micro/Maker by Loose Leaf Transmissions

Vanessa Ague recalls her time in college radio — from nervous beginnings to hosting her own shows focused on indie music and experimental sound. She describes the freedom of programming whatever she wanted, the joy of building a small but dedicated audience, and how those experiences shaped her thinking about music’s reach beyond traditional scenes. micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday, Wedn...

Beyza Yazgan discusses her deep connection to visual art and stop-motion animation, focusing on Passage, a handmade collage animation created alongside her music. Drawing from childhood memories, vintage imagery, and surreal storytelling, she describes animation as a parallel artistic language—one rooted in patience, imperfection, and tactile process. While music often comes first, visuals allow h...

Sugar Vendil attempted composition right after grad school—musicians learn a language but don't always use it this way—then stopped because it felt overwhelming and too late. She'd started piano young, already knew she was good at that, and classical training emphasizes craft in performance. For years she had strong ideas for pieces but collaborated with other composers to realize them. One collab...

Sinclaire Marie describes a gradual but decisive shift from charcoal drawing into ceramics, driven less by strategy than by a growing sense that her earlier work no longer felt honest. She traces her deepening commitment through atmospheric firing—raku, wood, soda—and the formative role of access, noting how losing university kilns after graduation forced her into electric work while she built a p...

For C. Jacqueline Wood , experimental film isn’t about chasing a single style—it’s about breaking rules. In this conversation, she recalls the appeal of video art in undergrad: working solo, translating an idea directly from her head to the screen, and pushing film beyond the walls of the movie theater. From projecting moving images outdoors to exploring sound, space, and site-specificity, Jacquel...

James May and Tyler talk candidly about the realities of balancing creative work with a full-time job. James shares how working in tech has reshaped his relationship to composing, how burnout forced him to redefine success, and why security can actually make space for deeper creativity. Together, they reflect on what it means to build a sustainable life as an artist—one rooted not in constant outp...

Baljinder Sekhon reflects on his earliest musical experiences — from banging on a Charlie Brown lunchbox in second grade to writing his first notated snare drum solo in sixth. What started as playful imitation evolved into a natural instinct to create. In this excerpt, he shares how composing wasn’t a formal decision at first — just something he did for fun, long before he knew it was called compo...

Composer Mahdis Golzar Kashani shares the moment that led her to choose composition as her life's path. In this excerpt, she recounts a political protest in Tehran that unexpectedly changed her trajectory as a musician. After narrowly avoiding serious injury following a government crackdown, Kashani realized that composition offered a way to stay connected to music regardless of physical limitatio...

Charly Daniels reflects on the formative artistic moments that shaped his creative sensibility long before he formally studied music — vivid memories of a childhood theater production, early encounters with abstract expressionism, and the emotional power those images held. He describes how his musical life began not with notation but with a sequencer in his family’s home studio, where hours of imp...

Staves, stems, and page turns carry more than notes. Marc Mellits explains how a copyist’s eye shapes his notation—prioritizing clarity, flexible tempos, and performer ownership—so rehearsal time goes to music, not decoding. He and Tyler Kline dig into the psychology of reading (iPad vs. paper), why a single word can guide interpretation, and how to write for players you’ll never meet. micro/Maker...

Brett Copeland traces his path into electronic and electroacoustic music through artists who treated the tuba as a flexible, expressive engine rather than a fixed orchestral voice. Influenced early on by Nat McIntosh and the genre-blurring work of Youngblood Brass Band, he became fascinated by acoustic sound manipulation—multiphonics, vocal effects, and timbral shape-shifting—as a foundation for l...

Carlynn Crosby reflects on the winding, often precarious path that many writers face after college. She shares how freelancing, food writing, and side gigs shaped her post-grad years—and why, for her and many others, writing has remained a passion even when it couldn’t be the primary paycheck. micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday! Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline...

Caterina Schembri reflects on why introspective, unhurried music feels truer to her nature—and how that sensibility shapes the pieces she writes. She talks about resisting the pressure for velocity or density, instead choosing to make work that asks listeners to slow down, pay attention, and stay inside a single sonic space long enough for something subtle to change. The conversation moves into th...

