Category: Discovery

  • The COMPASS: Kansas City, MO

    The COMPASS: Kansas City, MO

    By The Phantastics Kansas City is very much a city that lives up to its state motto, the “Show Me State” — there’s a shell of skepticism, challenging you to present something impressive— but once you crack the outer shell, you will be enveloped by a very soft teddy bear of love. That’s what we have…

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  • Entrepreneurship in Music: Third Side Music

    Entrepreneurship in Music: Third Side Music

           Entrepreneurship in Music Series: 007        THIRD SIDE MUSIC Founder, A&R, and VP Finance Jeff Waye Splitting his time between Los Angeles and Montréal, Jeff Waye started Third Side Music (TSM) after years of running the famed independent electronic music label, Ninja Tune. Third Side Music is now celebrating its tenth year and…

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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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  • 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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  • 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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RJD2: From Samples to Songs