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.
Roger Dumas was a synthesizer whiz kid back in the 70s. He wrote manuals for early Moog synthesizers, and he helped out Prince, Janet Jackson, and even John Lennon. He's also the guy behind the catchy synths in the disco hit "Funkytown." Now Roger has a new passion: studying the brain's response to music. He's done some pretty amazing work, including re-creating a melody out of the pure data from brain sensors. In this season premiere episode of Composer Quest, I talk with Roger about his research, his album based entirely on brain data, and his glory days in the music business.
Last summer, my friend Pete and I went out to kick the soccer ball around, and I decided to try taping a GoPro camera to my ball. It made for a really fun video.
I had the privilege of watching Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace) give a live music production demo at Gamer’s Rhapsody this past weekend. I recorded it for my new sub-podcast of Composer Quest, Charlie's Music Production Lessons. In the talk, you’ll get to hear Rich composing a track on the fly. He shares his secret ingredients in scoring the video game FEZ: the Massive synth, with heavy amounts of reverb, bitcrushing, randomness, and tape warble.
Mike Olson schooled me in the ways of old-fashioned analog electronic composing, where you only have dials and cords to create music with. In this episode of Composer Quest, Mike shares how his creative process works when he's at his Moog modular synthesizer. We also talk about how to sound-treat your home studio, and what makes music go from merely "perfect" to "hair-raisingly transcendent."
I'm excited to bring you this Composer Quest podcast episode with talented video game composer Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace). We talk about his snowflake-catching game January, and how he infused his code with music theory to make some beautiful generative music. Rich also explains his composing techniques for the indie games FEZ and The Floor is Jelly.
Fellow composition podcaster Tom Snively has been producing new tracks weekly and picking them apart on his show Making My Own Music. However, his inner composer was dormant for many years as he worked as a computer programmer, then as a financial planner. In this episode of Composer Quest, I talk with Tom about his new venture to make a career out of composing and producing. He's been experimenting with writing video game scores, jazz saxophone tunes, new age music, and a spoken word track based on Philly cheesesteaks.
In this episode of Composer Quest, Chris Kukla shares some practical advice about making a business out of video game composing. He talks about where to find gigs, how to get paid, and how to work well with your clients. We also talk about his "ugly guitar chord" game and his tribute to Hitchcock's film composer Bernard Herrman.
The infamous trio Lazerwülf joined me for a Composer Quest interview about their new charity single to raise money for children in Africa. We also unearthed some deep cuts from the Lazerwülf catalogue.
Experimental songwriter Ben Simon (aka Felix Frost) caught my ear when I was judging the SpinTunes songwriting contest. His album Phineas Flux has a really shiny pop sound, but it almost never repeats the same phrase twice (in fancy composer language, that's called "through-composed"). We talk about his elaborate plot-driven songs about cowboys and pirates in this episode of Composer Quest.