Behind the Scenes: Making the Pack with Swoope
Singer-songwriter, producer, and creator of Sound Doctrine’s Convocation pack, Lawrence Allen Swoope II (known as Swoope) sought out to craft a gospel pack that’s both accessible and tangible. He wanted you to be able to “smell the fish dinners cooking in the church basement when you listen to these samples” and feel like you’re in the Sunday service as he and fellow musicians and vocalists were performing. He says, “This release is not a cliché gospel snippet. These creators have been to night service, have been to convocation.”
Much like most convocation services, the making of this pack was heavily based on improvisation. Swoope wanted the singers to answer “what do you feel right now?” with their vocals, which is where all of Swoope’s work starts. He didn’t plan out chord structures or melodies. Instead, he gathered with a group of singers to sit down and started playing whatever chords came to him and they sang what they felt, which happens a lot in service.
Swoope told us, “You don’t always know what the singer is going to sing in testimonial service or what groove the musicians will make up during the offering, but you better be prepared.” He added, “Feelings are communal. Improvising what you have, bottling it up, and sharing it with another person is exactly what I’m hoping this convocation pack does.”
The majority of today’s gospel music is very clean with multiple over-dubs. Swoope came up with ‘80s and ‘90s gospel, where you’ll hear some dissonance, a tangible quality you can miss out on if the production is too pristine. He wanted to create music with texture that’s easy to sample. He reflected, “There are so many possibilities when everything is stemmed out rather than being limited to just the whole sample. It takes creativity to a whole new plateau.”
His general advice to artists is “Be the varsity version of yourself, not the junior varsity version of someone else. What this pack sparks in you is only going to spark in you. Don’t rob the world of you by trying to be someone else.” Regarding this pack, he says, “Take it and do what you want with it. Feel the pack and let it inspire you. What is this pack causing you to feel in your heart, your soul, your belly? The possibilities are endless.”
