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 \