Playlist

Recorded

August 25, 2018

Mossyrock, Lewis County - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

guitar plucking tenor minstrel
a collective memorial

Kilvert's Hills - Krassimir Ivanov [from Open Space 21]

contrabassoon, I think

turns melody's ear here
there

all been there
never wasn't

a cozy room in the woods

Nature Lives in Motion Part 2 - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, May 2011]

I drew a picture and wrote a poem

August 28, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 7 - James Joyce - Mike Watt & Adam Harvey [from Waywords and Meansigns]

guitar thrum color of page
figures texture of tale
slipping off character intrusion of voice
goes under (done)

August 29, 2018
Hallelujah, Amen from Judas Maccabeus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

It isn't that he had a tin ear for English, it's just that he didn't care. Settled for blocks of affect.

Requiem - Mozart - The English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir,

Barbara Bonney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Blochwitz, Willard White

accretes and presses down
to rise while falling
all the while a collective endeavor
any given passage traverses solid spans
we never get to where we were
no span remains
or survives a passage

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 27, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 965 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

On the porch with
Aaron, chanter
Neal, phone
Karen, autoharp
Keith, ukulele

also sharing a few little bells and a dried leaf

August 31, 2018
University Bridge 180831 - Keith Eisenbrey

cars on grated bridge deck go by

Playlist

Preface

"Here matter is not what matters, but instead 'mattering' as inter active processes that take place between a diversity of matters, human beings in interactions with other human beings, human beings interacting with other non-human beings, including inert things, producing a diversity of situations in sounds, words, gestures, dances, visual traces, acts, ... Each time the complex layering of active material elements that influence each other in conflicting multidimensional intercourses, gives rise to the emergence of a peculiar situation that can never be exactly repeated, due to different circumstances and agencies. And therefore mattering, even if a stable instituted disposition will be the guaranty that something of importance can emerge, has to do with ephemeral forms of experience, with work in progress without progress, in which matter is continuously revived, far removed from definitive immutable truths." Jean-Charles François "What Matters" Open Space Magazine Issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

August 21, 2018
MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers - Leonard Bernstein -  Alan Titus (Celebrant), Norman Scribner Choir, Berkshire Boy Choir, Studio Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein (Conductor)

It was not my intention to be blogging about this piece on LB's birthday, it just worked out that way. I spent a certain amount of time with this back in the day, and it ends up, frankly, leaving a bad taste. What isn't cribbed from others undermines itself irremediably. And he keeps hammering the Author's Message home. Hammer Hammer Hammer. Then some more hammering. The rotting corpse of Big-Tune Romantic Triumphalism on obscene display. Every possible end point strung together end to end without purpose. It won't help. Larded with ear worms and sodden with gaudily lit up irony. Slightly higher brow Andrew Lloyd Weber. Ugh.

August 22, 2018
Stray Bits - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [November? 1981]

the tail end of something lame from 1981, left over at the end of a tape re-used to capture something else.

Baby Grand - Billy Joel with Ray Charles [from The Essential Billy Joel]

Bad Bernstein, lame bits, and now Billy Joel. I was not expecting anything remotely as fabulous as this is. BJ does a creditable RC impression both singing and playing - I don't think I could reliably pick out which was which without seeing it done. It's as though Ray were teaching Billy how to sing his own song. So far, hands down, this is my favorite cut on this album.

Banned Rehearsal 270 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 2001]

gently begun til bowing takes off and opens up though never not gentle
spring in a tube
inaverse to playing out loud shaking scraping backforth rhythms restless sleep
JJumpUp?
Ring the Bells! Ring the Bells! Jingle Bong HOI!
oh dear we woke the sprite
eruption of radio
Aaronsbundler shatters apart slipjointedly
someone pitched 104 pitches
back to gently restful with guitar and bells and strikes upon the imperturbable going
on tribes of drums ongoing
we return to spring in a tube

August 24, 2018
Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello - Handel - Philharmonia Virtuosi

starts honestly, tuning up
just enough substance to allow music to be made of it, almost Couperinish, but less overtly sophisticated
bending toward neo-classical phrasing rather than wallowing in baroque interweaving
concerns balance bald - almost Randallian
by the book balance of phrase disturbed by inner disconsistences
or
we deafen ourselves to many things by applying, as the whole point, balance, rather than using it as only a frame of reference within a more twisted aesthetic
how many ways can the utterly stable be not at all stable not at all
within these balanced boxes metrical hefts shift in close pre-Copernicusian dance

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 20, 2018
Figure Study 180820 - Keith Eisenbrey

Neal couldn't come over for Gradus so I flailed away on the keyboard for awhile.

