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Richard Minsky

NOTES

Stockport, New YorkRichard Minsky

2014

This is a free sample of Notes to give a sense of what is insideIf you would like to order a copy or learn more about this edition

CLICK HEREto go to the web page

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Copyright ©2014 Richard MinskyAll rights reserved

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CONTENTS

Musical Chair 8Freedom of Choice 17Notes 18Musical Theory 23Phoneme Riffs 24I Wanna Be Riveted 33So Where’s the Theory? 45Adventures in Ku-Ta-Ba Wa-Do 47MIDI Compositions 58

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Musical ChairIn 2006 a cherry tree went down in a lightning storm. I cut it into logs and took them to a sawmill, with the notion of making a mud-room bench. One log where the trunk branched was sliced for the sides [photo on facing page].

In 2012 I was clearing out the attic and rediscovered a small collection of organ pipes acquired in the 1980s.

This was shortly after Yale bought a little manuscript book of my notes from the 1970s and 80s titled Musical Theory, and I had started producing a facsimile edition [see p. 23]. It all came together in a flash: these were the materials for for my second reading chair that turns a book into a full-body experience [see p. 17]. I did a pencil sketch of what that might look like, changed the title of the book to Notes, and got to work.

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Left: natural edge planks from a log cut specifically to be bench sides.

Above: planing and cutting the cherry planks.

Below: Assembling the parts.

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Freedom of ChoiceThree Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-BroidoNotes is my second work that enhances the reading experience by incorporating the construction of a specific chair with sound as an integral element of a bookbinding. Freedom of Choice (2009) was developed for the exhibition Somewhere Far From Habit, sponsored by Longwood University. On the inside of the head restraint are three electrodes, and one electrode goes to the leg. An MP3 player on the head restraint plays my reading of the three poems, two of which concern shotgun suicides and one an electrocution. On the back of the chair is a cabinet containing a 20 gauge shotgun, a Manila hangman’s noose, a wakizashi sword, razor blades, poison and a hypodermic syringe.

Freedom of Choice : Three Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-BroidoRichard Minsky, Stockport, NY, 2009.Edition of 5, printed inkjet on J. Barcham Green 1976 handmade paper. Copy No. 1 [above] is bound in dark teal goatskin with 23K gold title, chained to an oak electric chair built by Minsky. 73 x 26 x 24Copies numbered 2 to 5 are bound in limp leather with gold title, no chair.

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NotesIn September, 2014 I took a small electronic tablet with a pipe organ app on a Caribbean cruise, spending most of it in the cabin composing pieces for the limited set of 23 notes in the collection of organ pipes [see p. 8]. I liked the little notepads that were in the cabin, and wrote 33 fragments on them. Some are interpretations of existing melodies varied to fit the constraints, others are new. Given the format of the paper it was easier to write the names of the notes and a simplified system for duration and chords than to use five-line staff notation.

Phot

o by

Bar

bara

Sla

te

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On returning to my studio I started playing the compositions on a MIDI keyboard, to work on varia-tions and print them as sheet music. Some of the fragments worked well, others needed notes that were not in the set of pipes. I decided to re-tune several pipes to different notes than their original intention, making C#

3 from C3, F#

3 from F3 , etc. This changed everything. Some of the compositions were still playable, others not, but a greater range of modulation became possible. I started compos-ing variations of the unplayable tunes that fit the new set of notes.

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Musical TheoryForty years ago I made a small blank book and wrote the title Musical Theory on the first page. For a couple of decades I jotted down ideas for compositions and random thoughts. When Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library acquired it in 2012 I scanned all the pages and began production of a limited edition facsimile.

After starting the musical chair [see p. 8] and writing compositions limited to the 23 notes of the pipes, the scope of the edition expanded to include other related projects. The Center for Book Arts scheduled an exhibition of Musical Theory as a Featured Artist Project for October, 2014. By mid-August I realized that the title was no longer appropriate and changed it to Notes. The publication date for this book was set to November 14 to coincide with the “Artist Talk and Reception” at the CBA.

The front endpaper of Musical Theory.

The images above and on the following pages are actual size.

The front cover.

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Phoneme Riffsevoke musical genres, like Cajun, Funk and Punk.

