micro/Maker by Loose Leaf Transmissions

Brett Copeland dismantles the narrow expectations around “tuba and electronics,” laying out a clear hierarchy that moves from fixed-media “karaoke” works, to flexible broken-tape structures, and finally to fully integrated systems involving live processing, multi-channel sound, and video. For him, electronics aren’t an accompaniment but an extension of performance—something that must breathe, resp...

A nine-hour car ride with Steve Reich rewired Marc Mellits ’s plan: skip the safe teaching job, move to New York, and start an ensemble. After years of mailing tapes to Bang on a Can with no reply, a surprise call from Michael Gordon led to a commission and Five Machines—a piece the All-Stars toured widely. Those performances sparked more invitations (Kronos among them) and a lesson Mellits passes...

Daijana Wallace walks through the evolving pillars of her creative process: intentionality, working without boundaries, and daily repetition. She and host Tyler Kline explore how she begins each piece with a character sketch rather than staff paper, how she avoids locking herself into a fixed compositional voice, and why every project is treated as its own distinct world. micro/Maker episodes rele...

Shruthi Rajasekar talks with Tyler about the three touchstones she returns to again and again: identity, community, and joy. She reflects on how understanding identity—both self-defined and externally perceived—helps her shed fear, claim space, and recognize the privileges and complexities within South Asian artistic lineages. She also unpacks how her understanding of community has shifted: from b...

Sean Hamilton shares how his relationship with composer Stuart Saunders Smith has shaped his artistic identity — not just through mentorship, but through the challenge of performing Smith’s 50-minute vibraphone solo Queen Anne’s Lace . In this excerpt, Sean reflects on the rigor of memory, the discipline of presence, and how the piece prepared him for the large-scale improvisational work that now...

Dorm-room sketches, oversized George Crumb scores, and a business minor no one thought he needed— Tyler Kline recounts how an unlikely mix of research fellowships and mentoring moments set him on the composer’s path. From discovering The Artist’s Way to a pivotal lesson with James Grant that rewired his sense of musical punctuation, Tyler traces the do-it-yourself mindset that still drives his wor...

Gabriel Bolaños co-founded Proyecto Eco, Nicaragua's first new music ensemble, during a Fulbright stay while finishing his dissertation. Working with conservatory faculty and collaborator Guillermo Norori—a musician trained at the Royal Academy but rooted in Nicaragua's pop scene—they presented experimental chamber music at bars, cultural centers, and conservatories. Audiences proved remarkably op...

Hannah Selin traces the origins of her Pieces of Place project—a cycle of works that weave together memory, geology, and ecology. She and Tyler talk about composing during the pandemic, the ache of distance from nature, and the challenge of translating vast natural processes into human-scale sound. Through landscapes like the Chesapeake Bay and the Catskills, Hannah’s music becomes a way to listen...

Austin Hammonds shares a lesson from composer John Powell that reshaped his thinking: you don’t have to know what you’re doing — you just have to be in control of what you’re doing. He and Tyler talk about the gap between confidence and uncertainty, and how learning from mentors (and tackling new creative challenges) helps keep the process alive, curious, and deeply human. micro/Maker episodes rel...

Michael Frazier reflects on how birdsong entered his music not as a technical exercise, but as an extension of a long-standing, personal relationship with birds themselves. What began as visual fascination gradually expanded into sonic exploration, shaped by listening, whistling, and close attention rather than transcription alone. Drawing inspiration from Messiaen while diverging from his methods...

Vanessa Ague talks about her creative rituals — daily listening, long walks, and the rhythm of language — and how each plays a role in shaping her work as a writer. She discusses the subtle tensions between repetition and variation, and how her process combines deep thought with lived experience and stylistic precision. micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday! Listen to music/Maker w...

Mahdis Golzar Kashani opens up about the profound challenges women face in Iran—and how those obstacles have shaped her life and work as a composer. In this excerpt, she reflects on restrictions placed on women performers, the societal pressures she’s navigated, and the courage of a new generation rising to create change. Through it all, Kashani’s music carries both anger and hope, serving as a po...

