As part of the indie rock band Beige Shelter, I collaborated with our lead singer Adi Aman on a song encouraging men to be more open about their feeling and issues. The song was inspired by Movember’s tagline for their 2018 campaign. The movement asked all men to be “A Man of More Words.” Their [...]
This is the fourth year in a row that I’ve written an original holiday song. Previously, the songs were funny or cynical, or took a stab at conventional holiday sentiments like peace and love. Immediately after finishing last year’s song (perhaps the most scathing holiday song of the three) I decided to write my next [...]
This song is a test case for the distance between an initial idea for a song and its execution. Through two completely different drafts, the idea remained the same, but the execution and treatment went on a twisted journey. A bad first draft The original idea was to write a song about the pervasive vocabulary [...]
The question of the perfect fifth has been simmering in my mind for some time now. It started when we started investigating chord substitutions on Song Talk Radio in 2016. For that show, I looked at the Circle of Fifths as a great tool for making chord choices when writing a song. The Circle of [...]
I worked closely with electro-pop / dance songwriter Dokter Nomi for another catchy and cool track. Nomi sent me a scratch vocal sung to a beat. I expanded his melody to make it, well, more melodic, and laid down a chord progression on the piano to carry it. While Nomi’s melody suggested a clear I [...]
Beige Shelter had the pleasure of being interviewed on Passion Projects TV. I'm the percussionist, occasional songwriter, and producer for the band. Our host was journalism student Kayla Douglas. We talked about: the band name and where it came from our debut album, Rumours We Make, Paths We Take songwriting and collaborating performing cover songs [...]
I’ve written and recorded a Christmas song for three years in a row – I feel like I’m on a roll. This year, I didn’t have an idea for a new song until I fired up Spotify one day and saw their new Holiday playlists. Front and centre was the 1994 Mariah Carey hit, All [...]
Following news of sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein, many of my female friends posted “#MeToo” on social media. Some of them even shared their own harrowing stories of sexual assault. Their courage and vulnerability really got to me. It’s one thing to hear about famous people who live a world away, but [...]
This week, I had the privilege of once again being the guest on Song Talk Radio, where I talked about my current songwriting and recording project of progressive electro-pop songs. For this project, I'm abiding by three self-imposed creative parameters: I'm not allowed to use the 4/4 time signature All my lyrics are stream of consciousness, [...]
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