Songwriter Sunday

Wednesday is the new Sunday, right?

Not “Are You Afraid of the Dark Part 3”?!

Don’t worry. There will be more installments. I need some more time to feel ready to share more chapters of my life (that part at least). I appreciate your patience, friends.

Fighting perfection

To tell you the truth, it’s been incredibly challenging for me to keep up with weekly posts lately. I’ve been in the studio for 3 days with my Weary Ramblers partner, and just finished a 4 show weekend. Piano tunings and lessons have been sprinkled into the mix wherever they fit.

And even though I know all of this to be true, I’m still beating myself up. Because when I commit to something, I’m all in. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground for me in anything I do in life. When I’m playing a show, my entire soul is in that performance. When I’m tuning a piano, my ears hear nothing but the beat patterns between each interval. When I’m teaching, all I’m thinking about it how to serve the student. When I’m spending time with someone, my focus is solely on them. And when it came to Substack, I knew I wanted to commit to weekly postings.

So here I am…sharing with all of you…that I want to be writing. I want to be sharing my life with you. But I also recognize that I’m human, and there are only so many hours in the day. And I will do my best to post regularly.

The recording studio process

Chad Elliott and I just finished up 27 hours of recording at Golden Bear Records. We have a few more days of recording left for our second album, but things are already coming to life. We have some special guest announcements to make that I can’t wait to share (be on the lookout)!

After laying down all of the foundational parts for all 12 songs, we’ve been able to get to the secondary creative part of the process (I say secondary because the initial writing of the song is where it all begins). This is when the production part of the process kicks in, and you get to decide what new instruments will be introduced into each song.

I love being in the studio. I especially love recording at Golden Bear Records. I’ve worked extensively with Bryan Vanderpool, recording countless string parts for various songwriters and artists of all genres. I am typically asked to either play a pre-written violin and/or viola part, play an improvised fiddle solo or stack a string orchestra.

Recording pre-written music is a fun time machine moment for me. It reminds me of the gratitude I feel for all of my classical music training. The knowledge has served me in many ways outside of the classical music world. The ear training part of my classical training (as well as having perfect pitch) makes it so that I can play back a melody that Bryan sings to me on the spot. It has made the recording process incredibly efficient. All of the music I had to memorize on a daily basis touring with Barrage 8 has made it so that I can make seemingly non-sensical lead sheets. They have just enough information, because I’ll remember what else is being asked of me.

With improvised fiddle solos, I always ask the artist what kind of approach they want me to take. For example: do you want me to sound folky, country, bluegrass-y, rockin’, bluesy or jazzy? Do you want me to play sparsely or fill space more than not? All of these approaches are vastly different in my world, including the way I imply the harmony, how I phrase and what kind of vocabulary I use. Sometimes the artist doesn’t know exactly what they want, so I take different approaches with each “take.”

String orchestra stacking has become a speciality of mine and Bryan’s at Golden Bear. We seem to have it down to a science. Every part (let’s say there are 4 different music lines) will be recorded 6 times. Many times, we’ll do 2 octaves of each part as well. And with each take, I move my location to the microphone slightly, and will change my type of vibrato (wide, narrow, fast, slow, none). We don’t want it to sound like an orchestra played by Kathryn. We want it to sound like an orchestra of many. Changing the way I play and my proximity to the microphone allows for each take to sound a bit different.

Sharing Time

I’d like to share a song of mine with all of you, titled “Sweet Beginnings.” It’s the title track from my debut album. My sister, Michelle Quednow, wrote the words. The production on this song is an example of the string orchestra stacking process that happens in the studio. Big shout out to Golden Bear Records!

I can’t wait to share the back story to more of my songs with all of you, as well as my journey in music and life. Until next time.

See you in a week

If you’re reading this, thank you. I’m honored. And I can’t wait to continue on this journey via Substack with all of you! We’ll see what next Sunday brings.

To learn more about myself, follow my show schedule and hear my music: Kathryn Severing Fox's website

Photo by Andy Lyons

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