What if high schoolers were given permission to make noise—messy, weird, beautiful noise—and call it music? After finishing his PhD in 2019, Nathan Hudson launched a virtual project teaching families to perform non-traditional notation. That experiment grew into the Forage and Flourish Contemporary Music Festival, a weeklong celebration of graphic scores, unconventional sounds, and creative owners...

Beyza Yazgan describes how the idea of Anatolia—rather than Türkiye as a modern nation—quietly surfaces in her music through instinct rather than intention. Layered histories, blended cultures, and inherited musical language emerge only after the music is written, often revealing themselves as something familiar yet untraceable, like a half-remembered dream. Her process begins with improvisation a...

Chris Opperman believes music can—and should—be funny. From his tongue-in-cheek album Chamber Music from Hell to a set of 12-tone Cribbage Variations, he shows how humor and playfulness can open doors to deeper engagement with music. He shares how embracing wit, audience connection, and even chance operations has pushed him to expand his creative voice while making contemporary music feel more ali...

Shruthi Rajasekar looks back at her earliest compositions—letter names scribbled on loose sheets, drifting between Carnatic training and an intimidating Western notation system that never felt built for her. She and Tyler talk about gatekeeping in classical music, the shame that can shadow beginners, and how she learned to decode theory through a hybrid vocabulary of her own making. What begins as...

In this episode, Baljinder Sekhon describes his conscious decision to stop composing percussion music — despite being a percussionist — in order to break creative habits and push his own boundaries. He also explains how that mindset now informs his teaching: encouraging students to write outside their comfort zones, take risks, and explore unfamiliar musical terrain. micro/Maker episodes release e...

Returning to the University of Northern Iowa as a faculty member, Brett Copeland describes the strange cognitive dissonance of inhabiting both student and professor roles at once—still attending everything, still assigning himself weekly goals, still operating with a learner’s mindset. Teaching in Iowa has sharpened his awareness of how limited many students’ career models are, shaped largely by t...

Sinclaire Marie describes atmospheric firing as a collaboration rather than a technique—one that requires attention, patience, and a willingness to relinquish control. Drawn to fire as both an ancestral element and a living force, she frames wood firing as a communal, physically demanding process that demands full presence: listening to the crackle of the flames, responding to their rhythm, and ac...

Ania Vu reflects on the interplay between language, identity, and musical composition. Drawing from her multilingual upbringing, she shares how text influences her creative process — not just through semantics, but also through the sound and feel of words. micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday! Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcas...

Hannah Selin talks with Tyler about GADADU, the cross-genre songwriting project she co-leads with her husband, composer/pianist Nikki Adams. The duo’s kaleidoscopic mix of jazz, pop, and experimental textures has deeply shaped Hannah’s work as a composer, challenging her to rethink form, rhythm, and collaboration. She and Tyler reflect on what happens when concert music and songwriting meet—and wh...

Andrew Noseworthy reflects on how a DIY ethos became less a philosophy than a survival skill—one forged through limited access, institutional gatekeeping, and the repeated experience of being told “no.” Rather than waiting for permission, he learned to build the structures he needed himself: founding labels, curating genre-fluid concerts, organizing consortium commissions, and prioritizing collect...

Shelley Washington shares how her earliest experiences composing music were actually a creative rebellion against piano practice as a child — a spark that would later shape her career. From early improvisations to discovering composition formally during graduate school, Shelley’s path unfolded with encouragement, collaboration, and discovery. micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!...

From an early encounter with a living composer who jokingly warned him about the difficulty of the profession, Charly Daniels moves through the formative stretch of his creative life — first believing he’d follow a conventional composer’s path, then discovering that the reality was far more winding. He recalls early orchestral successes, the ego shock of graduate-school rejection, and the moment h...

Composer and percussionist Sean Hamilton didn’t plan to become a musician — in fact, he came to drumming through historical reenactments, not the school band. In this episode, Sean shares how he discovered his voice through punk, screamo, and grindcore, and how those early influences continue to shape his approach as a composer and performer. He and Tyler discuss what it means to seek out the edge...