Playlist

Recorded

I-90 Floating Bridge, Seattle

February 15, 2020
Sonata in A Major K. 83 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

wherein
it might
elsewhere // have been at

before what counts
as balance

If You Were My Love (unreleased version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

voice
person
music
costumery
song
movement

(She likes appoggiaturas as much as Mozart did)

What an experience of a person might be
presented to allow just so much of naked self

what clothes to wear?
hair to do?
face to paint?

other armor

Joseph, lieber Joseph mein - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

a carol for a pageant
having survived obliteration through all the time passed

Heart of the Wind - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

loop echoes accumulate, dissipate
otherwise they are inactive to the flow: dis-agented, neutralized, abandoned

echo: the past filtered by distance and memory
instant nostalgia

Gradus 200 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]

notes and lentils
tendrils drill air
lentils's tendrils

guest
quest

game of frames

roots drill earth
little lintel lentils
and other beans

game of beans

alien beans
go-like
pine cone stones

beans in frames

lintels of lentil tendrils

pine cones
conifer cones

O I been working on the bean frame
been bean framing

(". . . simple words like if and it . . .")

frame farm
farm frame
frim fram

Bad Service and Boredom - Robber's Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]




punkfolk
with Full Toilet tempos

February 16, 2020
Sonata in F Major K. 82 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

If ascending the chord is by a different figure than descending back down then the option opens to switch them up. One could sing these lines, but they truly seem to have been born as finger figures

Damaged I - Black Flag [from The First Four Years]

putting anger on for size
guitar presses down sharp and heavy,
pounds down and presses
squishes

dam'udge

squeaky squeal between the pounds

Feel It - Sun Sect [a Rescued Record]

funk bass
front half back half
of each measure

sits on the balls of its feet
then on the heels of its feet
back forth pelvis shift
of each measure

The Persistence of Memory, for Giselle - J. K. Randall [from Open Space 39]



Understandable at and through every moment and event, this music is helpful to its own self-understanding. This music tells you itself.

Sea, Sea, Sea - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linen]



A fully formed song: more like JKR than like Sun Sect.

Corollaries (Down's Up) 160924 - Keith Eisenbrey

so that each note fades to nothing

more like a wood block print than like a drawing
more like an impressed trace than like an inscribed trace

i.e.
not through-composed but rather strophic
testing tensile strength

||

Within the last year or so I went back to these pieces and changed some of the notes. I did this in order to adjust the process of moving across the register limit from high back down around again to the bottom, and vice versa. This was less to benefit these pieces exactly (but I think it did) than to make them easier for me to think about - especially as a part of the larger project to which these belong, because I needed essentially the same flip to happen in a later piece and being consistent seemed to be more clear than not. But I resist remaking all these recordings with the corrected notes. I'm moving on.

||

Portal to the Pacific, Seattle

these very long big low tones make the is it over now anxiety a palpable part of the experience of the piece

exploring the crevices that Neal might miss on the steps

Sonata in C Major, K. 84 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

His direct repetitions serve to hold an event still. Otherwise they would forever be running in all directions at the same speed. The kinds of motion are in balance as kinds, among themselves.

The Dealer (unreleased version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

ah,
it's about cards

a photo of a ballad

Independence Day - Bruce Springsteen  [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

same relation but different angle of shoulder shrug

anthem
hook
dance
ballad
ritual
sermon

Summer - Whiting Tennis [from Three Leaf Clover]



hook based lyric not a ballad
just not hook heavy

Banned Rehearsal 802 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
[November 2011]



in full battle, though it seems so friendly

Bike Tunnel, Sam Smith Park, Seattle

oystrygotts and vestrygoons

not to worry
it's not a real duck

lands deep after launch into composition land, throwing curves at each other by bend of bay, a battle of giants and a spat of sprites

Fickle Sun (II) The Hour Is Thin - Brian Eno [from The Ship]

message from:
message to:

February 17, 2020
Sonata in F Major, K. 85 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

wiggling fingers for pleasure

I've Heard It Before - Black Flag [from The First Four Years]

meta put-on
self parody

Fun Time - Bruce Willis [a Rescued Record]

local boy hangs with his musician neighbors
motown:: about: competence, collective, specialized function, how it's done.

Slavonic Dances op. 72 (#10 in E minor) - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

forgets which key it was headed at
end of 2nd phrase
or is that a sly glance?

Usefully marketable music for social occasions, available for solo, duet, orchestra, infinitely arrangeable

allow time for the old folks to be charmed

Death March - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



formidable
full body soul voice dance engagement
cinched tight

Corollaries (Up's Down) 161021 - Keith Eisenbrey

Sam Smith Park, Seattle

sharpened
honed
machined
as precisely unambiguous as can be
music as data stream
study question: why might this be useful and to whom?

Sonata in C Major, K. 86 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

Presuming the opening figure to be written as {graphic}
what a marvelously packed toolbox of durations and duration relations.
Always delightful, often astonishing

Blue Lamp (from Heavy Metal) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

stage show
album
"greatest hits" is a concept, therefore Bella Donna is a concept album

It may not be the best way to approach someone, but it does provide a sample of sorts. We put up with the notion that being a hit was what the song was about because it is commercial music after all.