Cheegaagaagacheega

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ah doo ackah doodoo ah’ dodeedadee doo ah doowa do

doddle ah dooweahdo de addleahdodleydodee ooh ooh wah

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ooh doodle oohooh doodle oohooh doodleooh doodledoodle oodle oodle oodleooh wha wha oodle

hah hicky hahhicky ha hahicky hicky

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wha dooacka ackadoooo-wahdooackaacka dooo ` –

,..-doo laaaaa doe dee d o oooo doe doo acka acka woooo

doe doo ackado doo ackaacka ackdoo doowhadooahdooohhh whohodoooo

___ ___

___ ___

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Musical Theory also has song titles and band names. On May 5, 1981 I pulled from the above spread and performed I Wanna be Riveted at the opening of my exhibition at the Al-lan Stone Gallery. The band was called Old Man Rivet and the Rivetheads. I had planned to issue a 45 of it in an edition of 100, but the record pressing company refused to produce the discs after listening to it. Then the tape recording disappeared.

Meanwhile I had printed the record jackets, designed by Pat Gorman, with a photo by Peter Seidler of me performing as Old Man Rivet. Facing is one of the original sleeves, printed on a Vandercook letterpress in 1981 at the Center for Book Arts in New York City and varnished on an offset press at Open Studio in Barrytown, NY.

I wanna be riveted

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I Wanna Be Riveted

Richard Minsky May, 1981

I

want to be riveted right

between my eyes. I want

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I Wanna Be Riveted

to be ri ve ted, come

as a sur prise. I

want to be ri vet ed deep

in side my brain. I want to be

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So Where’s the Theory?There isn’t one. Follow the vibes. People have been saying that since before string theory, but now it has added meaning. Knowledge of our ignorance has increased. How many dimensions, over what distance, do thoughts and feelings travel? At what speed? We feel dark matter we can’t see through gravity. We know it’s all around us. How does music interact with dark energy? Some tunes make people dance. Others pull the heartstrings.

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Adventures In Ku-Ta-Ba Wa-DoGerald Jackson, an artist whom I had always admired, showed me a book he had created with pages of pastel color fields interspersed with pages of his poetry. I thought it would be a great project to undertake as a small edition, and developed a method for creating color field images by printing a flat linoleum block on the motorized 8x12 Chandler & Price platen press, using crumpled paper and bits of paper collage as makeready.

To translate the handwritten poetry into typography and retain the intentionally varied word spacing of the original, I hand set the text from foundry type in Goudy Oldstyle. To coordinate the impression quality of the type with the color prints, I made offset plates from a proof of the typogra-phy and printed the poems on a Multilith at the nearby printing shop of Fred D’Alauro, from whom I had gotten the C&P.

Peggy Kelly, one of my printing students, did much of the presswork on the color prints, hand-feeding the paper after I did the makeready and Gerald had approved it.

The original manuscript had no title, and Gerald suggested Adventures in Ku-Ta-Ba Wa-Do, based on one of the poems. As I read the book I heard music in my head, and moving through the colors was like listening to an oratorio or opera.

I wrote a score, assembled a group of musicians, and booked time at Mercury Studios on 57th Street, with recording engineer Chuck Irwin. The score follows the color sequence of the prints and uses the poems as a libretto. The musicians had the color prints on their music stands, as the score called on them to interpret the colors

We recorded four or five takes of each section of the work on 8-track tape, made selections, and mixed down to a stereo master just under 40 minutes long. I had 100 copies made as LP records — 50 to go with the edition of the book and 50 to sell separately and to send to radio stations. I hand set type for the record jacket, printed them letterpress in silver ink, and the musicians signed each one.

In 1973 the book, record and score were issued. I sent copies of the record to three alternative ra-dio stations: WKCR (Columbia University), WNYU (New York University), and the independent WBAI. All three played the recording in its entirety. In January 1975 we staged a performance based on the recording at Ornette Coleman’s Artist House, on Prince Street in New York’s SOHO.

Installation photo at the exhibition Material Meets Metaphor, Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University, 2010.

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MIDI CompositionsOriginally played on a Yamaha KX88 MIDI keyboard and uploaded to minsky.com in the 1990s under the head-ing “Post-Modem Music.” These transcriptions are inexact visuals intended as stimulation for improvisation. For two years in the mid-1980s I played with the quintet of Agrupacion Amigos del Tango en Nueva York, which met monthly in a church basement. That music inspired the two compositions presented here. If playing on a piano, free use of the sustain pedal is suggested.

TangoRichard Minsky July, 1995transcribed November, 2014

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Tango

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Tango

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Tango

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Tango

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Tango