It’s A Process
Spiral Rhythm, in one form or another, has been making music together since around 1997. Our first album, I Am…, came out in 2000, starting us on our journey recording pagan music. We’ve run the gamut since then – live recording, studio recording, side projects, guest recording, a movie credit, and now we have our own set-up that we’re learning to use.
We’ve had the pleasure of knowing some stellar musicians in the pagan community. More than twenty years on countless stages has given us tremendous opportunities to make connections with singers, players, dancers, fans, and yes, even critics. We love what we do. We make magic with our music, invoke spirit and community with intent. It doesn’t just happen, though – it’s a process.
All Together, Now
Our first studio recording attempts were…umm…well, to put it politely, rough. We’ve always been a live band, and none of us had any studio experience. Somewhere, buried deep in a file cabinet or closet, is a copy of that first attempt, We don’t speak of it.
After some trial and error, we found that we do best recording together but separately. We first began with the now defunct Musiphysical Productions, recording as a group in a living room. We learned a lot about recording as a group (bleedover, volume control, how many times do we have to start over because someone sneezed???) and began the practice of making a scratch track that individuals would then sing along with, laying down each separate vocal and instrument track to give us the best control of our sound.
We also learned that recording sometimes means letting go of that control – where an individual may be able to continually listen and alter their mix, getting a group of varying numbers from various places together to do the mixing work? Not so feasible. Still, invaluable experience was garnered, and we’re forever grateful that we were privileged to learn together.
Eventually we chose to stretch our wings – and finances – to record in a more professional, purpose-built recording studio and found Rob Kuhlman and Root Cellar Studio. Working with Rob was and is good fun. Because he had various rooms, we could record together again, go along a little faster, helpful when you are actually paying the engineer!
Singing together gave us more of the feeling of being on stage, too, where our hearts and souls live. More lessons learned about being readiness, about mixing, about organizing ourselves as individuals and a group.
Rob and Root Cellar moved out of state for a bit (he’s back, now) so we had to muddle along on our own. These days we are continuing to learn as we wrangle diverse schedules and work, one song at a time, on recording new material for release.
We’re back to everyone singing into one mic for a scratch track, then recording one at a time. Kira has dedicated a portion of a downstairs room in her home for our practice and recording, Ric and Richard are learning recording software, Ric and Kira built carpeted panels into a booth, and all of us are making our vocals and instrumentals as tight as possible to lessen the number of times we need to smooth over rough spots.
You can see us goofing around…er…working hard on our next project in the photos included here – it’s good to get back to making music after the pandemic lull. This will be the last album on which PJ sings, so we’re taking our time to get it extra right. You can read more about PJ and what she meant to us in our previous post here on Pagan Song.
Ric is doing our mixing and we all listen and offer thoughts. More lessons? You betcha! Recording pagan music is WORK! Balancing everything, removing artifacts, and oh, my, some spectacular flubs for a blooper reel! We don’t always agree on the mixing of a piece. Opinions? We has ‘em. Sometimes the computer just eats a track, or something inexplicable happens, and we’re left scratching our heads. It’s fun, interesting, and frustrating, but we’re all in it together.
All the Difference
There is something about a studio recording. As mentioned above, we began as a live band, and have several live recordings in the mix of our albums. Live albums reflect our stage energy and our interaction with our audience. If you’ve been to one of our concerts, you’ve heard Kiki say it – we don’t perform FOR you, we perform WITH you, and the better you are, the better we are.
So why record?
The studio lets us polish our sound, tighten it up, and even play with it a little, but we know that the presence of our fans fuels us. We know other performers feel it, too, that exchange of energy that is incomparable to anything else.
We want our music to travel where we cannot. We want people to be able to take it home and listen, use it, share it.
We cannot always record live, and some songs aren’t good for stage but are fantastic for studio. We love being part of the soundtrack of people’s lives – we’ve been there at births, deaths, weddings, through cancer treatments, at rituals and celebrations.
We’ve been the first song a newborn heard and the last song that carries a traveler through the veil. We pour ourselves into every song, live or studio, knowing that we’re sending it out into the world where someone will hear it and carry it with them.
When we’re tired, frustrated, lost, or struggling, knowing that someone heard one of our songs and was lifted up? Makes all the difference.
Jump In With Both Feet
There’s not much about spirit or magic in all of this, more about process, but…the process IS magic. Creating anything is an act of spirit. Faith? Faith is believing that you have something worth sharing and putting it out into the world. There’s no halfway, when it comes to this process. Music is worship with drum, voice, and will, and you have to jump in with both feet knowing that it will keep you afloat.
For more articles about the craft of pagan music, check out our Sacred Music How-to page