Playlist

Preface

"So an activist doesn't transcend time, it invents a new time, in each new now. If each present is an expression of its past - of its histories - then opening-onto-future, as a radical reinscription of the past, is exactly what marks the end of history. Music, for Sun Ra, takes on a heuristic value here. My role as a music scholar as well: there is a great deal of research on Sun Ra, from the perspectives of literary theory, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and more, but little of it touches Sun Ra's music. Music theory and analysis, conversely, continue to privilege things like coherence and connection and what we might call 'hearing-as' as its disciplinary/disciplining projects. I'm interested in what can we learn specifically from Sun Ra's music; its materiality, its matter(ing) - or from the activist now of any improvised musical expression, or from the relations between musicking human subjects and post-or trans-human sonorous bodies - that can be of value beyond the hermetic world of music analysis. I'm interested, in short, in the ways that music theory - and the ways that it can imagine or reveal relationships between musicking human and sonorous bodies, relationships that, necessarily, transform those bodies through the very acts of relating - might matter."
Chris Stover "Sun Ra's Mystical Time" Open Space Magazine Issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

August 11, 2018

For Unto Us A Child Is Born - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

royal triumphalism
utterly misses the insurrectionary tone implied by the list of and he shall be called

Serenata Notturna - Mozart - Capella Istropolitania, Wolfgang Sobotka

a certain amount of bombast must be necessary to wake them up
graciousness propped on sturdy stilts
playful sequence of tempi in the final

Aria "A un dotter della mia sorte" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

the expression is always clearly drawn
the comic stance allows anything to get thrown into the stewpot

I'll Be Rested - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

great recorded sound of tambourine for 1926

You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

drumbreak biddabiddabiddabiddabidda
stops
returns in stripper tempo
twice
thrice
shrieks are loving it

Big John - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]

lots of airspace
you could walk around in there
an actual stage sized sound

Summertime - Billy Stewart [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

extra syllables pile in through the rhythm section and Billy offers no resistance
ends with a lullaby holler

Pacific High Studio Mantras - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

to have been Ginsberg
having become Ginsberg
required playing Ginsberg
as Ginsberg
at all moments

The Quiet One - The Who [from Face Dances]

something in the engineering is off
heavy on the bass strangely thin everything else
they play energetically but some edge of it is blunted

Banned Rehearsal 80 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

a session of Sudden Songs: This Time of Night (Kosály-Meyer), Hey Hey Hey (Eisenbrey) - robust guitar tunin' pretty lick -  I Believe I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee Sir (Kosály-Meyer) - then playing with self narration of intention as subjunctive suggestions taunt - also the string's a might loose - mighty stirrin' sound though - This Here Tunin' Mechanism's All Busted (Eisenbrey), I Was Sittin' In The Car (Kosály-Meyer) - thoughts about strummy type rhythms and plucks 3 clear sounds steadying each other - Hollywood, here I come! - If I Were To Learn (Kosály-Meyer) - the reason BR never resolved in a rock & roll band or jazz band or ought other genre band that plays songs is because when we started to put together songs seriously, that is right away, we already had each one down in all its perfection of momenthood. There was nowhere further to go to resolve. Can't get better than perfect. Wild Thing (a cover of course), Amazing Grace to a Louie Louie beat (we had some discussion the other night about the difference between a cover and a performance - theory: one covers a recording, one performs a chart), Tell Me Lord (Eisenbrey), If You Find an Alligator In Your Bed Tonight (Kosály-Meyer), I Got Dust In My Nose (Meyer) - that is, Karen before we got hitched. This string's beginnin' to peel a bit here.

