Composer Quest: A Songwriting and Music Composition Podcast
Join the quest! Learn how composers and songwriters create music in this podcast hosted by Minneapolis composer Charlie McCarron. Whether you’re a music composition grad or simply an occasional noodler on a guitar, each guest has a new perspective for you on the creative process of composing and songwriting, along with some concrete ideas to apply to your own music.
- Update frequency
- every 5 days
- Average duration
- 49 minutes
- Episodes
- 166
- Years Active
- 2013 - 2017
Patching Together a Creative Life with Anton Torres
Anton Torres has been an electronic music hobbyist for over 20 years, using the very earliest incarnations of Apple's Logic and Ableton Live. In today's episode of Composer Quest, Anton shares some w…
00:55:51 |
Wed 18 May 2016
Game Music Melee
A few weeks ago, I got to participate in a very fun live composing event at GlitchCon, called Game Music Melee. Three of us composers got up onstage to write video game music on the spot, based on ga…
00:57:44 |
Wed 11 May 2016
Daniel Levitin on Evolution and Songwriting
Musician, neuroscientist, and author Daniel Levitin has brought music psychology to the masses with This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs. For today's episode of Composer Quest, I go…
01:07:46 |
Wed 04 May 2016
Asperger's Are Us Composer Crystal Grooms Mangano
Crystal Grooms Mangano recently scored the documentary Asperger’s Are Us, which follows a comedy troupe of four autistic guys. In this episode of Composer Quest, Crystal shares her process in decidin…
00:49:08 |
Wed 27 Apr 2016
Composing for a Mutant Lobster Wife with Sage Lewis
When I called up Sage Lewis on Skype, I didn’t realize he was a fellow Minnesotan. He’s now out in LA, composing for films like Operator, starring Mae Whitman and Martin Starr, and a VR film called T…
00:54:09 |
Wed 20 Apr 2016
Improv Looping with Mandy and Mikey
Are you a "gardener" composer or an "architect" composer? My new (almost) neighbors Michael Maiorana and Mandy Fassett came over to talk about their different composing styles for today's episode of …
01:02:27 |
Wed 13 Apr 2016
Quest 18: MNKINO Film Score Fest 2016
I’m happy to announce that we’re bringing back MNKINO Film Score Fest this year! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an awesome challenge where filmmakers and composers are paired up to create short fil…
00:09:02 |
Sat 09 Apr 2016
Podcasting 101 with Guest Producer Jenny Handke
For the Season 6 Premiere of Composer Quest, I asked aspiring podcast producer Jenny Handke to guest produce the episode. Jenny was interested in gaining some podcasting knowledge, so I thought we co…
01:04:52 |
Wed 06 Apr 2016
Transylvanian Ethnomusicology with Colleen Bertsch
Ethnomusicologist Colleen Bertsch is in Romania right now through a Fulbright grant to study Transylvanian violinists. I got to Skype with Colleen for this episode of Composer Quest, and we talk abou…
01:06:29 |
Wed 23 Dec 2015
Star Trek Fan Filmmaker Tommy Kraft on Scoring “Horizon”
Tommy Kraft has been “living under a bridge” in order to finish his passion project, the feature-length Star Trek film Horizon. He’s doing almost everything himself: directing, writing, editing, comp…
01:09:32 |
Wed 16 Dec 2015
Composer on Fire Podcaster Garrett Hope
Garrett Hope has drawn composing inspiration from spider mating calls, Joan of Arc's trial transcript, oil spills, and rape survivor stories. In this episode of Composer Quest, I ask Garrett about th…
01:17:23 |
Wed 09 Dec 2015
Whiskey Songs and Space Musicals with Bubba Hollenhorst
Bubba Hollenhorst is a songwriter friend who I often only chat with during loud concerts or on the dance floor. In this episode of Composer Quest, I get to know Bubba a little better. He shares stori…
01:12:22 |
Wed 02 Dec 2015
Guild Wars 2 Composer Lena Chappelle on Melody Writing
Video game composer Lena Chappelle worked her way into the game business by starting as a quality assurance tester. Now she’s both designing and writing music for games like Guild Wars 2. In this Com…
01:01:07 |
Wed 25 Nov 2015
Cyriak's Surrealist Music and Animation
Cyriak Harris has wowed the internet with his weird YouTube animations, which often feature dancing, mutating animals, like his 34-million-views video "cows and cows and cows." But he's very rarely a…
01:05:31 |
Wed 18 Nov 2015
Quest 17: The Tattoo
I’m excited to announce our next composing quest, courtesy of Tim Cheesebrow and his forearm. Tim has been looking for a way to commemorate his family tree through music, and he’s decided to leave it…
00:12:16 |
Wed 11 Nov 2015
Niche Songwriting with Jonathan Rundman
Jonathan Rundman’s songs have appeared on the Ellen Degeneres show, the CBS Morning News, and NPR. He realized the success of these songs have been due in part to their narrow topics, like insomnia a…
01:21:09 |
Wed 11 Nov 2015
EDM Production Tips with Sam Matla
Sam Matla admits that his hometown of Wellington, New Zealand doesn’t have a big electronic dance music scene. But he’s been hard at work producing EDM tracks and educating people about electronic mu…
00:59:30 |
Wed 04 Nov 2015
Slot Machine Composing
Reel spins, rollups, symbols, celebrations, underscores - they're all different sound ingredients that go into a slot machine. In this episode of Composer Quest, I interview three guys in the sound d…
01:13:37 |
Wed 28 Oct 2015
Kevin MacLeod, King of Royalty-Free Music
If you’ve been to an indie film fest, you’ve probably seen Kevin MacLeod in the credits. Or maybe you’ve heard his music in a cute cat video, or a Minecraft video, or in a department store, cab ride,…
01:04:11 |
Wed 21 Oct 2015
Jason Graves on Game Composing
Tomb Raider, Until Dawn, and the Dead Space series are some of the big-name video games Jason Graves has been scoring recently. In this episode of Composer Quest, Jason shares a ton of great composin…
01:16:12 |
Wed 14 Oct 2015
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