Notes by the Way (Combining alignment with disjointure)

Combining alignment with disjointure in free improvisation:

The first instalment (Series #1) of recordings from the UglyBeautyCage Archives has been posted under www.archives.org. Check it out! You can download all these great tracks from UglyBeautyCage Archives - Series No. 1.

These 4 spontaneous compositions came into existence as the fruits of unrehearsed playing and spontaneous improvisation by the duo of Ralph Lichtensteiger and George Koehler, on Nov 21, 1999.

They are part of a larger blizzard of hardcore dada that evolved during a series of rehearsals, to investigate and develop material for our UglyBeautyCage project, and in preparation for two concerts in Frankfurt which were held on March 31 and April 1, 2000. There are no overdubs on these recordings.

Beginning To Feel Constructed:
Instruments used: electric guitar, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus

Dialogue 1:
Instruments used: electric guitar, bowed electric bass, flute, harmonica, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus

Dialogue 2:
Instruments used: electric guitar, electric bass, violin, harmonica, flute, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus, voice

Plant Trouble:
Instruments used: voice, electric bass, electric guitar, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus


For a selection of live recordings from the Zeil 5 Concert, Frankfurt, as well as photo documentation of the concert preparations, see under:
Zeil 5 Concert (Live, 2000) 2CD package








Photo © Ralph Lichtensteiger



More sound investigations, that form a part of the overall UglyBeautyCage project, can be found under the following:
Dialogue with John Cage (one)
UglyBeautyCage - Audio-visual-semantic incubator (a collection of TEXTS USED)
Dialogue with John Cage (two)
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage
Study Pieces 2002 & 2003
From Here To Emptiness


For more recordings from musique trouvé, see under musique trouvé, all available CD's

Notes By The Way (Interaction in Music)

"A captured moment of spontaneous creativity is worth more than a thousand hours of computerised perfection." - Louis Rey, 1997 (Liner notes to Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions (March 1969 - April '71) 2CDs, issued 1997.)

Live interaction between musicians breathes life into the recordings of compositions - surely that's not REALLY difficult to grasp?

These days, considering the possibilities of increased control that modern studio facilities offer, it should be possible to easily combine the creative processes such as those of jazz musicians in the Sixties, so that the interpretation of compositions profits from interaction, i.e., one should record compositions in a live ensemble manner without overdubbing, just as if the group where in a concert situation, as opposed to recording each instrument separately, and arranging the tracks on tape or disc.

Overdubs are all very well, and particularly useful if you compose in this way, but making music together with others boils down to interaction, that's more important than perfectionism.

I feel that the fruit of a group effort will always be among the most interesting results of creating music. Only control freaks prefer to play by themselves. And remain alone. Which can become rather sad, since isolation easily increases egocentricity.

Making music with others remains one of the most incredible ways of communicating, sometimes you can't even say WHAT it is you've been communicating, since the most important things that occur often happen without words. I suppose a better term for this collaborative process could be communion, as opposed to communication.
© George H. E. Koehler

Poems You See Before You Die (Excerpts)

NEWS! The current collaboration between artist Ray Rubeque and poet George Koehler (both residents of Frankfurt on Main) on their joint haiga book project is nearing completion.
Publication of POEMS YOU SEE BEFORE BEFORE YOU DIE is drawing nearer and nearer!

Here some appetizers from the forthcoming book:


daily Resurrection by ~Rektozhan on deviantART
© 2008 Ray Rubeque

The above picture is an expansion of the following senryu poem:

As life slips away
Let us dance towards our next
Spring in the morning

© 2008 George Henry Etnea Koehler

Sigh of Relief by ~Rektozhan on deviantART
© 2008 Ray Rubeque

The above picture is an extension of the following tanka poem:

A warm breeze blowing
Shivers over the skin of
A pond, girls in bloom
Like May flowers, shaking off
The bleakness of winter's gloom

© 2008 George Henry Etnea Koehler

Look for more pictures and poems from the forthcoming book under Rektozhan on deviantART

Ray, my man, your pictures really do look good on the net, even if I say so myself! Good man! I'm really looking forward to seeing our book in print.

Check out Ray's further work under Ray's Art

BROCKEN Ein Buch in der Entstehung

Die Entstehung eines neuen kollaborativen Buch-Projektes von Ralph D. Lichtensteiger und George H. E. Koehler kann auf der Webseite Brocken Dossiers verfolgt werden.