August 12, 2018

On a Plain - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

short feet face each other
across a break
a list of them with
bits that repeat

(intro and outro thingies are wrong)

Sonata in D Major - Bocherini - Philharmonia Virtuosi

violin and cello duetting demonstrating cooperation to demonstrate how pleasant a thing it is
domestic intimate for family public
not every household could afford Haydn so there was a market for fully realized home sized music

Sunshine Music - Love Princess (Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K-M [May 2006])

some question as to whether the personnel is listed correctly in my index

in which: the young'n age 6 is given an electric guitar to strum
we should get
a taiko drum
refrain boomboom boomboom boomboom BASH!
alto horn and trombone on one set of lips

Monday Boy - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain]

expensive sounding sound
haute couture construction
music as a kind of clothing self presentation
then there is another song after the song

Banned Rehearsal 909 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

we do the things that make the sounds
not expensive sounding at all
not expensive but occasionally puzzling in the sense of how are we making that sound?
what are we doing as we do those things that make those sounds?
drumming cooperative
low piano crossroads ahead
train whistle sucked into synthesizer

August 15, 2018
Hallelujah Chorus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

excessively beat-y
as a break from beating us over the head
more beating us over the head

Divertimento in F K247 - Mozart - Capella Istropolitania, Wolfgang Sobotka

dreary lackluster
he could churn out reams of this
statement answer
statement non seq
answer

though the moment between statement and non is lively

all about phrase balance
fails to get anywhere in the operatic way he can have
in short the balance between balanced and unbalanced is skewed too heavily toward the balanced

but overnight I had second thoughts

long static stretches of balanced thinking
come in anywhere leave any time
rewards attention without drama
very like high-toned background music
ambient music of another time long past

August 16, 2018
Act I Finale "Fredda ed immobile" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

rolled R's answered by vocal rrrrruns
go!
farce allows a wide range of affectual granularity
effective piccolo use
triangle glitter to close

Le Vieux Soulard et sa Femme - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

strumbox and squeezebox
free reeds now!

You'll Wonder Where the Yellow Went - The Jumpin' Jacks [a Rescued Record]

mustard in your chili pie
crazy man slang as many as can be got
like patter, man

Telemusik - Karlheinz Stockhausen

a poly-layered list
everything in its order
a study or chamber version of Hymnen
directionality metaphorized into leftrightness
doesn't come across as all that subtle in the end
though: in '66 stereo  play was relatively a new face
tuple channels
the play of filters and presence is better
music for loudspeakers

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 13, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 964 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Once again on the porch, features a new ukelele and an old autoharp

Playlist

Live

August 4, 2018
Forest Show - music by John Teske and Neil Welch
Ravenna Park, Seattle

John Teske, bass
Neil Welch, tenor and C soprano saxophone
Samantha Boshnack, trumpet
Ebony, cello
Noel Kennon, violin
Greg Campbell, drums

it is a rare thing

not Ravenna Park

- if one is not engaged at that moment in the performative mode of Choral Singing
just then -
to experience the same
precise
blending sense
of being a proper part of this activity we are doing together

I have been conscripted to battle
that much is clear

(flash scene)
(Gangs of New York)
(Dead Rabbits emerge)

warriors of cosmic conscience and little bells
now relics on the table

battle whom? what?

the clear co-association of each of us with the march, the us, the procession, was enough
we are us
we are the knights who process with bells

fear us

but seriously folks

there was a call, a gathering, a procession, and an anthem
there was preaching and a rite
as though
the blood of prophets
grows up
through us
church arising
through cracks in the pavement

fall you will rise you must

dust of priests fear not tidings
so loved the world
in own image

us

--- Thank you John and Neil and your superb cohort! Joy is a pleasure and joy in music is a particular pleasure.

