MMOM 022 - Nothing Flower

Originally posted on February 13, 2014In this episode, I interviewed Charlie McCarron, a composer in Minneapolis and the host of the Composer Quest podcast. We talked about his piece The Mystery of Grey Matters and his song Nothing Flower.In my interview with Charlie McCarron, we talked about the following:The concept of Grey Matters which was released as a PolyalbumThis is a concept album that included voice actors which was released on three CDs, called “L,” “R,” and “L+R.” The “L+R” version is the same as when you play “L” and “R” at the same timeMMoM-1400-blueNothing Flower is a song from the Cagetones album Did You See The Moon? Cagetones is an experimental group that Charlie created with Nick Syman and John Worth.Charlie started with a beat demo, with an electric piano, bass, guitar, and percussion. His friend Jeffrey Schwinghammer made a video of the demo that was uploaded to YouTube.Charlie added an additional keyboard part that used an arpeggiator at different tempos. Charlie and I talked about arpeggiators and how you get random performances that you may never be able to repeat.I then played Nothing Flower.We talked about the different ways to make money from music: film scores, video games, multimedia, commissions, grants, and other notated music for live performancesWe talked about registering with ASCAP or BMI to receive royalties from performancesCharlie talked about receiving grants for creating music. He recommended these linksNYFA – a large grant database:http://source.nyfa.org/Composers Forum – lots of opportunities, requires membership to view the full listings:http://composersforum.org/opportunitiesThe Composer’s Site – lots of opportunities:https://live-composers.pantheonsite.io/Charlie described his podcast Composer Quest where he interviews composers and others involved in the creative process.The current quest, #7 is to compose music for your ValentineCharlie also mentioned Spintunes Challenge as an external deadline to help him write more musicSend me your feedback by emailing tsnivelymusic@gmail.com. If you use LinkedIn, connect to me and endorse my skills (saxophone, songwriting, recording, mixing, and podcasting).