Magnificat quinti toni - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

obsessed with consonant blend
like Partch was

back in its day
serious money
paid for this music

Three Leaf Clover - Whiting Tennis [from Three Leaf Clover]



laid back comfort empathy

Badlands - Your Mother Should Know [live at Skychurch, November 2011]

make an entrance
come out swinging
invoke the muse

Ocean Ambience Rocky Coastline Volume 2 - Pete Comley

Jimi Hendrix Park, Seattle

What are the perturbations of those who perturb the imperturbable?

cavern voice

One would think an entire indexed collection of ocean sounds, impeccably recorded, would be soothing. It is not. It is terrifying.

Isolation of sound
nameable characteristics,
nothing mysterious, extraneous, unnamed
wanders in

hears all
highly classified

February 20, 2020
Sonata in B minor, K. 87 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

What sort of society allowed this to flourish? So tightly bound

harpsichord v piano

harpsichord: note's incipits overwhelm - rational/digital
piano: the harp overwhelms - irrational/analog

rationality overwhelms itself as does ir-
alike unstable

Louie Louie - Black Flag [from The First Four Years]

"it just shows I'm not very smart"

a musician's re-rendition, rethinking the rhythmic premise, playing the Sonics' game.

Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

hollow spaces after downbeat or strongbeat
a muttered hook
strong hook
allows wandering away

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Jimi Hendrix Park, Seattle

February 17, 2020
Gradus 364 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

one and two
pulsing bean
might just be
the dryer making that thumping

acting out schematics
software controlled

liberating or confining?
It depends.

Postscripts

delay her but the old rag-topped nag
covered the 600 miles of dark nearly

like swung off at I hadn't since I

don't count

roll a clam shell down a level plane

redwing blackbird on a bare tree top

Playlist

Preface

karen's deconstructed apple cranberry pie

"And terror
Is doubled, tripled, as he sees around him
Strange figures in the sky and savage beasts,
The Scorpion, for instance, arms outreaching
In two half-circles, and the other members
Spread over infinite acres, and black poison
Stinking and rank, and the threatening curved stinger.
Out of his senses, with cold fear upon him,
Phaethon dropped the reins."
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Recorded

February 9, 2020
Sonata in F Major, K. 78 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The first impacts set the increment and the focus, the remainder of the figure establishes the tools and rates of embellishment.

There is a tiny little coda.

Let Me Fly - Sister Fleeta Mitchell, Rev. Nathaniel Mitchell, Lucy Barnes [from Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

Witness.

unfussy piano playing, but it holds the tempo and the swing of it

3 part vocals arranged for a clearly structured variety
clearly structured but not four square constricted

the persons of each voice are distinct
blending at the dialect

Clarinet Concerto : Fire Dances - Deborah Drattell - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, David Shifrin

fraught moments
each juiced with fraughtness

starts in the high shrills
drops slowly
into stasis

this is orchestrated
you
can
tell

late model expressionism

once a passage is orchestrated it stays put

it has a cadenza
because concertos do
it's in the book

Before The Beginning - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

more like Scarlatti in its thinking
than like Drattell

why?: because it doesn't have moving from itself eventually to be a consideration in what it is building.

If you aren't entirely there
how can you mess around?

Loaded Gun, Loaded Youth - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

also, for same reason, more like Scarlatti
and also for its delight in rhythm play

Corollaries (Down's Down) "161011" - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

matter of fact version
What we have here, friends,
is a list of notes,
crisp and clear.

Sonata in G Major, K. 79 & 80 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The harmony changes.
The harmonies change
in order for us to be where we are
with a different view.

composition in the small

Herzgewachse, op. 20 - Arnold Schönberg - Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, Robert Craft, Eileen Hulse, John Alley, Sioned Williams, Tim Carey

short form operatic fiction thingy
with a truly remarkable high note in it

Sleeping Angel (alternate version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

small collection of pitches (5?)
two over
three

I must say she does seem to be getting a sensual kick out of filling herself with her own head resonance.

You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

He's telling a story in a noisy room, and bringing the noise of the noisy room along with the story. Plot points get lost in the noise of the noisy room in which a story is told.

My Prayer for Bella - J. K. Randall [from Open Space 39]

breath breaking
heart taking

Preludes in C Major, A minor, G Major, E minor, and A Major - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

When I played my C Major Prelude for Ben Boretz a few years ago he commented, after the first measure, "Liebeslied" - that is, acknowledging that this is yet another of my pieces that sprang from his unfinished solo piano "Liebeslied." And of course it's more than the springing from of it. It tracks Ben's  Partial piece (the whole of it) rather well, in miniature. Condensed re-composition.

These selections formed the prelude to a service at Langley United Methodist Church in August of 2015.

