It’s always a blast to have Mariah and Carlos from Mosaic MSC join us on the podcast!
Podcast Transcript
Ryan Loche
Welcome to the church collective podcast. In this episode, we had the opportunity to talk to Carlos and Mariah from Mosaic MSC. And we ended up having just such an incredible conversation, it was so much that we’re going to break it up into two parts. So this is the first part of our chat with Mariah and Carlos, let’s go.
Mariah McManus
And it’s called this is I think, already released two songs so far, and how album’s coming out. And so it’s been crazy. I mean, it’s been two years of writing. And we produced everything ourselves, did everything ourselves. And so it was a long process, because I don’t necessarily think we knew what we were doing. So it was very much an experiment. And in that sense of, like, you know, I’ve always written around songs, we’ve done like, some produce, like, we’ve always produced things with other people, but never just like, engineered everything on our own, too. Yeah. And so it was a pretty, from zero to 100, for sure. I feel like, you know, trying to figure out everything. So it really didn’t take us two full years to do everything. You know, it’s not just because we were locked down, it really was just because we were trying to make everything, you know, perfect and feel like I have the essence that we wanted to have. And so it’s way scarier, I think, producing your album and then putting it out. Because it feels a lot more even more so like a labor of love, than even just writing the songs was because we’ve had our hand in it, you know, since the conception of it. So yeah.
Ryan Loche
I’d love to hear like
to, like, bring it all in house, because I’m sure there’s a ton of worship leaders out there. Like, I want to go in house too. And if mosaics struggling through that, I’m dead in the water. Like, what kind of encouragement would you have?
Carlos Pimentel
I mean, it takes it takes time, it takes time. And also, like, it takes a lot of humility, to know that you must start doing something in the direction that you think that things should go. And you might need to scratch everything and go back to square one. Like we had to do a lot of that. And I don’t know. And even like, we were not married to this to any of the ideas that we had we there are some songs that like the first thing that we put out there spelled this out in the Lord, that song from the moment we wrote it, like we were like pretty sure that it was a special song. And we were like afraid to touch this song. But from the beginning, we had a sense that this song has something very special. But that was kind of unique in the context of all the other songs that we worked with, you know, like, we have some songs that they just didn’t make it. We have songs that we started one direction, and then we had to change. So change what we were doing. So I don’t know, I would say to anyone who might find themselves in that season of like, crafting their own songs and producing their own music. Just enjoy it and have be flexible. I think it’s important.
Mariah McManus
Definitely being flexible and taking your time this huge.
Chris Bellamy
What was the recording process? Like? Were like, was it a live environment or studio overdubs or are all in studio.
Mariah McManus
So we, we wrote went on, like two or three writing trips. And we started sort of like the base of everything, like, tried to kind of like create song structures, and like, you know, certain pads or like, you know, I don’t know, sounds that we were going to build the rest of the song off of, we tried starting there just to make sure like, the vibe in the song structures were right. And then we have a room, it’s literally an attic. And it was the only not like, occupied space during COVID in our office building. So we basically just set up like a makeshift studio that literally only had speakers and a computer in it, and like a couple keyboards, and we just kind of like went through around ideas. We had two guys kind of like working on computers all the time, like with different sounds. We tracked the drums and the bass together at a studio. And that’s the only things and the upright piano. Yeah, but design things we did in the studio. And those weren’t even like at the same time. We probably did those like two or three months apart. Yeah. It was just like we just built it. You know, we didn’t know like, we didn’t want to do everything at once before we even knew what we were doing at that point. So we really like wanted to make sure that before we like you know went full out that we had like Get good baseline of things. And so we just tried to do organically like, set the vibe and the structures. And then, you know, we did drums, which we did drums totally blind, like we didn’t anything else other than, like some pads, some mod,
Carlos Pimentel
like a basic roadmap of like a keyboard, and then we added drums and bass. Like, this sounds funny, you know, there might be something here.
