This Fall we hosted Composer, Bradley Thomas Turner, at Postcard Cabins Talladega Valley in Alabama for a full month so he escape the noise and focus on writing a new album in nature. Here’s what he had to say after week four of his artist fellowship.
For the first three weeks of my fellowship, all of the recording I did of music was done via iPhone. I do a lot of recording into the voice memo app, and it’s not uncommon for me to use this exclusively to create music when I’m traveling. I usually record into the phone and then import the files into the computer to be able to edit, layer, and mix all of the tracks.
Despite the fact that I had my mandolin, violin, and viola with me, much of the music I was creating during my stay at Postcard Cabins was being written on a tiny nylon string guitar that I happened to get right before the start of my fellowship. I’m always inspired by a new instrument, and I find being able to periodically switch what instrument I’m writing with helps me avoid getting stuck in compositional ruts.
By the time week four began, I had 90% of my mini album, Postcards to Myself from a Cabin in the Forest, written and the recordings outlined. Even though I had brought my more traditional recording set up with me (lots of microphones, and a mixer, and a recording interface), I held off on setting any of that up for the first three weeks. I knew that once I set these things up, the space in the tiny cabin would be completely dominated by recording equipment, and it’d be difficult to have any kind of normal experience that didn’t center around the recording process.
I opted instead to get as far as possible with using only the cellphone to record for the first three weeks. This was very freeing, and being limited to just that format for recording led to discovery and exploration. For instance, many of the background droney sounds you can hear on In the Morning and Swaying Pines Bid You Farewell were created from manipulated cellphone samples of the aforementioned nylon string guitar.
The voice memo app on the iPhone really can do some magic on guitar and mandolin, but the results are also a bit unpredictable. I knew that I would want to re-record many of these tracks with my proper set up during my final week. And I also knew that the arduous act of recording violin and viola—which for me involves layering many tracks of those instruments—would be essentially impossible on the phone. I decided to save all the strings recordings for that final week as well.
So, that week was mostly focused on this recording process. I would say 80% of what’s on the album was recorded on my cellphone. I liked the results, and it felt so in the moment and perfect for the diaristic approach of trying to capture moments from my time at Postcard Cabins.
Even when I was deep in the task of recording strings on this final week, I did it from the bed, with the huge window’s shade pulled to the top so I could see outside as much as possible. A big window like that can not be valued highly enough. In any other setting, there would be a disconnect between the experience of being in nature where I was writing the music, and in a studio setting where the recording process would take place. It was so lovely to be able to bridge the gap with that giant window.
It was such an inspiring balance that I’ve already started scheming what it would look like to record an album at Postcard Cabins involving other musicians using multiple cabins. The possibilities are endless.
You can listen to the full album Bradley created at Postcard Cabins here.