John Rahn, Charts, and AKU Part 1 - 1980 1981

AKU (1981) 

In the Fall of 1980 the University of Washington Department of Systematic Musicology acquired a Synclavier, which they housed in a small room on one of the lower floors of the School of Music, somewhere down below Brechemin Auditorium. I had just started studying with John Rahn and he had just completed and shared a piece of his that featured sounds synthesized thereon. Through his good offices I was allowed quite a lot of time with it during Winter Quarter, but in preparation I had to write a piece for it, which occupied my time through Winter break.

The Synclavier could play back eight lines simultaneously, and allowed eight instruments to be played during any single output file. These instruments could be designed with digital controls for various parameters, such as timbre and envelope. One of its features was that, unlike analog synthesizers of the day, once a setting was set it didn't drift, and could be adjusted in some detail. Specifics escape me, but I'm sure the specs can be found on-line.

your blogger, circa 1980

I figured that I would try to use its full potential, so I wrote a piece with eight instruments. Some of the instruments played more than one note at a time, so I had to do some fancy charting to be certain that no more than eight sounds were occurring at any one time. I started with an ordered set of eight numbers (I forget the order, but my criteria were similar to those used in KCBOL) and designed eight instruments in increasing complexity of timbre (wholly subjective) - the simplest being a sine wave, and with eight different envelope lengths. Each instrument was allowed a certain number of notes to play during its active time, and the amount of active time each instrument had was proportioned with eight distinct durations. The amount of time between the end of each duration and the end of the piece was divvied out among the eight instruments using the same ordered set of numbers. I probably also gave each instrument a unique size of total range. There may have been even more to it than that, but whew! I filled in the notes from various sources, among them some lines from the 25th Goldberg Variation, and a tune from my Habitabit. Charting this all out, as I say, took a lot of my time that December. I had pages all over my bed trying to get it all together when my brother came in to inform me that John Lennon had been shot and killed.

Each line had to be sequenced individually, by hand, in real time. In order to be sure each line was entered accurately (the rhythms are thorny) I had to scale the tempo down for most of the lines. this might involve sitting around for 20 or 30 minutes waiting for the part to begin. My friend Christopher Mehrens bravely volunteered to assist in this tedium and probably played some of the lines.

Once it was completed I had a floppy disk with the data and a reel-to-reel tape of the finished piece. I promptly had the folks at the Listening Library dub a copy to cassette so that I could listen at home. It is fortunate I did so, as later events proved, but that is a story for another day. I shared the piece at our weekly seminar late the next Spring. It kept getting put off because, as it seems, a good portion of the composition faculty at the time were not especially eager to listen to a 30 minute synthesizer piece, and I gathered some of them were not pleased with the direction I was heading. A few of them hung around to hear the whole thing. For all I know mine was among the first synthesized musics ever made by a student there, and possibly the first electronic music promulgated by an undergrad under their auspices. It was all pretty new at the time and it was a significantly stuffier department then than it is currently.

The title, in a tip of my hat to the Listening Library, consists of three index letters seen on a drawer of one of their card catalogs: A-KU. At the time I quipped that it stood for "Aaron Keyt, Undertaker". Many years later my wife picked "Aku" as the name of a volcanic mountain that plays a significant part in her Daughter of Magic "Deep River" fantasy series.

Recordings:

February 26, 1981 (from cassette dub of master tape)

Keith Eisenbrey · Aku 810226

Playing with Others (part 2) 1977 - 1981

 Choral Set (1981)

Your blogger in 1981, drinking ire

At the University I was occasionally pulled into other ensembles. I sang in a chamber chorus for a graduate student's choral music recital (fun!), pounded piano for a singer who was learning a fellow composition student's single-character opera (The Tell Tale Heart), and played piano in various UW Contemporary Group concerts. I tried unsuccessfully to learn Bizet's two-piano "Jeux d'enfant" with Christopher Mehrens for a class with Neal O'Doan, and finally signed up for the University Singers, as an easy ensemble credit. This led to my career on the opera stage, as illustrious as it was lengthy. The University was staging Dvořák's "Rusalka" and I was tagged for the chorus. I fit the bill perfectly: sack of meat, sang tenor (more or less). I was then bumped up to the "next level" chorus, where I remember singing in the first-tenor section in performances of Berlioz's "Requiem", Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", Beethoven's underrated "Mass in C Major", Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" and Orff's "Carmina Burana". I even tried my hand at writing music for choir and organ. "Choral Set" (1981) consists of an Introit, an Anthem, a Prayer Response and an Extroit, none of them successful.

