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  • The COMPASS: Winnipeg, Manitoba

    The COMPASS: Winnipeg, Manitoba

    By Slow Leaves What is often overlooked about Winnipeg, is that it’s subtle brand of near perfect mediocrity is precisely what provides such fertile grounds for honest artistic expression. The city is not grand enough to incubate the large scale arts trends found in bigger cities. But it’s the perfect size to grow genuine art…

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  • Pauline Oliveros Made Me a Better Listener

    We know more about hearing than listening. Sound is sound, and all sound can be music. There is virtue and scholarship in all sounds, all music, but we aren’t listening to it. We might be hearing it, but we aren’t listening. We as musicians and music lovers find ourselves forming cliques. We congregate in venues,…

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  • Rappa Turned Sanga

    Rappa Turned Sanga

    I was scared I would lose credibility as a rapper if I started trying to get my Bilal on. Then a friend taught me to embrace my imperfections.

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  • 5 Tips for Describing Your Sound to the Press

    5 Tips for Describing Your Sound to the Press

    To the readers who complained that my recently published “5 Worst Ways to Describe Your Band If You’re Trying to Get Press” piece lacked suggestions for successfully relating your sound to music writers: here’s your answer! While these tips are meant to help guide you in successfully illustrating your style, I’d like to point out…

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  • How to Find Co-Writers You Love Writing With

    How to Find Co-Writers You Love Writing With

    Take a journey with me. Imagine this all too familiar scenario: You’re sitting at a table, looking at the empty chair across from you. Your coffee’s piping hot. You take another swig to ensure that you are properly caffeinated before you meet your friend. Your friend. Can you call them a friend yet? Is that…

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  • Nothing is Perfect: A Guide to Analyzing Musical Theater

    Nothing is Perfect: A Guide to Analyzing Musical Theater

    Musical theater nerds are nothing if not extreme. Some people shamelessly love The Music Man and hate Wicked with a fiery green passion. Some people are moved by the rock anthems of Spring Awakening and left cold by the soaring melodies of South Pacific. This enthusiasm for shows of such variety is wonderful, but some…

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  • Learn to Play Adele’s “Hello” on Piano in Two Minutes

    Have you been loving Adele‘s new single “Hello” as much as we have? It’s her first new song in 4 years and she came back swinging with a video directed by Xavier Dolan and staring 90210 and The Wire‘s Tristan Wilds (why can’t anything good ever happen to Michael?! First he falls in with Chris and Snoop and…

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  • Elliott Sharp’s Essential Guide to Being Elliott Sharp

    By Elliott Sharp Editor’s note: For many years, I’ve been challenged and inspired by the work of Elliott Sharp, who has etched a place as one of America’s most dynamic modern composers. He’s hard to pin down both musically and literally, since he regularly travels the world for performance, recording, commissions, and likely a bit…

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  • Be Your Own Booker: Advice on Booking Shows from NYC’s DIY Community

    Be Your Own Booker: Advice on Booking Shows from NYC’s DIY Community

    Countless idealistic, fresh-faced musicians move to NYC every year, and far too many of them are preyed upon by shady bookers who cancel last-minute, take unreasonable cuts of the door, and bill them with other bands who share no genre or potential audience reach. One of the first shows I booked in the city required…

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  • 8 Bedroom Producers You Need to Know Right Now

    8 Bedroom Producers You Need to Know Right Now

    + Learning to record and mix at home? Check out Soundfly’s acclaimed online courses on mixing, production, and beat making — Subscribe for unlimited access. True creativity strikes where you least expect it. That’s why even the most established producers still have a “bedroom production rig” — and many got their start this way. When studios and professional…

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Jlin: Rhythm, Variation, & Vulnerability