PHOTO : VANESSA HEINS
DIGITAL MUSIC
Mar Meredith is the creative force and frontwoman behind Toronto ’ s electronic pop project For Esmé . She is a literary and psychology nerd who is very invested in the feminist movement – themes that play heavily into her songwriting . Their new album , Righteous Woman , drops on May 25 , 2018 . www . foresmemusic . com .
By Mar Meredith
Translating from Studio to Stage
For Esmé ’ s new album , Righteous Woman , was created mostly in the box – aka , in Logic . My central collaborators on the record were Dave Thiel and producer James Bunton . Once the record was complete , my challenge was to take these electronic arrangements into physical space to be played by five talented humans . In the past , For Esmé relied heavily on backing tracks – especially as a three-piece with no drummer ; with Righteous Woman , I really wanted to make the show significantly more organic , flexible , and live .
Translating to Live Enter Karrie Douglas , Charles Tilden , Morgan Doctor , and Lewis Parker , who are accompanying me as For Esmé for our upcoming Righteous Woman shows . Karrie , who you may recognize from HIGHS , is a phenomenal keyboard player . She and I have each developed sets in MainStage 3 through which we can play the crucial plug-ins used on the record , or variations of them . In our recent single “ For Others ,” for example , there is a three-layer synth lead made up of two of the GForce Oddity patches combined with the ARP 2600 by Arturia , all running through MainStage and triggered by my Akai MPK MIDI controller .
Synths Righteous Woman is grounded in a lot of patches that Dave and I developed on the Roland JU-06 and JP-08 boutique modules . While these tools were unreal for creating , neither were ideal for live performance due to their mini USB ports and their audio-outs being finicky 1 / 8-ins . We found the JU-06 module especially noisy in rehearsals and triggering its arpeggiation over-complicated . Karrie used the TAL-U-NO-LX V2 plug-in to develop sounds that are nearly identical . In
“ For Others ,” Karrie plays the central arpeggiator part as a TAL plug-in arpeggiated through MainStage . The subsequent absence of noise is significant and the streamlined set-up much more convenient . Similarly , instead of the JP-08 module , we are using the Arturia Jup-8 plug-in live .
Vocals I like singing through guitar pedals and other Logic effects to create percussive and ambient sounds . Those experiments often become signature parts of For Esmé songs . Because it ’ s difficult to recreate those sounds live , and because they often happen in tandem with lyrics , I bounce them out of Logic as audio files and load them onto my Roland SPD- SX . It ’ s really satisfying to play my voice as a percussion instrument . I use the SPD-SX to play some of the plug-in parts too , bouncing them out as samples and playing them like a melodic percussive instrument .
Drums In terms of drums , Righteous Woman heavily features the VProm by Aly James Lab , which is a Linn Drum emulator . We used that in tandem with real Linn Drum samples taken from James ’ time with Joshua Van Tassel at the National Music Centre in Calgary . On my last record , Sugar , we used live drum samples that were heavily edited in studio . I really wanted to have the energy and momentum of live drums on stage and it ’ s been a pleasure to bring the songs to life in a new way through Morgan . It wouldn ’ t sound like For Esmé without the signature electronic percussion though , so Morgan uses her Yamaha DTX multi sampler to accentuate her live drumming with samples from the record as well as to run click . The result is a nice compromise of live energy and authentic For Esmé aesthetic .
She ’ ll be incorporating two drum triggers as we continue to add electronic elements to the show .
Guitar On top of playing all the guitar parts on the record , Charles ( who you may know from his own project , Delta Will ) has the additional challenge of taking many of the synth lines we developed in Logic and recreating them with pedals . When watching live music , I think there is something really interesting about seeing someone play a synth part on a guitar . It is visually engaging , and I like that our live show will feature unexpected variations . When we were writing the record , we were heavily focused on synth textures , but in the five-piece set up , it makes sense to fully utilize each player rather than relying so heavily on samples .
Bass Last but not least , Lewis is doing double duty holding it down on both the Moog Sub-Phatty and his Squier Precision Bass . Just yesterday we were laughing how if anyone wants to undergo bass playing bootcamp , learning Dave Thiel ’ s For Esmé parts is just the ticket . They ’ re complex , indulgent , and a lot of fun , and an especially big part of the sound on Sugar . Meanwhile , on Righteous Woman , it ’ s all about the synth bass and those deep sub sounds . Lewis uses the Arturia Keystep to arpeggiate the Sub Phatty , linking the MIDI controller to Karrie ’ s MainStage set-up to sync seamlessly .
I am beyond excited about this new iteration of For Esmé . This lineup and show are a huge step up for the project and for me and I can ’ t wait to bring them to the stage .
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