Brian Brock
Bach, Brouwer, etc.
Llobet - Cançó del Lladre
Bach - 1st Cello Ste. Allemande
Brock - Field Dance
Hear here.
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A classical guitar album with works by Bach, Brouwer, Llobet, Valderrabano, and myself. The complete Bach 4th Cello Suite and Leo Brouwer's Preludios Epigramaticos are the main things here. The Llobet pieces and the Allemande from Bach's 1st Cellos Suite are also really good works and pretty decent recordings. Also has a couple from a new bunch of classical guitar pieces I'm writing.
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Saw Horse
Hail
Waiting For the Dust to Settle
track two
It's Rusty
A Nut on a River
(machinetoy #10)
Too Old for the Oldies
Emily 35
track eight
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2010 album. Contains good songs, careful guitar playing, other points of interest. Donkey by Lea Brock.
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Saw Horse
Raised By Robots (08)
Raised By Robots
Bonus Tracks:
Backfield Hag by Tim Morgan
AM (Etc) by Zach Parker
Pennybox by Z.P.
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Raised By Robots is a radio opera, depicting a radio which slowly comes to understand that it is sentient, then realizes that, as a radio, it is trapped in a metal box, unable to use its sentience to any fruitful purpose. Roughly speaking, the piece has the form of a continuously shifting instrumental music/sound stream, which begins in pure electronic sound and moves towards acoustic instrument recordings. Then there's a song.
This album was quite a long time in the making - I originally conceived it in around 1998, gradually understood a way to pull it off (more or less), and only became able to accomplish the end result in the last several years. The earliest recording here is from 2003 or 2004.
The album on CD is divided up into tracks, and it was created as a series of independent pieces, but for now on the web I'm only providing the album in one piece. There are some prototypes below, though.
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Saw Horse
Marsh Marigolds (07)
Why
Letting Her Think
Gone
(click the flower for SHMM play-page)
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Marsh Marigolds is a songs album by Sawhorse. It's Wisconsin music, with friendship in the form of Tim playing drums - his singing also pulls "Gone" back from the brink of gloom. "Death Valley" seems popular, so you might like to look for that one, and it's very big with sandy words, but I'm consistenly happiest with the grinding confusion and clarinet breakdown of "Why". The thumb-hating clarinet is also part of the big washdown banjo hop after "Letting Her Think" gets its song out of the way. "There's One Airplane in the Sky" surfaces differently here than in the time of 14 Tiles - there's Tim's drums, but he also told me about Dietrich Gosser's interpretation of the lyrics, which of course was awesome - eventually the words suddenly changed in a way that enables bivalency, which is my favorite thing. The other 4 songs, "You're So Sure", "Sit Down", "Stay", and "Difficult Run Farm" are Tim-less. "Difficult..." is a kind of mixed-meter country thing about kids; "YSS" is a song of loyalty (look rightward for sheet music). So, listen pleasure only, and all that.
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Brian Brock
Study (06)
Study
Middle School Bus
Happy Birthday Emily (32)
Mouvement de Priere Religieuse, by Fernando Sor
Up Through the Anthill
River Song
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Study is my classical guitar album. Tim Morgan plays
Drums on my only all instrumental "Happy Birthday
Emily"* (my original vocals, here played by Tim on trumpet,
were just ridiculous). Not a Sawhorse album. Check out Lea's drawings for this album:
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Brian Brock
John Duarte Carols
The first Nowell(arr. Duarte)
click to hear the set of Duarte's Carol arrangements
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John Duarte's arrangements of Christmas music are as good as I have ever heard. His voice leading and harmonic choices bring out the music in the carols perfectly. He keeps things easily approachable technically but does not make musical sacrifices.
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Brian Brock
2010 Live Performances
Reverse-Binoculars from 12 Oct 10 (complete show)
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live at Revolver Records cold discoveries, sweet treats, hardwood floors, crows versus crows, mothers of the world.
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Country City
Miniatures(05)
Robots Unplugged - Scriabin Prelude - Mr. Stumbles
Ramen Stomp - The Cop Who Ruined Christmas
Country/City
Hello Hank - High School Poetry
The Hag Imprint
Roll Down
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Country/City was a band destined to be named Goodbye Kitty. While thwarting Fate, we played two acoustic guitars, two trumpets, and one drum kit, with great fellowship. In a typical performance, freewheeling modernism dissolved into stalwart assaults on pop culture.
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B.T.Blue and the Trained Professionals (08)
Me and My Friends (have Asperger's)
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Awesome B.T.Blue and the Trained Professionals October surprise! Wonder Style! Eat the notes!!
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Brian Brock
Live at the General Store (08)
Letting Her Think
14 Tiles
I've Got a Plan
Get Serious With
Raised By Robots
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Four of the songs I played at the General Store, 24 may 2008.
"Letting Her Think" is a framework.
"14 Tiles" is a slow, weird instrumental thing.
