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  • 3 Things We Can Learn About Song Making from Phil Elverum

    3 Things We Can Learn About Song Making from Phil Elverum

    Phil Elverum, based in Washington state and best known for his musical projects The Microphones and Mount Eerie, has trafficked and produced prolifically in all manner of medium: song composition and production, letterpress printing, photography, filmmaking, and last but not least endearing, a 365-day comic calendar called Fancy People Adventures. He has also effectively retained the…

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  • What the Heck Is a Shruti Box?

    What the Heck Is a Shruti Box?

    The shruti box’s warm, textural drone can be used as a backing track for soloing instrumentalists, accompaniment to throat singers, or as an iPhone app!

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  • What I Learned from 3 Artists Who Really Get Social Media

    What I Learned from 3 Artists Who Really Get Social Media

    + Pursue your next marketing goal with a Soundfly Mentor! Soundfly offers four-week mentorship sessions with a pro, customized to you. Get in touch. Social media is a chore for you (okay, me). But why? Because you’re (I’m) doing it wrong. You know who’s doing it right? Of course you do. Amanda Palmer is doing social media right because…

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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

    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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