The Songwriting Process 🍂
Happy August! 🍂
Greetings from the Pacific Northwest, where Autumn is already creeping in. After a couple of brief trips to the Oregon Coast for the beautiful Oregon Coast Music Festival and a jaunt to the Midwest for a return to the Iowa Irish Fest which was great fun, we're enjoying a few more weeks at home (in which to search for Jimothy and eat as many blackberries as we can) before setting off for the Fall Tour.
As many of you know, last August we rolled out the release of our newest album, "Moment in Time.” Since then, everything has moved so quickly between tours and promoting the album and then tours again and of course the inevitable "life stuff" curveballs that happen to us all, that it feels just like yesterday that it came out. Because of that, we have only just gotten around to being able tell some of the stories behind the songs on the album :)
Let's start at the beginning.
The Writing Process: "Moment in Time"
The title track came together at the end of January, 2024. The song was inspired by a phrase in Japanese, "Ichigo Ichie," (I believe it is originally a philosophy from the tea ceremony) which roughly translates to "one moment, one meeting." It's a reminder to cherish your encounters -- every time you meet someone or something, it will be different. The place you are in your life, the place they are in their lives, the season, etc.
I thought it was a beautiful way to look at things, and to appreciate the power of a moment. From there, the song also became about how each moment also contains an element of choice; small choices, big decisions. These can be tiny steps forward, or giant leaps that can change the course of your life.
No pressure!
Once the song was written, we were able to make a demo recording, but then had to get back on the road for a month of travel for shows. By the time we were finally able to begin the recording, it was April, 2024.
The Arrangement Process
Coming up with the words and song structure is the first step, then it's time to work together. This step is one of the most creative (and fun!) parts of the process. All three of us take turns working on the song. We try on different tones and textures, harmonies and instrumental parts in order to find which ones enhance the song. Not everything works, and many, many ideas are tried and discarded in this phase.
This is when things like vocal harmonies, background vocals and strings parts are usually added. Drum parts are figured out, and a lot of the musical ideas between verses, pre-choruses and choruses are created. A violin solo is composed, and any special effects or additional percussion parts are added. This part seems to get more complex on every new project! However, this is followed by a series of sessions where we go through and "edit" the arrangement. One of the biggest parts of the process is actually now taking things OUT of the song -- to make sure only what is most serving the song remains.
Once this is done, it's time to record!
The Recording Process
We record each instrument separately.
Usually this means guitar first, followed by the lead part: violin, lead vocal, or whistle. After that, every single instrument, each violin part, each mandolin part, each djembe part, is recorded one by one until it is captured as well as we can get it.
Often, instruments are also doubled. This doesn't mean a copy and paste in a software program -- it means recording the same real instrument again in order to add texture and to balance out the stereo field (your left and right ears while listening). This can be challenging to make sure all the instruments are as in tune with each other as possible, since our classical training pride means we never use auto-tune or pitch-correcting software.
Is it time-intensive? Yes! Is it also challenging and fun? Yes! :)
The Official Music Video
Halfway through the recording of other songs for the album, we started thinking about the video for "Moment in Time." We were all excited by the idea of illustrating how a full year, with all four seasons, could fit inside the "moment" of a song. It sounded crazy to return in all four seasons to film, but also exciting. And we were definitely over a year away from being done with the rest of the album -- so why not?
So we filmed most of the video in the summer of 2024, then returned in Autumn (on the same trip as the filming of the "Storyteller" video), then again in the Winter between stops on the Christmas tour, and once more in the Spring, where we were rewarded with both a spectacular showing of wildflowers (they were so enthusiastically sprinkled across the hills they almost looked fake, but I promise they are not!) and a beautiful rainbow, marking a truly memorable moment in time.
You can watch the finished video right here:
We hope this was interesting! Do you enjoy getting to hear the stories behind songs? Which song would you like to hear about next?
We'll see you down the road,
Greta, Willow and Solana
The Gothard Sisters
P.S. this blog post is an excerpt from the Gothard Sisters’ monthly newsletter, the Story Times. If you’d like to receive these updates, sign up here.
Listen to the Album
(It's finished now! You can listen to the whole thing!)
