Shores - Crawling The Walls
Over the course of the Covid pandemic I reached out to some of the superb local talent that Lurgan had to offer. Artists had no avenue to be able to do what they love most - play live music. This is something I felt the studio could help with.
First up was Stephen Reilly of ‘Shores’ with his great song, ‘Crawling The Walls’; a very appropriate name for the time it was recorded in. Stephen wanted to play the song live but instead of a full set, wanted to produce a single track that could stand up by itself as a recorded work. This was music to my ears, so to speak. Stephen brought two good friends with him to help out, Christopher Harbinson on electric guitar and Conchúr White on acoustic guitar (you can check out some of the work we’ve done with Conchúr, like his pandemic cover of Lungs and his BBC ‘ATL Introducing’ live session).
You can see them perform the track in the video above but you will notice there is accompaniment with the track that wasn’t filmed. Stephen wanted to flesh out the arrangement with some percussion, bass and a few other little extras. This is something I absolutely love to get involved in with artists. I think this performance really demonstrates the sort of sound you can achieve as a singer-songwriter if you come into record at GNA Recording Studio with a song that yes, holds up by itself without all the extras, but can really be brought to the next level when it is fleshed out. This song was a perfect example because the arrangement is simple and is designed to carry the vocal as the main star and what you add to that must only add enough to help carry the pulse of the music without distracting from what’s most important.
In this track, that was done with a very simple drum groove - a basic kick pattern with a simple pedal hi hat and brushed snare. To accentuate the choruses, some simple shaker was added…just to give it that extra little bit of drive whilst remaining very subtle unless you really listen out for it. The two aspects that really lifted the track though in my opinion, were the added backing vocals by the trio after the live tracks were recorded and the extra acoustic guitar. The acoustic that was added is just some brushed chords to really accentuate every 8 bars of the bridge and finished off by some very nice arpeggiated counter-melodies in the final chorus and outtro, to end the song with something new for the listener, retaining engagement to what is otherwise a very simple song.
This song highlights the important role that very subtle instrumentation and arrangement ideas can have in elevating a song. Please enjoy Shores - Crawling the Walls.
If you are a singer-songwriter and are interested in something like this, please contact us here. We would love to work with you and give your tracks the love and attention to detail we did with this track.