Opinion | Making music in the pandemic

Spencer Bennett, senior screenwriting major

Writing, recording and releasing music during the height of the pandemic is a very surreal, awesome and strange process. In 2019, Braden Joe, Graham Byrne and I were in a band called “SuperVoyage!” We played small Orange County shows here and there and wrote some songs for fun. 

Once the coronavirus hit, everything about life changed and priorities shifted. I’m sure many bands broke up and countless musicians went on to lead different lives. I’d be lying to you if I said that each member of our band didn’t at one point think about quitting as well. 

Instead of splitting up, we took the extra free time to practice our instruments and write new material. Our songwriting quality increased tenfold during the pandemic and we developed a new sound that was different than the previous band we were all members of. Thus, the band's new identity, Coyote Pond, was born.

In October 2020, we decided we wanted to finally go into the studio and professionally record a song, but we were pretty clueless about where to begin. I reached out to Ethan Ganouna, better known as “Noona,” and asked him how his band North Morlan went about recording songs. He gave me the phone number of Tony Mancini, an audio engineer and producer working out of a Mancini Mixing studio in Fullerton. 

Meeting Tony changed everything. We explained to him the direction and sound we wanted to have on the recordings and he brought the songs to life. He was incredibly easy to work with and helped us fully realize our group vision. 

As a musician, going to a recording studio is something you dream about forever, so finally visiting one during the pandemic was interesting. It wasn’t the typical party-type environment you see in music biopics. We wore masks the whole time, had personal headphones to listen to the tracks and stayed socially distanced while recording. It was still incredibly exciting and a super fun time;  it was just a little different because of COVID-19. 

Though the instruments were recorded in person, we primarily conducted the mixing and mastering process remotely. Typically, the artist sits with the producer while he mixes and masters and gives live notes on the track. Instead, Tony would email us new drafts of the songs with mixing edits and we’d respond back with notes. 

We only went in twice during the mixing process, just to be able to work out final notes on the songs. Once we locked in the mix, the mastering was done entirely remotely by an associate of Tony’s. 

The songs turned out great and exactly how we wanted. We recorded two songs, entitled “Drive You Home” and “Lorraine.” You can check them out on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever else you get your tunes. Just search up “Coyote Pond.”