"I've Got a Plan" is a simulated big freakout.
"Get Serious With" is a big and small.
"Raised By Robots" is here without electronics.
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Happy Birthday Emily, 2008 (08)
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It's my sister Emily's birthday again.*
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B.T.Blue & the Trained Professionals
The Buttons (08)
Cucumbers
Radishes
Very Nice (explicit lyrics!)
Grean Beens
Hermes
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B.T.Blue and the Trained Professionals present 5 tracks of pure fun for vegetables, young persons, and the general public. From the relative calm of Radishes to the stomach upsetting Grean Beens, something will be sure to please everyone on your wish list. Watch out for the politically charged Cucumbers! The acerbic, acidic, and Hasidic - pick one - are sure to find food for thought here. Note that Very Nice explicitly refers to acts of reproduction without using swears, cusses, or bad words - what daring! Let Hermes hammer your shield into a relaxing plowshare as you drift away into the darkest regions of your mind.
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Saw Horse (other things)
Ten Tun Truck (07)
While Delano Was Here (07)
Yelling Dog (07)
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These are prototypes from the design phase of Raised by Robots, a radio opera. Delano Quonset-huts tractors where we live. Temporary music.
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Slop Den (03)
I Love You (03)
She's So Shy (02)
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These are some old songs offered up by special request. Slop Den could be seen
as the defining Saw Horse song, and it was around that time, while I was cutting tile for
artist Sandra Miller in Taos, NM, that the name "Sawhorse" came to me. Check out the hot
Beatles rip-offs.
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Emily Everything (HBE 34) (07)
Two Nutses Bub (07)
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Happy Birthday, Emily - 2007 *
Two Noises, Tuna Says. What do tuna say? "Bubble." The radio edit only features one of the noises. To get serious: this is an attempt to simulate radio static as heard driving around - FM. AM is way cooler, but I felt it would be better to start small.
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b brock
Dylan Songs and Heresies (07)
Going, Going, Gone
You're a Big Girl Now
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
He Wasn't Any Friend Of Mine
Nobody 'Cept You
When You Paint Your Masterpiece
I Shall Be Released
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In May 2007 I played at Bobfest, an annual Bob Dylan birthday celebration in Spring Green, WI.
Culturally speaking, I see Dylan as a translator of early recorded folk music for those who have succumbed to the intellect.
I have probably used my classical guitar to separate the songs from their musical roots while developing the
structure inherent in the lyrics. The heretical material here, "He Wasn't Any Friend..." and
"When You Paint..." are songs I wrote while conscious of Dylan.
See the cover.
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Minuet 1 from Cello Ste 3, by Bach
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"Melodic-style" banjo playing on a perfect Bach piece.
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Saw Horse
14 Tiles (05)
14 Tiles
Get Serious With
Theres One Airplane In The Sky
Snow Falls
No I'm Playing This
14 Tiles (take 2)
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14 Tiles combines determined solo guitar playing with raucous thought-explosion and songs of outdoor scrutiny. Don't be fooled by the folky beginning of "Snow Falls", it will destroy your speakers. "There's One Airplane In The Sky" is the hit. The first Saw Horse album, before Saw-Horse was Sawhorse. Get the whole album by clicking on the airplane picture.
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 B. T. Blue & the Trained Professionals
Rain Off (04)
In the Way (with Lea B)
Avocadoes
Happy Birthday Emily (31)
Carrots
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B. T. Blue & the Trained Professionals is me and my machines. Except my wife Lea wrote and produced the first song on Rain Off, "In the Way", which is really more of a Saw-Horse song. Click on the goldfish head to get the whole album.
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Brian Brock
Comma 3 Oct 10
w/ Collective Urgency art zine
Comma 2000
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Comma is a piece in which I use a looper and e-bow to create a drone with no articulation or attack. I then attempt to layer onto it a drone exactly one fifth higher, and then another, until I have traveled the entire circle of fifths (A E B F# C# G# D# Bb F C G D A). Because no power of three is equal to any power of two (ie no series of fifths can create a tone equal to any created by a series of octaves based on the same tone), the final A is slightly sharper than the initial. The interval between these two A notes is called a "comma". If I have performed adequately, there should be an audible difference between this final A and the original, which I play at the end, layering the two A notes against each other.
In practice, much of the musical value lies in what happens when I fail to create perfect intervals or create pure drones, as the various constructive and destructive interferences between frequencies create melodies and rhythms. However, even a perfectly performed version of Comma will have texture, as the overtones of each note interact with others'. Also, many of the notes are dropped an octave, which causes their fundamental tones to directly clash against predecessors (as for example G# against A).
Collective Urgency was an art zine created by Jesse Hoover and some friends of his. There were a bunch of reads and looks and listens.
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;)
;)
Now find the secret bonus psychedelic trash picture.
;)
Voyages On Vinlandia
Zach Parker
The Bastard Duo