Mariah McManus
So it was really just all sort of, we took it in phases of like, you know, are we going in the right direction, because we really did have to go back to the drawing board on a lot of the songs. So, you know, we thought we had the right direction, and then it just, once it came down to it, it just didn’t feel right. You know, and we knew when we play this lie, this is not it like this is not going to translate. This is not going to feel good. We did like at our church, we just played through some like full band just to see like, will they take shape in any way Live, which a lot of them did. And that was super helpful. One of the coolest things we did was we recorded all the vocals at the same time in the same room. So
Carlos Pimentel
here like the church, yeah, but she got at our main auditorium on this on the stage, we kind of did it on the round. And everyone thought it was like, everyone thought that it was like the craziest ideas that it was impossible to do. And Mariah was like, let’s just try it and see what happened. And we did it. And it turned out to be super, super cool.
Mariah McManus
It like it just the the feeling because we wanted it to be not a live album, because we couldn’t do it live. Yeah. But to have like, there’s definitely a lack. There’s like a lack of like, sometimes just that emotion or that like heart when you’re doing a studio album that really comes across when you’re doing a live album, or at least that’s what we’d run into. And so we’re like, how do we mesh those two things together. And that was one way of like, just feeding off the energy of each other. Like the singers and being able to just kind of like do a bunch of tags where we’re all sort of feeding off of each other. And it just ended up being really special because it had that essence of being lives. But more like a studio version and isolated vocals, you know, all that.
Chris Bellamy
Yeah, so for the lead vocals, did you just step closer to the mic, or
Mariah McManus
we have, we have like a different mic for the leads. And they were like sort of in the middle back of the circle. It’s kind of like we had a circle, the engineer, we were like set up on one half the circle and then that lead would be like opposite them and the other VGB would be sort of on the sides. And so you know, sometimes with like louder vocals, we’d have to, like isolate them a little bit more than the others are, like certain parts of the song because I’m I do this where I’m singing AGVs on a song and I’m going, I’m just doing my own thing. Yeah. Again, you could pick it up and all the other mics. So, you know, sometimes sometimes we have to look a little bit different. But yeah, it was a cool thing. I’m not sure how it ended up working or being a good idea. But
Carlos Pimentel
yeah, it felt like a big experiment. Like for real, like we have, I think there’s some even some songs that we went after we were like, almost done with the song we decided to retract lead vocals. And we like it doesn’t carry the same energy. Like it didn’t have the same essence. And we just like stick to like the original, like demo. Recording. And we we had two that were like maybe like three songs, which I think it was it almost like you made it for us it made it feel even more special. You notice I guess I think it’s like different when you can sing a song when the song when you’re seeing the song in the moment that it was written. You know, like, I feel like the emotions and the understanding of the songs are maybe more vivid, they’re more present. And you’re less focusing in trying to hit the right note or say the right word you’re like way more loose. And I think that kind of like help you just like at the end ended up winning over trying to do it perfect. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Loche
Is there a thematic lyrical thing you were going for? Or is it kind of just maybe speak to what the Lord revealed in that aspect?
Mariah McManus
Yeah, I mean, that’s a big part of even this the name of the album and the symbol that we chose. It ended up just kind of being you know, I think it’s happened throughout all of our records and even more so this one where, you know, we kind of have different groups that right I saw not all of us write together, you know, every session will be like two or three of us here and there. So when we come together, and we show each other the songs that we’ve written, and then you kind of see, okay, is there like an overarching theme. And a lot of times, it’s pretty surprising, but definitely, in this case, it was very much of like gratitude. And, you know, that’s why that song, I feel like really set the tone for all the songs that we were writing even songs that had been written before that, that we didn’t realize, or about gratitude. And it’s, it’s special, because it didn’t feel like a good time. You know, like, didn’t, I think a lot of times we think of gratitude as sort of a response to good things happy. Yeah. And it wasn’t that it was a response to this, like, you know, assurance that that guy was good, even in the bad times, you know, that there are good things, and we just had to look for them. And we had to, you know, like weed through a lot of the bad things that were happening to us, you know, like, we’ve all the collective experience we’ve all had, and be able to see the good things, and, you know, there are endless good things that that we could think of, and it just ended up being this very real gratitude that wasn’t, you know, because things were good, or because things were easy. But because things were hard, and we had to choose it. And so, you know, that is a major theme throughout the album, even in like the beginning of like, questioning that. And, and how do you explain that and then to, to this, I think the Lord, which is like we express our gratitude, and singing and worship, and that’s essentially what the song is about, you know, yeah. And so that’s really the theme of most of the songs.