Aaron Keyt in the early 80s

I would also, when asked, play fellow students' piano compositions. We may have already become acquainted and started hanging out together by then, but it is in this context, in 1980, that I first worked with Aaron Keyt, who had started in the program a few years after me. I played his composition "Seven Piece Match Set" for the weekly seminar and for the Young Composers' Concert that November. We have been collaborating steadily ever since. Much more later.

Neal Meyer, with hair grown back

In my last quarter, Spring of 1981, I took part in the UW Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble under the guidance of Stuart Dempster. I was excited to join this group after hearing them perform the Spring before and realizing, much to my surprise, that I could follow what they were doing. It wasn't that hard. I could do that! It was in this group that I first worked with Neal Meyer (now Neal Kosály-Meyer). Of course I had seen him around the music building - he was hard to miss, a bearded young man with a shaved head (not a common look back then) lugging a synthesizer around in a big blue case. I would have been dumbfounded had you told me that in a few years I would marry his sister. Again, much more later.

Music in School 1965-1977

your blogger on Mt. Pilchuck ca. 1976

I started playing drums in 5th Grade, under the tutelage of "Red" Eickhoff, the band teacher at Phantom Lake Elementary School. I could read music and knew how to practice so I moved quickly up the ranks, or "chairs" as they were called. And since I knew how to watch the director I was tasked with playing bass drum, starring as the eponymous "Mr. Boom Boom" in an early concert. I must have started private drum lessons at about that time. My mom was a musician and that is what one did. I remember a series of private drum teachers (whose names are forgotten) who had little studios in the back caverns of various local music stores, teaching rudiments and sticking technique - and eventually "drum set." Soon I was taking on younger students of my own. At some point I started taking orchestral percussion lessons from an older peer, Cameron MacIntosh. He introduced me to the mysteries of mallets, and that there are many ways to strike a triangle and operate a tambourine.

At Tillicum the band teacher was William Wicker, a jack-of-all-reeds who would regale us with stories of playing for the circus when they would come to town. I don't remember whether I started also playing in the orchestra right away in 7th Grade but it is likely. Marsha (sp?) McElvain was the instructor. One year we entered a student orchestra contest in Gresham, OR, and walked away with 1st Place in our division, beating out our feared cross-town rivals at Odle Junior High, who had won the year before. The trophy we brought back was easily 3 times the size of any of the trophies (all sports) in the case. Miss McElvain was quite pleased.

drawing by Paul Eisenbrey, 1977

At Sammamish High School I was in band (Gary Walker, director) for perhaps a year, perhaps just one semester, opting quickly for orchestra as being more amenable to my personality and schedule - we had been required to play in Pep Band for the first football game, at which I caught walking pneumonia and was out for three weeks. The orchestra and the ensembles were led by Norm Poulshock, who gave me several wonderful opportunities to show off in public (spooky xylophone solos and the like) - and even let me take the school's marimba home one summer to practice. There was a music theory class in those more enlightened times, led by Jack Halm (who also ran the choral program). It was as an assignment in his class that I wrote "Prelude for String Quartet." With my dad's help I even convinced the powers that be to count this music theory class as an "Occupational Ed" credit.

Columbia River

Among my peers during those years I remember Kathleen Ebneter (a guitarist, singer, and huge Sandy Denny fan who tried to introduce me to folk music, and who later went into Astronomy), the remarkably talented violist Karie Prescott (whom I escorted to see Götterdämerung when Seattle Opera first produced it - talk about your first dates!), the cellist sisters Anne and Meg Brennand, (all of whom are, I believe, still active professionally), cellist Larry Chu (went into medicine), my piano duet partner Dean Williamson (from whom I quickly learned that I was not the greatest pianist since sliced bread and who is now an esteemed Opera Director), my good friend in the Thalia percussion section Julia Calhoun (sadly lost track of), and a host of others. At various local piano competitions I was often placed in the same pool of contestants as Christopher Mehrens. For some reason my piano teacher seemed to think we were rivals for something, but when he appeared in my first theory class at the University of Washington we ended up hanging around together quite a lot, He provided invaluable assistance during the realization of my big synclavier work "AKU."

your blogger on Mt. Adams, 1977