Music

The volumes of your recordings are of utmost importance while you are recording, mixing, and mastering. In other words, it really matters how loud your stuff is. This affects the quality of your finished product and the ease by which you can manage multiple tracks and get the best sonic results. The trouble is, it [...]

In September, I hosted a new event at my Meetup group, The Songwriting Supermarket. I invited members to get together and collaborate on writing a song in two hours. Three other talented songwriters showed up, and we had a blast writing and recording a new song, Don’t Fix Me. Before the session, I [...]

I attended the Song Studio Student Showcase at Hugh's Room in Toronto this year. Song Studio is a week-long songwriting camp in Toronto, hosted by Blair Packham and others. I know several songwriters who have attended and they all say it's an amazing experience. For the week's grand finale, the students put on a show with [...]

I know many of you don’t care for music theory. It’s clinical, it’s boring, and it sucks the soul out of songwriting. Well, news flash: you’re using music theory whether or not you intend to. For myself, I know my theory pretty well, as I learned it at young age. I couldn’t tell you if [...]

When you start creating mixes, you quickly realize that the low and low-mid frequencies are problematic. Without care and attention, they can sound muddy, boomy, and unclear. Mid- and high frequencies are much easier to manage—you can have multiple instruments and voices taking up the same sonic bandwidth and still hear everything clearly. Try this [...]

As part of the indie rock band Beige Shelter, we were approached to write a new song for a youth gang prevention event. Although we declined to perform for the event, we realized our new song was also a great message for mental health awareness and conversation. My friend and Beige Shelter frontman Adi Aman had [...]

When writing a collection of songs, whether for a album release or in general, we sometimes end up playing it safe and resorting to tried and true motifs and ideas for every song. For myself, when I become a fan of an artist or band, I like to hear a variety of songs. Sometimes the differences [...]

I met singer-songwriter Shari Archinoff at one of my meetup groups. Shari plays piano, guitar, sings, and lives in the same neighbourhood I grew up in. The first time we met, I came up with a simple chord progression on the piano. Shari developed lyrics and a melody for a song about moving on from [...]

Once again, I attended a night of talented singer-songwriters in a Nashville-style round, where four performers do four songs each in turn. What makes this kind of setup amazing is when the performers backup each other with guitar or harmony vocals. The performers for the February 9 show at the 120 Diner in Toronto were: [...]