Recorded

August 4, 2018
Duetto "Donque io son . . . tu non minganni" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

dumb fun yes
also no moment like any other
conversations and coils and negotiations and journeys

I Want Jesus to Walk With Me - Homer Quincy Smith [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

reed organ and tenor sweet

Why Do Fools Fall In Love - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

before band-ness became what it came to be
as: who and what did that
is: when the group was a group of singers first, accompanying themselves perhaps

Baby It's You - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

alarming dynamic contrast in the mix
gives the singer's voice room to get low and sexy

Substitute - The Who [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

mixed blatant so that
what is front is front
what's back is back

The Journeyman's Grace - Fairport Convention [from Meet on the Ledge]

the word "I" has almost an "oh" sound to start: "oh-EE" rather than "ah-EE"
an accent that was near to that that returned in the heydays of Brit Punk
England land of diphthongs

Strawberry - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [November 1981]

one side of a conversation
telepathic feelers
you enjoy your dinner

NB - this is one of the very few bits of recorded sound left over from that proto Banned Rehearsal time

I've Seen Your Face - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

suffocation saturation sound

August 7, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 269 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

Toad Hall and its intonation of doom and destiny

do not adjust, listen instead
you will have to listen to what this little bird says in order to construe oneself
boogah! boo-gah-loo!
a unique compositional challenge: engage with a protoverbal sentience
nailed it
(easier than with a verbal sentience, especially than with a neoverbal)
a seminar open table conference hearing congress convention
of rhythmic inflection
from inside the tape, any input from outside the tape serves to shrink, diminish, circumscribe
the challenge of any sound is to be more than its fact

August 8, 2018
Caress Me Down - Sublime [from a private mix CD]

a sex brag weaving between Spanish and English
little bit of a Bo Diddley beat

I Love You - 260000 Volts [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

urge mindless
certainly does not overstay

Nature Lives in Motion Part 1 - S. Eric Scribner - S. Eric Scribner, Mike Sentkewitz [from Storm Sound Cycle, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, May 2011]

how it begins
cetacean siren keen feline yowl caw

limn of sky and ocean
was not

a long process begins here
utterly without hurry

time to enter an impersonal space completely progressing clearly in imperceptible increment to space-alien cricket field

never clear whether bird sound is from the can or from the out
disbalanced
what is in the room barely registers over what already persists
our world matters so little

what of it is the use of it as over above what is the other of it, the it of it

the passing squalls have carved the landscape into passing squall impervious hollows
little can happen except in the eddies where flotsam collects

a corner is turned around a ridge line into a furtherscape where we sit and say what we did and what we heard

best get on up the trail

!fun fact: my laptop was used to play back the canned bits

syncretic land/sea/jungle/alpine could be all at once or
rigging creak on ocean ship

70 minutes in a dynamic event with bird tweet or not

August 9-10, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 - James Joyce - Maharadja Sweets [from Waywords and Meansigns]

comedy show
from space!
each line a separate dream full formed
folk strum recitativo psalmtone focus
the finessed intervals between each end of line spokesung and guitar refrainingcommentary
as though this were simply sung for y'all to hear
!to Anna Livia!
is each
things enumerated here
focus: size of
riddle me this: range of
reading with specs :|| answer ||: rank of
!! Finn Mc Cool !!
sees of
another silent hiatus
after which the tune bends downward not this not that game show !!! ANSWER !!!
sub basement ward
FIVE
fragmentsed fastjumbleforwardthroughawesomeheap
MS SAM!??? almost
teachermaster filtertransformuliterates into dialogue reported
sequentiated logo layers
the linguas distracted
each from their each
quiver against each other in layerous words

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 6, 2018
Gradus 337 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Every piano composition performance should announce itself with equal forthright-ery and detail.

If this is melody
what is the exact nature of it? exact to the absolute? notes emerging into consciousness
after all these years it is easily as much about teaching me to hear piano music one note at a time
as Neal learning to play so
an interview question (hear below)
Do you, when moving from one rung to another during a single double 40 minute session,
think: this is a new thing entirely wipe the slate clean of rung before just preceding
or: now I'm just gonna move some notes around
or: something else entirely?
gap between what it says and what it is
transformation through filter of availability (as a compositional strategy)
downright narrative

Interview Question - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

I was so tickled to come up with an actual question that I asked it. Neal answers immediately.

August 7, 2018
Oak Harbor 180807 - Glen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

I was in Oak Harbor, Washington, on Tuesday, with my brother Glen, who decided to give his car an automatic bath. I recorded it with a phone app.