Carlos Pimentel
Ryan It’s kind of funny because this this song, especially this song, we wrote it in the in our first first writing camp or third Friday retreat that we did, after being completely like isolated here in LA, no been able to go out. And then we’ve, we went to Baja, Baja, California, and we’re staying at this house like right beautiful place, I feeling kind of inspired by the environment. But then we got hit by a storm like Hurricane hurricane, like literally, we didn’t know that those are European on the way to the place that we were riding, like we lost power. For like four days, we lost power loss water, we had to have to borrow board up like the whole house and had to cover up with with like, wood. And, like escaping from the storm that’s happening in LA and in the US and we go down there and we find ourselves getting a different type of storm. And these are the songs that came out of that and I didn’t I came in we look back and I find that I find that to be so beautiful, how like in the middle in the middle of being in a moment of darkness or a moment that you feel like you’re losing hope being able to still express your gratitude you know, because I think that’s why make it also makes gratitude so much more deep. You know, like when I was saying like it’s different when gratitude gratitude comes out of a good thing that happened it’s very different when that gratitude is coming from from stories from a background that doesn’t so it shows gratitude. So you see that in the whole theme of the album and for us is very special
Chris Bellamy
so so after you’ve got you know you’re doing it all yourself after you got all the material together. Did you like did you do the final like mixing or mastering in house too? Or did you send that out?
Mariah McManus
Yeah, we sent that out that’s that we’re in over our heads. But yeah, we were able to work with a guy named Chris really who makes everything and he was awesome and he actually one one thing we did was we did like initial mixing kind of in the middle of the
Carlos Pimentel
process because we’re kind of stuck I feel like we were like, Okay, we don’t know where they’re like we don’t know if there’s gonna sell good
Mariah McManus
yeah, when it’s like all mix. Yeah, so he actually like did like everything. And we were able to hear like, okay, here are the holes that’s
Carlos Pimentel
like pre vocal. So basically like Yeah, stick first.
Mariah McManus
So, yeah, cuz we wanted to get a sense like, are we on the right track here. Also, like we didn’t want to, we didn’t want to track vocals to like a crazy mix that didn’t even work in the end. So we actually did mix everything, just like a quick, like pass or everything. And that helped a ton because we saw so many holes in everything. And we basically like, I feel like we produced a whole other record after that, like, we added so much, and it started to take shape a lot more. So that was pivotal to the entire process.
Ryan Loche
Was did he know that you were going to send them vocals that were like, all tracked and around like that? Or did he have any apprehensions?
Carlos Pimentel
No, I think he knew, like, yeah, we send that we had like the, like you said, the demo vocals. And they were already there. And he helped. But yeah, he knew that that was not like the end. Final? Oh, I
Mariah McManus
don’t think he I don’t know, if he knew that we did them in the round. Yeah, I
Carlos Pimentel
don’t know if he knew, actually. Right.