"Brocken" stellt diverse noch in der Entstehung sich befindende sowie bereits verfasste Einträge eines sich hinstreckendes "Work in progress" in einer Blog-Version vor.

Aus der Projektbeschreibung:
"Ausgehend von einer zentralen Annahme Sören Kierkegaards, die Wahrheit sei subjektiv und die Subjektivität sei die Wahrheit, fühlen wir uns berufen unsere Anmerkungen zu einer subjektiven Kultur- und Philosophiegeschichte zu leisten.

In unserem Zeitalter der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit bleibt das Individuum und die individuelle Perspektive dennoch das kostbarste Gut der Kultur, und wird zukünftig, in Opposition zur virulent orthodoxen Verabsolutierung im Prozess der Geschichtsschreibung, DAS KOSTBARE der Kulturgeschichte werden.

Als Gegenentwurf zur Erfindung der traditionellen Objektivität, wie sie uns von den Archiven der Herrschenden vorgegaukelt wird, und als Angriff auf die korrumpierende Subjektivität der Orhodoxie, erkämpfen und erschliessen wir mit dem Projekt "Brocken Dossiers" ein neues aphoristisches Terrain der Kulturbetrachtung."

Sound Voyages (Discography)

George during rehearsal for the Zeil 5 concert, Frankfurt-Main, in 2000 (Photo © Ralph Lichtensteiger, 2000).
Check out some of my collaborations with Ralph Lichtensteiger on CD, as well as Ralph's ever-expanding body of work - all available from musique trouvé, via mailorder at his website:

musique trouvé · CDs via mailorder

Some of the CD projects I have collaborated on are:

Triadic (2007)
The Beauty of Found Music (2007)
A Taste for the Secret (2001, released 2007)
Uglybeautycage / Dialogue with John Cage, Part 1 (2000/2001)
Uglybeautycage / Dialogue with John Cage, Part 2 (2000/2001)
Impossible Improvisations (2003)
Beginnings, Part 1 (2004)
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage (2 CDs) (2001)
Zeil 5 Concert (Live, 2000)
From Here to Emptiness & Other Compositions (2001)
Funeral Orchestra & Other Duos (2001/2002)
Louis Mink Duos (2001)
Study Pieces (2001/2002)
Unknown Centers (2002)

Study No.5 [01:02] [excerpt] :: Study Pieces (2001/2002) | By George Koehler and Ralph Lichtensteiger © 2008 by musique trouvé


Study No.4 [02:55] [excerpt] :: Study Pieces (2001/2002) | By George Koehler and Ralph Lichtensteiger © 2008 by musique trouvé


You can order these CDs via mailorder at Ralph Lichtensteiger's musique trouvé site

Collaborations, List of

Selected Collaborations/Projects with Ralph Lichtensteiger (Music, Music-Theatre, Prose, Poetry):

60 Pages for voice and piano (1989);
Cageware - The Revolution of Life and Language Vol. 1 (a study on John Cage’s relationship with language and literature) (1990);
I LIKE (1991);
Eine Woche mit Hegel (huge fragmentary torso) (1999);
Duos No. 1-45 (1999);
Charles Ives Songs (1999) · info on Ch. Ives;
Arbeit am Mythos (body of work) (1999);
Human Apparatus (for William S. Burroughs) (1999);
Zeil 5 live-concert in Frankfurt (2000);
Funeral Orchestra & Other Duos (2000);
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage (2001);
Louis Mink Duos (2001);
1 to 16 (2nd version) for three voices, amplified violin, electronics and percussion;
1 to 23 (2nd version) for voices, amplified violin and two CD-player (2001);
Three pieces for Toru Takemitsu (2002);
Do You Think Cage I, II and III (2002);
From here to emptiness (2002);
1-440 for speaker, piano and percussion (2002) [pdf];
Thoreau kills Buddha (emptiness that surrounds) (2002);
A Taste for the Secret (2002));
A Crown of Feathers (for Pierre Boulez) (2002);
Unknown Centers (2002);
Uglybeautycage - Dialogue with John Cage (2002-2005).

Listen to me reciting "Ugly Beauty Is" (orig. text ca. 1997, new text version 2001), taken from the Ugly Beauty Cage project (UBC), a "dialogue with John Cage":


Check out Ralph's site under: www.lichtensteiger.de