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I had a lovely productive day in the recording studio (i.e. in my living room with the mics on) today, and you, O lucky readers of this blog, will see the results of that work over the next couple of weeks as I get the recordings edited and mastered.

Here\u2019s the first from today\u2019s session. This piece is my old, trusted standby. I wrote it back in college, in the winter and spring of 1998, and since then it\u2019s been the one piece of my own that I\u2019ve continually kept in my hands and head, always at the ready when somebody says, \u201cPlay something you wrote, Paul!\u201d It still remains satisfying to me: the shape is simple, but interesting little puzzles keep emerging from within.

People often ask if these are three specific places. They aren\u2019t. At the time, my mom was writing a lot about the \u201cidea of place,\u201d and I thought I\u2019d call these three little pieces musical places. So I have no explanation of what the piece \u201cmeans,\u201d but I will offer this: I often like to include a little quote at the end of my pieces, not an explanation, but an evocative image or idea to open the piece to exploration. This piece\u2019s epigraph is from the Mahabharata (William Buck\u2019s translation):

\n

As Lord Brahma sleeps, he hears something lost mentioned in his dream of life,\nand he remembers and it appears again among us as it was long ago.

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\n\n\n\n\n\nPaul Cantrell\n\n\n\n\u25b6\ufe0f\nThree Places\n\n\nPaul Cantrell, piano\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2b07\ufe0f\nDownload\n\n\n(5:09 / 6.4 M)\n\n\n\n

In all that time since I wrote this in 1998, only live audiences have had a chance to really experience the music \u2014 but with this recording, I finally had the sense of \u201cYes, that\u2019s it, that\u2019s Three Places.\u201d It\u2019s not just that it finally sounds realistic; it\u2019s the first time the music of the piece has really come through in the recording, from the three-dimensional layers of the opening, to the warmth of the whispered final low note against the cold of the final high one. (If you\u2019re curious, compare this recording to a very similar performance recorded at the first Keys Please, in the Macalester concert hall.)

I\u2019m sure it would make a traditionalist classical audio engineer turn apoplectic, but I just love the crazy huge sound I get with my unorthodox mic setup. Suddenly, all those long ringing sounds make sense in the recording, just as they do live. I can\u2019t praise recent advances in audio technology enough \u2026 or my beautiful piano, for that matter. I also must thank Matthew Smith and also Mike Olson, my audio engineer friends who helped me choose mics and do the EQ.

Do the recording justice, and listen on some good headphones \u2014 or, if you\u2019re lucky, a great pair of speakers.