Mariah McManus
But you know, like, we edited a lot of that stuff, too. So we had to, like go through and, you know, make sure that it wasn’t like bleeding. Yeah. Like we obviously had, there were there are a lot of imperfections. And we we knew that we just had to embrace that, because that’s where we’re at, and wanted it to have that essence to have not being like, this is the most polished thing in the world, because it’s not, and we don’t want to pretend to be people that we’re not in, we’re not the most polished people in the world. And, you know, stuff that we do is like quick because we want to move quickly with where we feel like God’s moving, you know, and so we don’t have the experience or, you know, the, the time to like, you know, make sure everything’s, you know, perfectly polished. And that was a huge thing was the upright on the album is attitude. And so I think we were surprised by that. Even though we were all there when it was tragic. We didn’t hear it like quite as severely as it is on the record. But there are a few times you’ll hear it, and we kept them in there. And some of them we retract, like beginning of the site, like before we took out, like the bad notes, but on some of the songs like there’s a song called grace. And there’s a totally stripped down part of it, where it hits, like data to note hits, like a wrong crazy thing. And we kept it because we just felt like, Hey, this is like, part of the story. You know, like, this is messy part of it that feels gritty, that doesn’t feel polish. And, and in a lot of ways musically, that’s sort of the story of us. Yeah, you know, and so, we felt like, why not have those moments that musically reflect like, you know, what we’re saying lyrically, while we are living out, you know,
Ryan Loche
what was your, like? The actual setup? Did you already have it? Like, did you have a laptop and interface? Did you go to Guitar Center and like, buy stuff? Like, what? Like, what was the actual gear used?
Carlos Pimentel
Well, not more, i None of us are like the like the tech people. I don’t know how to answer that question pretty well. Well, we kind of we built things as we were producing. Yes, we literally went to Guitar Center that is down the street here at our location or offices in our building in Hollywood. They’re down the street on Sunset Boulevard. And we literally ran their guy at an interface. Couple of cables. We bought new speakers. And little by little, like, based on the needs and like the two we have 2x on our team that they’re like, more like on the engineering side of things. And they know more about these things. Yeah, it was like a little by little adding things to, to to this studio.
Ryan Loche
Yeah, that’s super cool. Because I think like some churches are like, I can’t write a song or record a song because I don’t have the gear. You know, like, I feel like, that just proves how you can just get a laptop and just make art. You know,
Carlos Pimentel
I mean, we did it. We did it in a laptop. For sure. And I recorded everything with this mic that everyone I feel like everyone is yeah, we would do all the vocals.
Mariah McManus
So great. Like it really is like, I mean, we we we don’t have you know, like unlimited budgets. Yeah. You know, and and, you know, we’re everything we do is an extension of our church. So we really do have to be creative, and resourceful and a lot of ways and so, you know, we use what we have, we were able, you know, here and there to get stuff that we felt like we use for, like the future. And as we went Okay, we can do this in the future, maybe it is worth investing in. But it really wasn’t until we were like, Okay, can we? Yeah, can we succeed at this? And it was honestly, the hardest thing I think we’ve ever done like it was a lot of days, it felt like sort of treading water and not really making a whole lot of moves forward. But, you know, we have an album that we probably like, we’re probably most proud of. Yeah, super proud. So, it, it paid off, even though it was a lot of days, like, you know, this is how, how are we back at the same spot? Again? Like, how are we not? How can we not figure out this song? How could we not like seem to be done with this. And it really was like, we probably would have kept going, it had been like, for a deadline or like, us just having to be like, we have to stop because we will do this forever. Which is I think the upside of having a producer is that like, it feels more done. Like, yeah,
Carlos Pimentel
you get to the end.
Mariah McManus
But, you know, I think it just, it worked with our process of all of us kind of like having a hand in different pieces of it and, and making it still more hours than anything else.
Ryan Loche
How many? How many times would you try a song live before you’re like, nah, this ain’t work. And
Carlos Pimentel
that is I mean, honestly, that’s one of the things that was super, like, special and unique about this album. And like, when you compare it to the other stuff that we have done in the past, because in the past, we’ve been used to when we try the song Who writes songs, and then played them on our midweek or, or on a Sunday, and just, you know, I feel like we have such a advantage as a church like anyone not not I’m referring to us as mosaic like anyone who gets to, like, play songs in front of a church has taken advantage of getting like that immediate reaction to know, feedback to know the song.