Playlist

Recorded

July 29, 2018

Finnegans Wake Chapter 5 - James Joyce - Neil Campbell [from Waywords and Meansigns]

as from in a swivelorbiting teacup ride
the fellows of which filled with pulsing square wave glowers

quiet enough suburban sounds around oblivious
lore is rich with long loops backdrops cranky go round

here's the motor at the heart chugging chug chug tip
under the waves it goes

July 31, 2018
Aria "La callania è un venticello" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

snark within form
form lights fuse
fuse polite tunes
tunes turned to
to revolution

Get With - Ben Pollack / The Readheads [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

that guitar sounds amplified
as richly detailed as the trumpet
the drums must have been two blocks west
instrumental dance for dancing instrumentals

Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

same deal
but the drums moved back in
trumpet replaced by loudspeakered voice
beautiful virtual space of recorded sound
cut to fit to the two minutes thirty or so

Symphony in D minor (The Year 1917) (#12) - Shostakovich - Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky

soundtrack for which visuals are superfluous
(panoplepticon)

circling lost in the orders of its circling figures
somebody keeps turning the frenetic up

meanwhile in the simple hearts of the proletariat
history's burden bestowed
distant doings afoot

Stop Her On Sight - Edwin Starr [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

power coloratenor
barely a song before it's gone

Don't Let Nobody Turn You 'Round - Silver Light Gospel Singers [from The Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1]

tempos within voice
genders of tempos
held together at the tap tap tap tap tap tap

Fire - U2 [from October]

kind of a mess, drifts off in a Pink Floyd haze

August 1, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 79 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Neal

merge! yield!
recounts a story of the container of stuff they had brought with them from back home
Karen clears her throat
Keith recites in whale a sixty cent bus trip

time and a consideration of decision making
measuring regret and loss
Orpheus and Eurydice perhaps, in another guise

Harry and Maude hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot

remember! merge! forces beyond their con|||| . . .

August 2, 2018
Once in a While - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

for those paying close attention, I blogged about this one just last May.
punctuated by insert beats and relax chorus a BRIDGE!!
Big Punkt
to guitar solo Haydnesque affect-thinking translated to song structure
finishes in punctuation mode

The Teen Thing - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

so I listened to the next track too
clever filler bit of song for between

"...woe my road is spoken..." (second midi draft of May 29, 2006) - Keith Eisenbrey

still messing with tempos and pace, dynamics
seeding ideas into cloud forms
chains and links and daisies

Pretty Saro - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

precise pitch articulation
essential inflections

masterful

no song needs to be
or could be
more than this

as good as it gets

10 Minutes for Aaron - Keith Eisenbrey [April 2016]

loose hi hat cymbal inverted on antique milk can with mallets (various)
all its sounds' parts and their lastings

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 30 2018
Banned Rehearsal 963 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Recorded

July 22, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 78 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]


the legendary push to 100 begins in earnest

Anna had decamped to San Diego, Neal to follow in a few weeks
we figured we could fill 23 sides if we got together as often as possible and made several sessions every time

with dulcimerian strum and guitar and funmaker
distinct presences playing pitches
vaguely downhome funmaker bend button to imitate saw or bee swarm

the relation between the metaphor of steady beat and the metaphor of click track clock time
each is a kind of virtual reality

Neal sings a sudden song Strange Animal interrupted by a wicked great funmaker effect
Sprite in punkissimo overdrive

clocktime is a metaphor of objectivity and reproducible results
beat is a metaphor of inner time - heartbeat breathing sleep
to conflate them is to sell beat short
to measure the rightness of a beat by its adherence or not to a click track clock time timepoint is to utterly mistake its subjective essence
trading image for fact

clavichord even gets in there most sinister of sounds

disproportionality is our speciality
does it go on too long?
experiments should not halt upon receipt of desired result
desiring a result is an ur-error

Stay Away - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

ferocious bass playing back there
sure like that fuzz box

Downtown Hangaround - Blank Its [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

minimalist patterning
nice focus
power suit

"...woe my road is spoken..." (first midi draft of May 29, 2006) - Keith Eisenbrey

another in a series of drafts of a set of variations for string quartet

affect is carrier wave for pitch set transformation

Life in a Marble - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

just a young man and his strummer joined by kin on cello and voice

Gradus 288 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

the highest G

if the acoustic machine that is the piano
strings soundboard hammers frame harp dampers
could be adequately modeled algorithmically

then one could design interfaces for the dampers
on a gimble or as independently operated as the keys themselves

one to play the hammers
one to play the dampers

could virtual strings break?
algorithmic modeling of the sound of a string breaking?
virtually?

