At the last meeting, we both agreed and underlined the importance of not over exaggerating the instruments we put in. We wanted to make this as much as a live feel as possible. Also, when Lizzie plays live she just uses acoustic guitars and vocals, so if too many extra parts were added, she would come to play it live and it would be more difficult to replicate with only a couple of guitars and vocals.

When writing the extra instrument parts, particularly for the drums, I took some inspiration from bands in a similar genre such as Mumford & Sons. On early Mumford tracks, It consistently features a bass drum playing straight crotchet beats throughout to keep that driving beat going.

I thought this was essential particularly in the song Wild Things. I changed some of the structures around in this song so it builds up slow, mellows out during the break, building up again before mellowing out at the outro once more. This would be different from the way Lizzie recorded the demo where she kept the song going with the same chords, tempo, and dynamics.

Lizzie would still be able to play this live without it sounding bare with the extra instruments not on stage, as with this idea, she could start off slow, playing softly then build it up before mellowing down again, like the idea for the structure suggests.

For the two songs (Miles and The End) which would not feature drums or bass, we decided that the string parts should be slow and soft and just to add a bit more punch in the background. Again these wouldn’t be too overpowering and the main focus from the recordings is still aimed to be just acoustic guitars and vocals.

 

Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E