Pierced Ears Recording Company is located on a neighborhood street in Ballard, Washington. Pacific Northwest in all its glory this studio has a small grassy front yard and is home to Aaron C. Schroeder who records and mixes Seattle bands like The Wimps, Ex Licks, and Slow Elk. In late summer of 2018, Moon Palace walked past the salmon colored door through the shady backyard and into the basement studio to record their second full length album, Shadowcast.
In this particular session we focused on the songs “Embers”, “The Cave” and “Characters”. These pieces were intentionally left semi-structured so that we could create together during the recording process. Being open to the unknown we left space for that undeniable force to emerge in the studio. The song “Characters” was the least structured. Cat and Carrie are the twin masterminds of song writing and because they hadn’t fully formed the structure I couldn’t record the drums first. We decided to try a new method where Cat and Carrie would finish writing the song structure in the studio while recording bass and guitar to a click track, along with scratch vocals.
After this process was complete Aaron set up a Gretsch Renown maple snare and two toms with bandanas laid on top of each drum head for a warm muted tone. I used mallets for an even softer attack. An 18” Paiste crash ride and a Keplinger 22” ride were my cymbals of choice on this album. Kraut rock drums were of influence along with the lo-fi drums from the first Julie Ruin record. In my headphones was a click track and the music Cat and Carrie recorded. I played through for about five passes and while doing this I was adding to the dynamics of the song. I knew the band wanted a minimal beat for the first half so I honored that while still unleashing the rolling thunderous toms that wanted to be known. After a while I was in the zone and totally forgot about the structure. I could have done that all day! It felt powerful to stand and tower over the drums while playing. I think this would be fun to do at a live show. Maybe a dance move or two would even come over me at some point.
Towards the end of the song the pace picks up and a dance beat emerges. We changed the set-up of the drums for this portion of the song. During a previous recording session Aaron recorded samples of each one of my drum sounds from my full kit. Full open hi-hat, three quarter open hi-hat, tight hat, thick hat, dead snare, dry snare, wet snare, fat kick, full kick, thin kick, tom one and tom two were the sounds he sent me. I was able to transfer them into my Alesis drum pad to practice with at home. It’s been a handy way to write music at home without having to get together in the physical form. Carrie and I have been sharing music via our iPhones to create drum and bass rhythms for this album. One Saturday night I create a DIY home set-up by playing her iPhone bass line recording through my UE Roll Bluetooth speaker. Next, I ran my Alesis drum pad through my vintage Goodwill-bought home speakers and took a video of my performance with my laptop to send back to the band. What came of this process will be the foundation of our song “Bold” which we will be recording in our next studio session.
After recording the acoustic drums for “Characters” I walked out of the conventional recording space into a room with a couch and the motherboard. Aaron had loaded my drum samples into an Akai Professional Midi Production Center MP 2000XL drum machine. I sat on the couch with the drum machine and realized I really had no idea what I was doing and there was this moment where I froze thinking, “I don’t know how to play drums like this.” At home I was using sticks on my much larger drum pad and with this machine I would be using my fingers on tiny pads. I pushed through the muck of self-doubt and lack of ideas and focused on Aaron’s excitement. He encouraged me to just start tapping. I started with a simple tight hat and added the kick and snare. The beat ended up coming to life on its own and after a few passes I added the full open hat going off at the end to seal the deal with a party vibe. Surprisingly the end product is something I can actually play on my sit-down kit. I think breaking it all down and playing the song in smaller chunks initially felt weird because I felt far away from the structure but close to the vibe. I’m excited about the end result because the beat is familiar, but the quality of sound was affected and I learned a new process.
“Characters” is about trying not to worry too much about what others think or being cool. Looking back I inadvertently experienced this while attempting to play the new drum gear. In the song Carrie sings “We all seek relevance but try not to revel in unwinding your character”. I’m adding gut punching snare accents after her words during that chorus and when the end arrives Carrie says “We look in amazement, we drown them out”. It’s about letting go on stage, enjoying the experience of playing and not worrying about crowd judgement or what you think may be happening out there.