"First (1.0) 'a pitch' is stipulated to be 'atomic' - that is, indivisible into components not equivalent to the whole of itself. This designates the 'basic' vocabulary of entities for music, i.e., 'pitches'.
Next (Df. 1.0) two pitches are designated as
distinct if there is any third pitch such that one of the two, but not the other, matches it, or if the two do not match each other.
If there is no such third pitch, and the two pitches do match each other, they are equivalent pitches, and are assigned to membership in the same pitch-identity class (1.1 and Df. 1.1; note again that 'pitch identity' is, properly speaking, a
relation, not a 'property' - the latter, insofar as it is applicable here, as a notion, is only so in the 'property' of 'being a pitch')."
Benjamin Boretz
Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought 1969
Texts
Live
September 1, 2017
Chapel Performance Space
Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Steve Scribner - Untitled Tondish Music
Folk music of a fictional culture, but a real fictional culture, in that there is actual solid fiction (books!) in which that culture arises. Karen and I got to play squiggly percussion in the second one.
Patrick O'Keefe - Sonata for Piano
Like listening to familiar musics through someone else's ears. I hear 30's Stravinsky, some Debussy, some Shostakovich, but not quite the SD&S's with which I am acquainted. Someone else's, and at other slants.
Cole Bratcher - Transit Maps
We visit graphic aspects of San Francisco and Copenhagen. Work in progress on a fascinating project that hits squarely on two of my geek-outs: music and maps. We are all waiting eagerly for Tokyo.
Blake DeGraw - Diler, for strings
Four string players, each playing a single string, attempt to match the pitches of a track heard only by them. See Preface above. Theory hits the pavement. Damn!
Recorded
 |
| Charlie Rich |
August 26, 2017
Who Will The Next Fool Be - Charlie Rich [from Sun Records The Definitive Hits]
Relies on vocal charisma to hypnotize. Circles around twice, no more, needs nothing so fancy as a bridge. About a girl or about music? Always a tricky question.
City Midnight Junk Strains (for Frank O'Hara) - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]
Bumps around drunk in an empty room.
I Shall Be Released - Bob Dylan [from
Biograph]
Trapped by wordmeaning, more interested in rhythmplay, ripples in a pebble pinged pond.
Miama 2017 - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]
Prog Joel. Imagines he has more range of personae than he really does.
Music with Or Without 12 Chairs - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [May 1981]
The class of clowns.
Breakout - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]
A totally Vegas ambitious arrangement over funky bass and tight brass.
Banned Rehearsal 251 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [March 1991]
tossing noises into a bucket of noises the cats are concerned. Amnehitabel? Concerned. Anarchy: concerned. we must be picking up from something old ugly floral drapes are mentioned 3 bags full
::] city truck outside as I listen beeping clearing sewers? [::
funmaker staccato hits magnetic ghost reel tape
Thought experiment for sound engineers: imagine the worst, the at all costs to be avoided horror of a soundquality, not just unmarketable but quick turn it off before you vomit bad soundquality. Now, imagine the most sophisticated transparent playback apparatus that money can buy reproducing exactly that same worst horror. Is there a difference? Where, exactly, would the difference lie?
improvisational composition designing with readily apparent qualities cumulating funmaker drone reminds of Frippertronics ah that Wurlitzer button that pulls the pitch down almost but not quite a half step
improvisation: the art of redeeming one's, and each other's, sudden decisions. Falling, a la Buzz L, with style
August 27, 2017
Sonic Brilliance 18- John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, John H, Aaron Keyt, Holden K, Kia M [June 1996]
intents made together in a room to hear how it goes. A theory of the man in the oat box. Must be hiding.
Banned Rehearsal 614 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2001]
etched with care || a percussion sequence arises
what if we go with it, without regard for redemption?
deep dynamic registers linger languorously
August 29, 2017
Class Notes - Michael Dellaira [from Open Space 21]
Although: barely a minute long
Although: figuration could be any midcentury bebop wannabe piano player in late evening lounge mode
Although: all that and more or less
Rich in: melodic twists of chords
And: Nothing here is quite just one thing
Gradus 187 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]
3rd A-nat from the bottom behaving as a point of reference, the high notes, all A-nats, nestled or floating in its active or imagined or remembered partials. Parent floating child; I rattle a rattle! I had forgotten. Are these hiatuses Cage silence or something else? division markers? resets? reminder? absences?
Each A-nat, being itself unhooked from pitch class inclusion renders each of its aspects unhooked to an extent from any sort of class inclusion, i.e. staccato notes don't form a class with other staccato notes, nor quiet ones with quiet ones, nor loud with loud.
2nd rung: it centers a bit higher on a still low mid A-nat.
#2Pretty4Jail - Strange Like Us [from Strange Peeps]
seething writhes around an electrohummy spacefilling wad that squeezes the vocals off to the sides. Immobile, constrained, plea though they plea.
August 30, 2017
Qui Passe for My Ladye Nevell - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]
Upon these inflections of tetrachordal-metrical correlatives, the ear dances rice on drum.
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XV - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg
Playful puppy. Weary hound.
How Do You Like It Blues - Art Sims and His Creole Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Mid 20s, getting sound into the grooves was work, or the sound makes it seem so, striving to be recorded, to achieve groove.
I'll Be A Friend to Jesus - Wade Mainer [from Goodbye Babylon]
Formulae stubbornly adhered to. The barest of variance tells.
Save It Pretty Mama - Frank Signorelli [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
In a similar spirit to Art Sims above, but more chill and relaxed about getting it into groove. And yet, very conscious of that 3' deadline at the end of the record.
Signal - Stan Getz [from Alan Lowe's
That Devilin' Tune]
 |
| Stan Getz |
Precisely beveled throughout. Every join tight as tight can make it.
Chorale Variations - Stravinsky - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Festival Singers, Stravinsky [from The Original Jacket Collection]
The big magic picture book of Chorale Preludes. Each page turn renews.
Little Miss Sad One - The Fleetwoods [from The Very Best of the Fleetwoods - Come Softly To Me]
Weakened by a weak bridge, with a little cliché riff at the end of it (said bridge) as much as to say at last that's over.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
August 28, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 942 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