Mariah McManus
Ruthless focus,
Carlos Pimentel
if you have if you have a brother that, you know, that is very honest, or who would say like, yeah, that song is really bad, or, you know, like,
Mariah McManus
that didn’t work didn’t work didn’t work. Yeah.
Carlos Pimentel
So that’s like the, that’s the way that that we’ve done it for like, five, six years now. And with this one, from the moment that we started working on the songs, like we knew that it was a different process, and we approach the process with a completely different perspective. Like we knew, like we don’t have, what are we going to sing? Or what are we going to say, when you don’t get that immediate response response from the church. And that was kinda like this challenge of writing the album. But at the same time, I feel like, at least for me, that has been one of the biggest surprise with the album. Now that we’re back, a meeting in person here, here in LA, like, just seeing how people are responding to the songs. It’s, it’s very, very special. Like, I was like, Okay, this is actually because I feel like there’s moments like, working on the songs, I was like, Oh, I don’t even know if this is worship, I know that it’s about God, you know, like, it does communicate, and it makes me feel closer to him. But I don’t know if this ever gonna work in a like, collective corporate setting. And it’s been really cool to now play this song. So I see how people are responding and see that there’s songs even have like, a completely different texture. When you play them play them live. And yeah, that’s pretty cool.
Mariah McManus
The crazy thing is that our last album came out after
Carlos Pimentel
like, right, right, when, when, when, Yeah, shut down.
Mariah McManus
So I think shut down here was May 16. album came out, or March 16. And then album came out in May. So we played the songs twice. Because we recorded it live over two nights, we put songs twice, ever. So it was already like we had released an entire album that basically like we’d never get to play for our church. So it like immediately was a shift because we’re like, okay, I mean, obviously, we couldn’t have ever, like seen that this was gonna happen for this long, especially in LA, but that would that change your perspective? Because we were like, that was the most proud have ever been a group of songs and note, we never get to play them for our church essentially, you know, and so that was we kind of had to go through that process with those songs of like, okay, well, they’re basically you know, we hope that people listen to them, but like I wasn’t really consuming music for a while during the shutdown you know, I’m like trying to do all the juggle all the other things and like adjust to life in a whole different way. And so yeah, going into this record, it really was like, we this is like X amount of time that we could be doing this, like we could release another album and never play live again. Yeah, you know, so kind of having had dealt with that, with that album before. The perspective shift was really great. And I think the only reason it works, it worked right now with this is because we’ve done it for so long, I think because we’ve vetted every song we’ve ever written with our church. And we’re able to, like, envision how things will like go, you know, and obviously, we’re wrong sometimes and things don’t go as well as we think or things go even better than, you know, we think. But I think a lot of times with the songs, we had to just sort of decide, okay, is this a song we’re trying to make work in a service? And we had to do that before, you know, even when we’re writing songs in church, it was like, Is this gonna work and some songs were just like, This is a song that’s more of like a personal introspective moment for people to listen to and have on their own time, you know? And so we really had to do that even more with these songs of like, hey, is this a song we’re hoping will be the big worship moment? You know, the big reflective worship moment and gathering or just the upbeat song that we want to be able to use live and in person? Or is this a song that’s just for the record? And, you know, we had to make those calls sort of blindly, because we had no way of trying them out. And what’s scary is that we started church like, you know, six months ago now, or like, four months ago now. And we start playing all the songs already have, having submitted the record like, Well, I hope you don’t write them because this is what’s coming out. Yeah. And so, and it’s been, I think, very different. Obviously, everyone coming out at that time is, is different churches different. It’s been a very different experience. And so it’s been a pleasant surprise to feel like those songs are very much putting music and words to a collective experience, which I think has been a good surprise and exciting.
Ryan Loche
Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. Again, we’ll have part two of our interview with Carlos and Mariah on the next week’s episode.