Annika Socolofsky fell in love with the Hardanger d'Amore—a Norwegian fiddle with sympathetic strings that ring underneath, creating resonance like built-in reverb—when her teacher Dan Truman left her alone with one in his office. She knew if she played it, she'd have to attend Princeton. She played it. The instrument slowed her down; fast Scottish reels gave way to sitting in single notes, which...

Declining PhD offers for “one gap year” sent Tyler Kline down a decade-long side road: composing at break-neck speed while climbing the ranks in public-radio hosting. He recalls the crash that followed, the food-and-sound series Terroir New Music, the 50-miniature piano set Orchard, and why launching Modern Notebook felt like a healthier way to uplift fellow composers instead of competing against...

When Nathan Hudson first heard author Ben Loory’s story The Duck on NPR’s This American Life, he knew he had to set it to music. That impulse sparked a collaboration that’s grown into years of friendship, concert tours, and a forthcoming album. Hudson reflects on jumping headfirst into vocal writing—despite never having written for voice before—and the challenge of setting Loory’s full, unedited t...

Gabriel Bolaños is fully Nicaraguan, though his parents fled the Sandinista revolution in 1979 with three kids and two suitcases. Growing up abroad, moving every few years, Nicaragua remained the one constant—summers with family, guitar lessons with folk guitarist Julio Vásquez, marimba training. But Bolaños resists incorporating those traditions into his notated work. He learned early that folk m...

Emma O’Halloran reflects on Ira Glass’s famous “gap” quote—the reminder that every creative must endure the distance between their taste and their early work. She shares her own struggles with that gap, the importance of making “bad art,” and why practice is as vital for composers as it is for performers. From clearing space with meditation and movement, to filling the well with curiosity and new...

Nicolás Lell Benavides reflects on the bridge between rock, jazz, and composition — how early band rehearsals unknowingly taught him orchestration, and how writing music became a way of organizing thought. He and Tyler talk about teaching creativity, the value of notation as a tool for clarity, and the humility required to stay curious long after formal training ends. micro/Maker episodes release...

Austin Hammonds opens up about what it really means to take ownership of a creative career — after years of working under others, learning the ropes, and navigating industry instability. He shares the courage it takes to step out on your own, the deep self-reflection behind that decision, and how family, mentors, and curiosity continue to shape his evolving path as a composer. micro/Maker episodes...

Jessica Ackerley applied to an Arctic residency on a whim, partly motivated by a childhood spent reading Farley Mowat's accounts of Northern Canada and a long-held desire to reach the polar regions. What they found in Svalbard, Norway — one of the furthest points north on the planet — was almost the inverse of what they'd imagined: the gap between preconceived idea and lived experience became the...

Hannah Boissonneault describes how her songwriting and concert music practices have become more unified over time — and how improvisation has remained at the heart of both. She shares how voice memos, nontraditional instruments, and a love for slow-moving harmony help her tap into musical intuition. Whether writing a fixed media piece or recording with her band, she embraces the same curiosity, la...

Through his Vital Organ Project, composer and organist Graeme Shields is reintroducing audiences to an instrument that’s often misunderstood—or overlooked entirely. He and Tyler talk about making the organ accessible outside of church walls, connecting with new audiences, and showing that this centuries-old instrument still has a vital place in today’s musical landscape. micro/Maker episodes relea...

Nicky Sohn traces a real shift in how she lives and works back to meeting her husband Nate, whose ordinary nine-to-five routine — gym at six, regular hours, a clean line between work and the rest of life — struck her as almost unbelievable after years immersed entirely in musician culture, where identity and self-worth get tied up completely in career outcomes. Watching her brother Justin's old ni...

Han Hitchen shares how his identity as a queer, transgender, nonbinary man has shaped his music, from early subconscious works to intentional explorations of belonging and transformation. He reflects on the freedom he’s found in embracing both masculinity and femininity, and how composition became a vehicle for expressing identity with honesty and depth. For Han, music is not just notes on a page—...