Tag: Interview

October 28, 2015

Slot Machine Composing

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.

October 21, 2015

Kevin MacLeod, King of Royalty-free Music

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.

October 14, 2015

Jason Graves on Game Composing

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.

October 7, 2015

Blind Film Composer Stephen Letnes

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.

July 1, 2015

Season 4 Finale: Jon Brantingham Returns

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.

June 24, 2015

African Guitar Legend Siama Matuzungidi

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.

June 17, 2015

TV Composer Double Feature: Fil Eisler and Mac Quayle

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.

June 10, 2015

Inside the Creative Mind of Noah Keesecker

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.

June 3, 2015

Composing a Symphony with Musicologist Michael Dodds

Composer and Baroque music specialist Michael Dodds is the subject of an upcoming documentary called Blessed Unrest (currently being Kickstarted) about the personal challenge of creating a 40-minute choral symphony. Michael joined me on Composer Quest to talk about the techniques he used in writing his symphony, like borrowing from the beautiful Romantic harmonies of Richard Strauss. Michael also explains how Baroque composers are like jazz musicians, and how music theory is linked to the history of map-making.

May 27, 2015

Game Music so Sweet it’ll Make Your Teeth Hurt, with Lisa Walkosz-Migliacio

Lisa Walkosz-Migliacio is a video game designer who also specializes in composing sparkly "tingy tingy" music that perfectly complements her games like the cute, bunny-filled Usagi-chan. With about 350,000 downloads of that game, she's clearly found a niche: young girls who don't have many games designed with them in mind. In today's episode of Composer Quest, I talk with Lisa about her creative process as both a composer and game designer. We also get to hear about her first ever game, a floppy-disk Joan of Arc adventure.