Tempered Magazine December 2013 // January 2014 // Issue 01 | Page 23

THE BROKEN MIRROR OF MEMORY, PART II
By Paul Cantrell

In The Broken Mirror of Memory Part

The point of these effects is not to

II, you may notice the bass clarinet

stand strikingly apart from the rest

has a talking quality throughout this

of the music, but to integrate with it.

piece that involves some unusual

Jimi Hendrix has had a big influence

sounds you may not have heard

on me. What he did so well was to

before. You’ll hear a few bends and

take an “extended technique” and

microtonal adjustments, and in many

make it feel not extended at all, but

spots, Pat O’Keefe actually sings

perfectly integrated into the musical

through the body of the instrument

expression, utterly a part of the

while playing. This does not produce

syntax.

two distinct notes as you might
expect; instead, the voice and reed
combine in a strange and beautiful
way. You’ll also hear some damped
notes in the piano, where I touch the
end of the string while the hammer
strikes. In the mixing process, I used
a variety of techniques to accentuate
these strange sounds and make
them even a bit more strange and
emotionally immediate.

I was also thinking of some traditional
Bulgarian singing w \