Why Was I Born - Mark Paschen & Robber's Roost [from Cuatro]



cars come and go like the ocean tide
and singing saw

Sonata in E minor, K. 81 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

This one has violin and continuo too
and a quick second movement

from when what a Sonata was was more fluid, invented

for this one you will need to seek assistance

say hey
write something for us to play together

larger scale: I wrote a bunch of them
We'll be a hit!

a perfectly balanced ensemble, like bluegrass string band

American Waste - Black Flag [from The First Four Years]

duality is destiny
virtual contrary motion
always

the center point is the point
the shaking laser point
of it all

Dirty Money - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]

machine ensemble
nothing real but the flashing lights that flash
and her rather attractive alto voice
imitatio madonna

Sonata in G major, op. 100 II Larghetto - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

for violin and piano. this is really nice stuff!

Introduction - Your Mother Should Know [Live at Sky Church, November 2011]

traditional and customary
brings up all the
family business

Corollaries (Down's Up) "161021" - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

to alphabetize is to shuffle
alphabetize is shuffle to to

the time should flex with pitch !
! flex pitch should the time with

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 10, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 1001 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer



We discussed, among other items, how long it might take us to get to 2000, and how old we might be. Perhaps after we retire we can speed production.

Postscripts

to a lack of the consolation to

enough of counsels or spiritual

books about them doing this to which they

(*)*(*)

of such murders

I do not scream

twice

Playlist

Preface

"Thus, in the public view as well, 'great' music remained inextricably associated with 'big' music. The prevalence of this attitude is perhaps most strikingly revealed by the Hollywood movies about musicians that proliferated in the thirties and forties, in which the great musical moments are never at recitals or during performances of late Beethoven quartets, but in those strange Hollywood concertos that, by stringing together bunches of candenza-flourish clichés without much attempt at actual coherence, were a far more devastating parody of Romantic nostalgia than the wildest flight of dada ever conceived."
Benjamin Boretz - Music - The Nation: October 26, 1963, reprinted in Being About Music, Textworks 1960-2001, Volume 1

Texts

Recorded

November 3, 2019
Sonata in D minor, K. 52 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

a gracious home
designed in a single breath

Symphony in G (#4) - Gustav Mahler - Berliner Philharmoniker, Bernard Haitink

out of doors in the air
possibly haunted
those wafts of ghosts
what are they?
perhaps the dead of many wars
perhaps the skeletal framework of the monarchical order
perhaps the near future
a wandering day
stomp your boots coming in

languid evening in the home
over pipes and tales
one of the servants has a scordatura
so picturesquely quaint

evening quiet
full satisfied
don't look behind the screen
let's not talk of that
as the not talking of that wafts through empty halls
a vacancy in our satisfaction
our strenuously prosperous society
allows this display

we read to the children
else they won't remember us
or our macabre undertones

:: I rather like Mahler's spacious way with meter, operating on several levels of time rates with refreshing and awkward ease ::

Someone Needs Me - Harvey Schmidt - Mary Martin [from I Do! I Do!]

a song of few words

Let's Groove (Instrumental) - Earth Wind & Fire [a Rescued Record]

a song of no words
brass and synthesizers
the comes-along-with instrumental-track-thing
of the eighties
residue of a club scene

Wild Wild Life (extended version) - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

as I was saying
designed for loud speakers
in a wide low ceilinged place
speakers in the four corners
maximum separation
this club has moved to the small screen scene

Carrizo Breeze - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

flute and sampled marimba-like machine
and frame drum in our left ear
too much reverb, but otherwise rather nice

Ask Your Question 110906 Draft F Compressed & EQ - Your Mother Should Know [September 2011]

for me who doesn't know what I am doing behind the mixing board
I enjoy it and I can get interesting results
I can see why people really get into it

all of these recordings by Neal and Karen preceded their first gig playing together, in November of 2011 if I recall correctly

Into the Night (live) - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live Volume 1]

A Character monologues to create his myth
Hero: a role and its soliloquy

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 4, 2019
Gradus 358 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

the greater the quantity of notes
in the collection
the more conceptual
or the less concrete
is the notion that the notes are a part of a limited set
that what these notes are about
is the collective of which they are an ostensible part

November 7, 2019

Alle Menschen müssen sterben - Keith Eisenbrey

I continue my quest to record the twelve chorale settings that constitute Part 12 of my work-in-progress Études d'exécution imminent, which appears to be taking the shape, as I compose it, of a kind of multi-roomed gallery exhibit of thoughts about music, scores, composition, and performance.

St. Rage Demos - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

I haven't listened to the tracks yet, but we recorded demo versions of three new St. Rage songs. St. Rage is the fictional rock band in Karen's novel "The Gospel According to St. Rage," and in the soon to be released sequel "Barbara and the Rage Brigade." St. Rage is impersonated by Your Mother Should Know personnel: Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer.

Don't Know How to Start Over
Punk Rock Drummer Girl
Summer Girl

Postscripts

think steinbeck hand scrawled turning up taped cash
the no checks cashed for more school bus slows and

stops frost gilded my kids the windows flash

two scrambled and an english, tea

no view now

elf ore