Mixing

Yesterday was another long and gratifying day in the studio. We did a combination of recording and mixing on this visit, with a lot of attention and energy going into the song “Mountain Mother.” This is another song with lyrics by We'Moon poet Sherri Rose-Walker. The music was developed collaboratively by all members of Devi Vaani from an original piece of music by Alison Kohler-Newvine.

This song explores the ancient images and symbols of the Goddess that appear throughout neolithic culture, tens of thousands of years before the relatively recent patriarchal religions took hold. This song also praises the creative nature of the divine, and how she comes to us in our art-making, poetry, dance, and through reverie and dreams.

“Mountain Mother” was our first experience mixing a track that involves not only guitars and voices but drums and violin as well. There is a lot of detail work involved in adjusting various components of the instrumental tracks so that they sound more like they do in real life. Ironically, if we just hear them as recorded they sound less authentic than they do after several hours of tweaking. Additionally, finding the right volume balance amongst three voices and three different types of instruments, that all need to highlighted at various points throughout the song, requires a lot of adjusting and readjusting and then adjusting some more.

Fortunately, we are learning a lot along the way! Our sound engineer, Joe, even decided to teach Alison how to run one of the mixer boards to help streamline the process. Since we know our songs inside and out, we can adjust volumes quicker and more efficiently if we are the ones with our hands on the levers. As you'll see in this video, being the one with your hand on the lever is very nerve wracking!

For the next month, we will be focusing our energy on preparing the next four songs for our recording session in late July. These songs include a high-energy tribute to Goddess Pele and the transformative power of her “holy fury,” as well as the song “Somebody Calling,” which gives voice to the millions of women who were killed during the witch-hunts carried out in the Middle Ages, a crusade that effectively suppressed Goddess and Earth-based spirituality for hundreds of years. We are simultaneously humbled and excited to bring these silenced voices back to life.