I recently finished reading a great book by Marc Myers entitled Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits that Changed Rock, R&B, and Pop. Myers interviewed the people involved in historically significant songs from the 1940s to the 1990s. He ended his examination in 1991 because, as he explains it, you [...]

I first discovered Rush towards the end of high school, after borrowing a tape of Presto from the public library on a whim. I expected to hear heavy metal that I wasn't fond of, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to hear a fusion of rock, jazz, progressive, and extraordinarily well composed and performed music; [...]

I was intrigued by the premise of the movie Yesterday; an English singer-songwriter who finds he's the only one in the world who remembers the Beatles music after a freak accident. This is a unique idea and relatively refreshing after a barrage of mediocre musical hero bio-pics in recent memory. Watching the movie, I often [...]

I met Chad through the cross-pollination of our respective Meetup groups, Song Talk Meetup, and Chad's own group, At Home Songwriting. I highly recommend Chad's online workshops, he's a fantastic teacher with a great presentation style and knows how to engage his participants in a meaningful and effective way. He's also the Education Director at [...]

I’m inviting rap artists to collaborate on a new project. I created these beats for my progressive electro-pop EP, Ace Symmetry. I challenged myself to only use odd time signatures, so every beat is 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, or 13 beats to a bar. If you’re up to the task, I’d love to hear [...]

I released an EP of progressive electro-pop songs in September 2020. Ace Symmetry features odd time signatures, nonsensical lyrics, inventive beats, and catchy synth solos. It was an interesting and fun challenge to work on a focused project like this. I talked about the project and featured some of the songs twice on Song Talk [...]

One year ago, a van mounted the sidewalk in North York on a sunny spring day and plowed through over 25 people, killing 10. The driver was quickly arrested, and the community came together in solidarity to express our collective grief over the incident. During the van attack, I was working from home with a [...]

Singer-songwriter Angela Saini asked me to take photographs and videos of her CD release show with her band. I also got some shots of her opening act, Mikalyn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gI_dH-jnh0

As a member of indie-rock band Beige Shelter, we shared the stage at Sneaky Dee's in Toronto with very talented acts Claire Hunter, Stephanie Paglia, and Wilson and the Castaways. I took some photos of the other artists too. As usual, I used my 85mm F1.8 prime lens on my Nikon D7000 body, which gave me [...]