Mosaic MSC on Recording as a Team

Jason sat down with Andres Figueroa and Carlos Pimental to discuss the latest album from Mosaic MSC. They talk about arranging in isolation, creative approaches to recording, and how a congregation impacts a song.

This record was our Covid album. We wrote and recorded most of it in lockdown. Usually our process is that we write songs and then play them with the congregation to see how they fit. This time we just focused on the songs that we really loved and what we connected to most. In that sense, it was a risk–we didn’t have the live feedback. Add to that this was fully written and produced by our team. In the past, we’ve had additional producers to add but this was start to finish ourselves. Lastly, it was the most personal and honest one we’ve done. Take the song “How Do I Thank You”. Sure it’s about thanking God in the good times but it really asks the question “How do I thank you when I don’t understand?” Rather than offering the answer it asks the question and that was a very honest question we were facing during the pandemic.

On shaping the sound

The record really reflects the spaces we were in. Some songs feel like they were recorded in a living room, others like they were outside. We wanted the album to document what was really happening. Even the vocals were unique. We did the gang vocals in the round and it captured the intimacy of singing together as a small group. There were some tracks we kept the demo vocal because we were never able to recapture that take in a different way.

On the community response

We’re still in the midst of learning how things work in a congregational setting. As we said earlier, this is the first time we haven’t been able to test songs out with our community so it’s really been fun to bring these to our people. Already the songs are changing with different chord progressions and little additional parts we’re adding live. There are some moments we wish we had been able to track because we love them so much now. Because we were so restrained in our recording there’s been a lot of room for them to grow dynamically and change in the live setting.

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