In a Perfectly Wounded Sky (remastered)

Published: Oct. 20, 2005, 10:13 p.m.

Here\u2019s an older piece of mine, newly remastered. I\u2019ve gone back and forth in the past on whether I like this one, but I like it very much today, so I\u2019m publishing it!

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The title is based on my mishearing of a Tori Amos lyric (from Cruel). I generally go for titles that are evocative and somehow seem to fit, without actually having any clear meaning that listeners will try to impose on the piece \u2014 I want the title to be an opening into the music, not a box to stuff it in.

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Another one of those \u201copenings into the music\u201d is the little epigraphs I often put at the end of the piece. I almost always choose both the quote and the title after writing the music, so they\u2019re more a reflection on where I ended up than an explanation of what I was doing. The epigraph for this piece is a hokku by Masahide:

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Now that my storehouse
has burned down, nothing
conceals the moon.

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\nPaul Cantrell\n
\nIn a Perfectly Wounded Sky\n
\nPaul Cantrell,\npiano\n
\n\u266b\nDownload\n(5:04 / 6.3 M)\n
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For those following along with the audio engineering side of things, I used a touch of a look-ahead limiter on this one (which I usually don\u2019t do), because of the huge variance between the attacks on the harsher chords and the very quiet intervening sections. I also cranked the scaling on the Gain Shaper a hair higher than usual.

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For those interested in music notation, here is the score. Fun with parallel fifths!