Have you ever wanted to learn the basics of music composition? Audio production?
In an effort to get the Composer Quest podcast heard, I'm offering a free music composition or production lesson to one random Facebook fan and one random Twitter follower.
2013 Children's Album Grammy-winner Joe and his fellow Okee Dokee Brother Justin Lansing took a trip down the Mississippi river to write some beautiful bluegrass songs for their album Can You Canoe?
In this video, ambient music wizard Brian Eno explains his creativity-provoking pack of cards, called Oblique Strategies.
Matt Schubbe, the graphic designer behind our 8-bit Composer Quest art, is also a songwriter himself! In this episode, we talk about how he writes songs for (and with) his wife, Donna. Matt tends to choose strange lyrical topics, like a kid getting his head stuck in the banister, or the 1739 invention of a pooping duck automaton.
Luke Friedrich was too young to carry a musket when he joined his Civil War reenacting unit, so he picked up the fife and drum instead. Now, he plays in more bands than would seem possible, including Crimes, Strange, Rupert Angeleyes, Flowerstalks, Secrets, ThoughtTalk, and his primary songwriting endeavor, Squares. We talk about performing, the music business, and his fascination with horrific lyrical topics.
I talked with my cousin, Nathan Graves, who fronts the band With a Gun for a Face and writes solo music under the name Kurtz. Nate's music is usually pretty dark and dissonant, but strangely catchy. The more I listen, the more I like it.
In this episode, Kazyak's Peter Frey debuts his new, more personal album See the Forest, See the Trees. He also shares his philosophy on soloing, the pros and cons of touring, and his advice on promoting your music.
In this episode, Ryan Ruff Smith and I talk about a bunch of lyric-writing techniques, including seeing the big picture, using subtext, writing as a character, and focusing your song ideas.
Join me in the inaugural episode of my new podcast, Composer Quest. I'll be picking the brains of composers and songwriters to gain some insight into writing music. For the first episode, I interviewed Mitchell Johnson from Spencer McGillicutty.
A mysterious, webaholic music lover known only as "Spin" once took it upon himself to start a songwriting challenge, free and open to anyone in the world. The SpinTunes challenge usually has around 35 participants, who are pitted against each other in four rounds of songwriting. The judges include Continue reading...