As part of our "hosts as guests" series on Song Talk Radio, I had my turn to present one of my own songs and get some feedback from my co-hosts Phil and Bruce. I presented Telepathic Androids, and we talked about odd time signatures (9/4 in this case), changing up your rhyme scheme, and how [...]
Having been in the middle of moving in December, most of my studio was packed away, including my microphones, my keyboard and my drum pad controller. All I had to play with was my software. So I thought, "What kind of song could I do without any musical instruments?" I dug into Sonar's provided loop [...]
This song began with the cool piano sound and the electronic backbeat. I challenged myself by writing it in 9/4 time, which of course, made it difficult to add other parts or even write a B part that worked in harmony and still felt different enough. Suffice to say, I sat on this one for [...]
Abbey Road is one of my all-time favourite albums, and certainly my favourite Beatles album. I had this cover version of Because on the back-burner for several years, and finally found a singer capable of handling the complex harmonies. My friend Kira Braun didn't know the song, but given a few listens, she was able [...]
I recently purchased a new audio interface for my studio, after the mic inputs on my old one starting giving me static or no signal at all. I thought it would be interesting for others to see how I went about making the choice of which interface to buy, within the framework of the evolution [...]
For this piece, I had started with the guitar part (played on my keyboard), and wrote pretty much the entire music bed with the one sound. Then I added other musical parts, wrote lyrics and melody, and presented it at a songwriter's circle. Many group members were impressed that I could tackle an interesting topic [...]
I had a strong reaction to the 2012 gang rape case in India, which made international headlines in December. Revolted as I was from the crime, equally unsettling was the call from the Indian public for violent retribution upon the accused (not yet tried or convicted) men. I read several articles from different sources, and found [...]
I've been working for a few weeks now with a local singer-songwriter named Hayley. This work is quite unique in that Hayley has written lyrics and melodies, but no music, even though she plays ukulele and cello. So as she repeatedly sings her melodies, I hammer out some piano parts, with the help of a [...]
It's been more than 25 years since I started writing music, and over 10 that I've been writing songs with my own lyrics. This is my very first published song for which I did my own singing (thank goodness for pitch correction). I Am started out as the lyrics to accompany the music I had [...]
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