? In another register, I may ask: is aesthetic perception distinct from extra-aesthetic perception, that is, from what I might call analytic perception?" Benjamin Boretz "fourth and long in Baltimore" Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

May 5, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

John Kammerer and Rebeka Ko

New Music for marimba + electronics

They partly construct and partly conjure a wall-less but circumambulatable space. Oh so many crannies, meadows, brooks, and glens to explore!

Patrick O'Keefe

Morning Stroll - Emerald City Saxophone Quartet: Barbara Hubers-Drake, soprano; Molly Pond, alto; Harold Rosenkrans, tenor; Jim Glass, baritone

Patrick tells that this piece is about distractions from a stroll. Personally I think that's backwards. For me this was about scattershot distractions surprising themselves in discovering that it is a strolly sort of thing they are doing.

Jeremiah Lawson
Guitar Sonata in A major

A tender memory of a ragtime intimacy.

(On piano the energy of playing notes is vertical to the string - at an arced near-right angle.The face of the sound comes to us reflected off the lid, we hear it as though in a mirror. But here the energy of playing notes is horizontal to the string - across them at a near-horizontal. The sound comes to us directly from the soundboard. We hear its face directly.)

John Teske
ad;sr (vectorscores) - Neil Welch, Evan Woodle, William Hayes

(a short segment of a long space)

read-

ing

a-

long

read-

ing

a

long

road

read

a

long-

ing

read

a

long-

ing

road

Recorded

May 1, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Zoltán Kocsis

A triple fugue attempts escape velocity through stretto alone.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, opus 76 #4 - Haydn - Amadeus-Quartet

We are addressed as colleagues and familiars.

May 2, 2017
String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op 131 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

This recording was ripped from 1970's vinyl. (The past and its thwipdips.)

wafting smoke falling silk

the camera pans up to fade

the memory of a quartet

broken linear dreamlogic

the past is the price paid for this moment

it earns its odd threads

by sacrificing so many other paths