September Videos
Here is a video of me recording kalimba on Pumpkin Patch. I bought this kalimba back in 2021, as something to do during one of the lockdowns, but I had never used it to write or record my own music. I decided to use it in my Autumn EP because I think it has a certain ghostly sound to it. I also considered playing it on my Spring EP but it didn't fit in with the songs the way I wanted it to. It is quite a high frequency instrument so it really needed it's own instrumental section rather than overpowering the rest of the song. I got to use the skills I'd learned while playing the kalimba the previous couple of years and tuned the instrument to the key of A so it worked with the song.
This is a really short snippet of me recording what I wanted the bass in When I Look at You to sound like. I wanted it to be a bit funkier than expected from a sombre Autumn EP and tried to make it upbeat like the bass line in Campus by Vampire Weekend, which reminds me of the academia of autumn time. I struggle to play bass because my hands are small. I even struggle to play extended chords on guitar sometimes which is very annoying! I hope to pick up bass in the future but I want to find a decent 3/4 size before I do. In the meantime, Camilo, Shane and Ben are my go-to guys for bass playing. I ended up having Ben as the bassist on this entire project so I showed him this video as a reference before recording the track. I like creating audio guides such as this for my collaborators as I think it gets what I want in the song across to them easily.