Cyriak Harris has wowed the internet with his weird YouTube animations, which often feature dancing, mutating animals, like his 34-million-views video "cows & cows & cows." But he's rarely asked about his soundtracks, which are equally intricate and wild. In this episode of Composer Quest, I interview Cyriak about his composing methods and creativity tips.
I'm excited to announce our next composing quest, courtesy of Tim Cheesebrow and his forearm. Tim has been looking for a way to commemorate his family tree through music, and he's decided to leave it to Composer Quest listeners to write a "Cheesebrow family" melody. Tim will then choose his favorite composition, and TATTOO IT ON HIS ARM.
Sam Matla admits that his hometown of Wellington, New Zealand doesn't have a big electronic dance music scene. But he's been hard at work producing EDM tracks and educating people about electronic music through his blog and podcast at EDMProd.com. For today's episode of Composer Quest, I interviewed Sam about his production techniques and advice for new producers.
Reelspins, rollups, symbols, celebrations, underscores - they're all different sound ingredients that go into a slot machine. In this episode of Composer Quest, I interview three guys in the sound department at High 5 Games about their unique challenge of making music for casino slots. We talk about the composition techniques they use to hook players into these elaborate slot machine story worlds. I also ask them how they feel about using their musical skills to get people to throw down money and press that button again "like a monkey looking for that frickin' shot of espresso," as Aldo describes it. It's a fun and quirky interview, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
If you’ve been to an indie film fest, you’ve probably seen Kevin MacLeod in the credits. Or maybe you’ve heard his music in a cute cat video, or a Minecraft video, or in a department store, cab ride, or on hold. By writing an enormous amount of music and giving it away for free, Kevin has built his reputation as the single biggest royalty-free music composer.
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.
Last night I got to hear a wonderful performance of a new quintet composition of mine. I wrote it in hopes that I'll be picked for a trip to Cuba through the American Composers Forum. The ensemble Third Sound is going to perform pieces from a few lucky composers, who will also travel to Cuba.
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.