if it doesn't then the model is inadequate
limitations are important

the E comes in as though it hadn't really

July 24, 2018

Cavatina "una voce poco fa" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

how exactly weight is adjusted to articulation

Don't Fish In My Sea - May Rainey, Jimmie Blythe [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

celebration within complaint
irrepressible right hand comments

Ubangi Stomp - Warren Smith [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

copping to racial thievery (N word trigger warning)

What A Sweet Thing That Was - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

as crowded as the words are
there is lots of time for spare my my my my to spill out

Septet - Arthur Berger - The Contemporary Players [from Form]

long tones doled out sparingly
to tell
we search them out where they cling
past woods edge
a guide will be wanted
to return

Barefoot School - Bellevue First United Methodist Church Children's Choirs [from my Mom's tape of May 6, 1971]

I shared narration duties on this, and so it becomes one of the very earliest instance of recorded sound recognizable as me

our charming pious tale of spreading the benefits of civilization

July 25, 2018
I've Never Been In Love - The PK's [from a private tape]

history: the night before Karen went off to UPS at the end of the 1981 Summer in which we (she and I) happened to have both been in the same room at the same time for the first time Karen and Neal and Yvonne made this recording of their (really proto-PK's) collaboration. It was supposed to be a good tape.

Shut Out The Light - Bruce Springsteen [from Neal's mix-tape Six B-Sides]

story ballad family retrieval

Banned Rehearsal 268 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Paul Eisenbrey, and Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

clams up
big honk speaks across the spiral tape as it lies on its reel
J clears his throat
nervous sort of explosiveness
chatter
all the doo dah day yes sirree doo dah
buddha baby
imitates squeaky violin squeal
failure to incandesce but many many colorful bits
bug call

July 26, 2018
Haunted House - Fall-Outs [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

politely overdrawn accusation
gaslighted
never trust a breakup song

Song From The Storms and Winds - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, live at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 21, 2011]

tone held through thundernuk place
within place within place

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 27 - July 6, 2018
Two Pomes Play - Keith Eisenbrey


Most of June and into July I was working on getting an adequate recording of these short two-voice

piano pieces. The first is one of my takes from June 27. I finally got the last one pretty well on July 6. These began their lives in the mid 90's as duets for clarinet and bassoon. In 2000 I transcribed them for piano solo.

July 23, 2018
Gradus 336 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

. . . and the fifth B
perihelion swerves of many kinds
lit up the bubble of now in etheric mind nowhere hidden

Playlist

Recorded

July 1, 2018

Cavatina "Ecco, ridento in ciedo" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

a distance traveled before we get off the ride

Rainy Night - Duke Ellington [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

say a thing (twice) (or two things) then comment or overturn
the back ends of the melodies invite consideration

The Goodnight Waltz - The Voices of Walter Schumann [Rescued Record]

The Age of Sentimentality's Last Gasp

Walk, Little Julie - Chester Hanchell [from Anthology of American Folk Music Vol. 1]

jaw harp in the raw

Requiem Canticles - Stravinsky - London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen

pitch plates microadjust their relative altitude
planar placards plastered on the pitch plate walls
icons

Track 6 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from my mom's tape of a concert give March 3, 1971]

with vibraphone solo

Subhuman - Throbbing Gristle [from Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits]

inverted accentuation becomes name classification

July 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 77 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

vacuum cleaner vacuuming floor clacking sticks and ocarina or flute
we have a hum on the tape from something
it wanders

Neal & Anna's Outpost on Brooklyn Ave, as they were packing it up

typing tap tap tap tap ding! szzzhook!

persistent lack of focus, phoning it in, not present
weary and wearying the hum does not help
this tape has ennui
impervious time

Don't Mix The Colors - Courtney Love [from Kill Rock Stars]

words on a good enough rhythm track
half a song or less

Gradus 99 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2006]

single tones allowed to linger
turn their predilections for proliferation inward upon themselves
become sets of parts independently spinning
fulfilling the compositional imperatives
which notes to play
is so simple to accomplish that the notion of necessity in the short term
or of form at all as a specious trajectory
is left far below

