I'm excited to say that over 70 people have signed up for the "I Barely Survived That Game Jam" game jam. We have SIX CONTINENTS covered, including participants from Brazil, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Norway, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Macedonia, India, UK, Canada, and the US. After forming teams based on everyone's skill sets, it looks like we'll have 17 games in progress this week. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!
Tomb Raider, Until Dawn, and the Dead Space series are some of the big-name video games Jason Graves has been scoring recently. In this episode of Composer Quest, Jason shares a ton of great composing, production, and music business advice, along with lessons he learned from his in-depth study of John Williams scores.
What is life like as a blind composer? It's a question I've wondered about, but haven't been able to ask until this interview with Stephen Letnes. In this Season 5 premiere episode of Composer Quest, Stephen shares his adventure into the unlikely field of film composing. We talk about Stephen's love/hate relationship with epic music, his advice for working with directors, and the piano performance that changed his life forever.
This fall, we'll be teaming up composers, game developers, artists, sound designers, etc. to create new video games from the prompt, "I Barely Survived That Game Jam."
We had our second annual MNKINO Film Score Fest this summer, and it was a big success! Back in the spring, we paired up filmmakers and composers to create new short films. The Composer Quest Orchestra played the film scores live at our screening on August 13th. Thanks to Emma Andelson at SPNN, we have a video of the entire event!
I've been writing jingles for my Composer Quest patrons who are donating $3 or more per episode (thank you all!). It's been really fun writing in a different style each week. Some of these jingles are very jingle-y, others are weird, others are sweet. Enjoy!
For the Composer Quest Season 4 finale, I asked Jon Brantingham back to chat. He shares some great insights on musical form, film scoring, and the Gustav Mahler orchestration style.
Siama Matuzungidi played guitar on and wrote some of the biggest pop hits of the 70s in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Kenya. In today's episode of Composer Quest, I talk with him about the soukous style of creating interesting rhythm guitar parts and lead parts to complement them. We also talk about Tim, his talented cockatiel who can improvise in the right key over Siama's guitar playing. As a bonus, Siama writes a song on the spot in honor of the thief who stole his shoes in Uganda.
I'm excited to announce this Composer Quest double episode with TV composers Fil Eisler (Revenge, Empire, UnREAL) and Mac Quayle (American Horror Story, Drive, Mr. Robot). First, we hear from Fil about what he learned while composing for an orchestra during four seasons of Revenge. He shares his tips on getting hired for composing gigs and his tips on scoring the entire arc of a show without getting musically stale.
Next, I interview Mac Quayle about how his dance music background (41 #1 Billboard Dance Hits!) influences his film and TV scoring. He gives some music mixing pointers and explains how to build momentum in a song or soundtrack.
In today's episode of Composer Quest, I interview Noah Keesecker about everything from the perils of grad school to making musical ping pong tables. Along the way, I discover that Noah is on the "spectrum of synesthesia" as he calls it. For example, he often experiences smells when he hears things (bassoons smell like mossy logs), and he strongly associates visuals and sounds, which has led to some really cool multimedia works like Tonegoblin. Noah shares some great tips on being both a creative and professional artist.