Playlist

Recorded

February 9, 2019
Male Content - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

empty set?

an ordered texture of durations
several orders of embedded ordered textures of durations

Alla Polacca in G, Wq. 116/8 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

scraps cut to not fit quite just so

The City Never Sleeps at Night - Nancy Sinatra [a Rescued Record]

wide-eyed cinematic distance

I Mean You - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

a pickup of three eighth-notes and a downbeat played as
a pickup of three quarter-note triplets and a downbeat, all offset by half of a quarter-note triplet
or fairly like that

October - U2 [from October]

brief
the piano figuration could turn in upon itself intriguingly
but won't

Banned Rehearsal 90 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

the third of seven sessions made on June 7, 1986, in the attempt (successful) to get to 100 by the time Neal left for San Diego later that month

back at the half house

microphone placement
tape to the window
sacrifice the television

Wally is reading from my listening journal which I had been keeping for 3 months at that time and of which this blog is an extension 33 years later
working backwards bloglike

instructions for the Realistic mixer
Karen's going to make cookies
run the output through the ox
back in time we are in two
at once of times
time travel
time's return

sounds of us recording sounds
life within the veil
all the objects this signal has passed through
as it passes from skull to skull

mix thoroughly
combine ingredients

Salute to John Philip Sousa - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

what was the first military force to have a band?
or has music always lured us off to war

you can almost smell the outdoor air

On/Off - Tom Baker - Tom Baker, Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, May 2006]

in which
I perform on piano
exciting its harp and board
by amplifying recorded other musics
into its underparts

by signaling to Tom
who operated the ingoing sounds
with my hat
on the music rack

February 10, 2019
Dhunki - Mere Brothers Ki Dulhan [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

with so much money evident in the production the question of heartfeltness seems inappropriate
like one of JKR's "farts in church"

Banned Telepath 49 Mississippi River Brewery - Aaron Keyt [June 2016]

sounds glinting off the echo shiny walls
a box of jewels flashing

Mascharada - Nicolaus Blyer -  - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

the multiple tempo changes make this seem a much bigger piece than can quite fit in a minute twenty four

Fantasia in G minor, Wq. 117/13 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

fabulous instrument (fortepiano?) seems to have a damper pedal
Bach the J.S. used music to exert intellectual control
Bach the C.P.E. used music to consider music

or
given the tremendous gifts of B the C.P.E.
personal, peculiar
what must it have been like to have B the J.S. as dad?

Hitch Hike - The Sonics [from Boom]

rhythmhornB3 has a luscious fuzz all through it

Introspection (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the melody
within itself
loses itself in itself
finds within itself
melody itself

February 12, 2019
Wild Wild Life - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

it's so clean!
so clean the words don't even register
except as placeholders within the songwritery songwriting

Can You Dig It? - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

showcase: I'm what you got left (all of it)

Time Stratifications I Through a Glass Darkly - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011]

sounds recur
flirt with adding

up to a sequence
resist

congealing into
a texture might be

commentary mostly
mutter art

Tetua (Jai Gangaajal) - Sukhwinder Singh, Salim- Salaiman [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

mid
distant
too close

February 13, 2019
Mascharada der Edel Frawen - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

a genteel quicker but not really quick bit
a breathtaking slow few phrases
rounded by quick slowing to slow

Keyboard Sonata in A Major, Wq. 65/43 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

master of do-overs and sharp turns
sudden shade

in this music the weather changes always

I Met Him On A Sunday - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]

cycling through voices
one for each day
great clapping part!

Introspection (take 3) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

recorded to make you feel like you're in the keyboard seat

low left
high right

Playlst

Recorded

December 1, 2018
Allemande - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

closer to clearly a dance than any of Bach's Allemandes are
being older

step kick step kick
do they all stem from the same root dance as the Polka?

King Arthur Act III - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

Purcell liked the noise of it
up to his elbows in liking the noise of it

a shake (ornament) on shake (word) - very clever, Henry
wordpainting as blatant as possible, visceral even
as though that were so completely the point
but also distracts some from the little seminar the notes are engaged in, as notes

and then there's a Wind Machine!

Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

four clowns
each answering

to reprise is to vary
the activating symmetries

we suspect the non sequiturs
are not so non as all that

a lull? a lulling? a trap?
(left hanging in the attentive lurch)

definitely a trap
pizzicati ex machina

Caprice - Henryk Wieniawski - Itzhak Perlman, Janet Goodman Guggenheim [from Itzhak Perlman 
Live in Russia]

an encore
a remnant of the old Music Is For Fun vogue

East Arkansas Shout - Sammie Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

picked that up (the vogue above)
a draft or older version of the land of a thousand dances
pre mashed potato too

Carabina Trienta-Trienta - Epifiana Sanchez and group [from The Art of Field Recording vol. 1]

There is a slow flange quasi-arpeggiation effect concerning the placement of the strum sound upon the strings within the presence of the recording. tape wobble or intent?

December 4, 2018
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - The Sonics [from Boom]

a reimagined throwback

Punk and its progeny being a back to the roots music, from the very root of it arises a propensity to revisit older songs and goose 'em. From this trope comes some of my favorite covers and moments: The Stranglers Walk On By; The Dictators I Got You Babe; and (live): Peterman I Can't Help Falling In Love With You; and Red Ribbon That's All Right Mama.

stripping the sheen from the 50's
bringing it home

Chordially (Improvisation) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

experimental
thinking with his hands
not a finished thing and clearly not a thing intended to be finished
melody notes perched uncomfortably on lumpy chord chairs

Eliza Act I - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

oh golly this goes back

in the year between my graduation from the UW and my wandering off to the East
Aaron, occasionally Neal, Dave Jones, and I would gather in the basement of Dave Jones's place north of the University and record improvisations. Over the course of several such session we improvised an opera named after one of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The result is easily not all that wonderful, but it has its moments and anticipates many of the activities that came to dominate Banned Rehearsal a few years later.

the overture
intoned trombone, bass clarinet, conch? ceremonial solemn
text erupts
fairy tales

If improvisation's purpose is to elicit pieces of music then we explode that idea by trying to elicit a particular known genre of music, demonstrating just how far off things can get. And it isn't due to us choosing the wrong kind of music to elicit. We do it in numbers.

we didn't have amplification per se to play with so we moved the microphones around instead
competitive cleverility
all of a sudden I realize
hey I'm in control here

December 6, 2018
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

fancy melismas and choral drums

Banned Rehearsal 275 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]


a piano, so, Toad Hall

as none was available at that time at headquarters
thumbpiano mixed to have presence
J operates a spring contraption and is cyclically quite amused
drum and brass with flabby lip
the organ transformed suddenly into The Show
or was that the Aaronsynth?
going on for the cause of why not go on
awake!
or drift more
fat finger tunes
some tiny whisper whistles imitating cassette ghosting
J squawks discovering agency
double double reed thingy designed for the desire to be at two with one's self
pre-toddler delight
squeamish should turn their ears aside
diaper is being changed

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 3, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 971 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt


December 4-5, 2018

How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude-ish arrangement of the hymn tune Foundation in July of 2001, the last of three little organ pieces. For the last decade plus now I've been going through all my keyboard pieces to be sure I have acceptable recorded documentation. They all work pretty well for piano too, though this one requires some carefully applied sostenuto pedal in three or four spots.