Front Door - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain EP]

circling insistence (a worry stone)

Banned Telepath 47 Somerville - Aaron Keyt [April 2016]

the new note nears quickly
improvisation composing itself as a composition composing improvisationality

July 5, 2018
Cavatina "Largo al factotum della città" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

intricate prestissimo blah blah blah
tour de articulation

Irish Black Bottom - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

wide open window to another celebration
when it is over
feels empty

Tweedledy Dee - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

clearly worked over before release
with vinyl surface noise just as clearly audible
no-one was, apparently, thinking history and collecting quality data

(He's) The Great Imposter - The Fleetwoods [from The Very Best of the Fleetwoods - Come Softly To Me]

Requiem Cantlicles - Stravinsky - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky

categorically disparate rhythms
though coordinate
choral sound disblending as instruments perfectly
ceremony
voices instruments solos chorus - all treated emphatically impersonally
each is there to function just so
not anybody's show really
as though these were sound samples pulled from hammer space

July 10, 2018

Jascha Horenstein reminisces with Alan Blyth

". . . nineteen tzwolve . . . Webern and Berg were the ushers who controlled the membership cards . . . enowmously tense and inhibited . . . Vienna is the only place in the world . . . a closed shop . . . icy cold every inch the emperor of music . . . "

Well I Just Might Do That - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [July 1981]

barbasol theater
it's got lemon in it
an historic moment for proto Banned Rehearsal
in that we were beginning to spill out of academic oversight
into sessions which we then inflated into legend out of all proportion to the actual results
good thing most of the sound is lost
come inside you'll catch your
keith
mind your mother
clump clump clomp clomp
done

4th of July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985]

full blown legend domain see your life as mythic grandeur
your face here

July 11, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 267 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

in the past I have made errors in that regard
moan tube scolding big red bag of fun
soft skinned rattle of rattles
semi independent double reeds
finger independent righty lefty
breath dependent if each speaks or in turn
jalopy rattle get it firing tambourine
this sounds like Aaron's now defunct electric organ
rather than the funmaker
30 minutes in not a dud moment really
terrainish
concerns itself with another subject than the terrain we experience
much as geology arose from metallurgy and mining
Mr. Punch you are a bad bad man
diabolic plotting encrustations of narratives' remains
realms are missing
music is an abstraction of activity
informing our future selves of the past reporting back truly what we say
common pulse theory

DX7 - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy - Interstellar Pianos]

probes in substance with danger traps beacons left behind
creatures that feed on geyser's edge in pitch darkness

July 12, 2018

Day Signals Sonic Nebula - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, live at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 21, 2011]

slow circle
drawn
dug
stethoscope to deeper tunnel
clanging cagebars
rain drops what zooms by cares not
performance as self preservation
face of impervious
the slowly drawn circle nears, lurking, respiring
a membrane within the sound
cessation without conclusion

July 17, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 4 - Rio Matchett [from Waywords and Meansigns]

immediate: as though related over morning breakfast finger thump on table
scifi traffic medievaly chanting past on the interstar
repletely misoverheard
leaning close over the cafe table
not fussy about the jointures
color not corrected as gossip passed
then report per radio tv with background
journalismus

July 18, 2018
Duetto "All'idea di quel metallo"- Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

light orchestral touch
the air they breathe

You Made Me Love You - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

not much space on these old tracks, timewise or dynamical
best to fill it completely

Tynan Tyme - Chet Baker, Art Pepper [from Playboys]

now we got us some elbow room

A Thing Of The Past - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

such subtlety of vocal pressure
just exactly the right weight given to each part of each syllable

no slop

Secret Agent Man - Johnny Rivers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

something in the sound is often repressed

July 19, 2018
Selections from Finian's Rainbow - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of a concert given May 4, 1971]

extended medley or truncated show
Irish as ethnic quaint (harmless) lesser European pastoral
LA < > NY
Hollywood < > Broadway
good enough modulations (not to write home about)

Universal Corner - X [from Wild Gift]

measures measuring measuring measures

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 2, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 962 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


July 16, 2018
Assembly Rechoired 57 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy