The making of Soft Power

Soft Power is a song for anyone on a healing journey, who is doing the deep work to meet their shadows, tend the wounds and find their inner light.  

The story

Soft Power tells the story of a wounded young girl, who went on a deeply healing journey, through inner space. 

She did the work. Became conscious, faced her shadows, felt the pain, released the crippling doubt and fear and shame. This gave her the strength to mend her broken heart and bring back the lost fragments of her soul, making her whole. 

For the first time, she could see her own light!  She was standing in her power; compassionate, connected, creative, worthy, truthful and wise. 

This is the initiation.

Crossing the threshold, from wounded child to healed adult.

This is me.

The sounds of Angel Mawlabaux

Soft Power is a spoken word piece that occasionally drifts into song, supported by a soundscape of looping harp, guitar, percussion and synths. All crafted, recorded, and produced by me!

I’m so proud to share this release, which has been a labour of love, alongside my sound therapy studies.

The technical creation

The guitar, harp and my vocals were recorded by me in my home studio, using my new giant acoustic panels and production set up with Ableton. 

I hadn't recorded the harp before, so I was learning on my feet, buried in manuals and tutorials. Much of the time was spent moving panels, mics and instruments around to create the correct conditions to record each part.

Next came the production phase, where I added minimal percussion and synths, using VSTs (virtual studio technologies) and drum racks in Ableton. Again, all really new to me, so progress was slow but educational... it’s such a big learning curve. 

Then onto mixing, where I removed frequencies to create space for other parts, and got it fairly clear sounding. Again this was a whole new world of music technology to me, but I was determined to push my skills for this release. 

When I took it to a professional sound engineer, I felt pretty self-conscious, as he’s worked with a some seriously talented musicians including Tori Amos, Depeche Mode, Goldfrapp, and Robbie Williams! 

Much to my relief he was quite positive about it. I spent a wonderful day in his studio while he worked his magic… and even got to see inside the hardware version of a VST I was using in Ableton - a chorus echo... with actual tape spinning! 

Then it was sent off for mastering, and distribution, while I got to work on some video footage for my social media.

And now it’s here… from Friday 2nd February, Soft Power is yours!