Look Mom There's a Tree!
Hi there,
allow me to introduce you to my newest song, Look Mom There's a Tree! It's my first full song with an mbira as the root instrument. I have been attempting to learn the instrument for a year or so after picking up a cousins and falling in love with it.
Look Mom There's a Tree (Feat. Rita Farai Mbanga) by Matthew Gair
It started as a riff on the mbira and then I grew it from there. I recorded the mbira with an AKG 414 through a very clean Mint Julep (Bizzar Audio) pre-amp. Then moved onto recording my Takamine acoustic and old Aria Pro 2 bass. It was loads of fun to grow this track. Next I recorded the shakers which are traditional wooden shakers I got from Zimbabwe. The voices were next, first off my scratch vocal and then Rita came into the studio and absolutely nailed it and brought so much to the table it was such a pleasure. Last were the snares and kick drums (there isn't any other drum in the track and I know that this is kind of a backwards way to record a song but hey, backwards is good sometimes!) and a violin and cello to finish it up at the end. I didn't use a click because I wanted the rhythm to stem from the mbira, my playing isn't spot onto a specific bpm so I just let it flow.
The Lyrics fell into place once I got to sit down with the mbira recorded. It sounded so pure and innocent I immediately remembered being that way as a kid and it grew from there.
thanks for checking it out. If you like it you can buy it in these fine stores (click on them to go to them):
