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!

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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 powerful outlet for self-expression in a system that often seeks to silence women’s voices.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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micro/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.

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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 ownership. From libraries and breweries to arts centers, Hudson and his faculty invited Atlanta-area students to discover the joy of making choices, not just following directions. The result: a ripple effect of schools programming non-traditional works and student composers taking the leap.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 as an emotional, almost therapeutic act, followed by careful listening, notation, and refinement. Meaning, geography, and identity arrive later—never planned, never imposed. What results is music shaped less by concept than by trust: allowing sound to lead, and understanding to follow.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 alive and inviting.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 a conversation about notation becomes something broader: a reflection on who gets welcomed into classical spaces, who gets left behind, and how genuine encouragement can change the trajectory of a young artist.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 the visibility of band directors as the primary professional endpoint. Rather than rejecting that path, Brett works to widen the frame, introducing students to alternative models rooted in performance, electronics, entrepreneurship, and hybrid careers that don’t fit traditional academic narratives. His approach is grounded less in disruption than in exposure: showing what’s possible by example. The conversation culminates in a broader philosophy of work and life, illustrated through a parable about unknowingly building the house you’ll one day live in. For Brett, the lesson is simple but uncompromising—love the daily process, because the career you’re constructing isn’t abstract. It’s the structure you’ll inhabit every day.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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 accepting that the kiln will not always do what you want it to do. She reflects on how this uncertainty becomes a teacher, revealing growth through small, unexpected victories—a cup whose surface finally shows looseness and history, or a teapot that playfully subverts its own form. Rather than chasing efficiency or perfection, the process becomes about attention, endurance, and learning how to play seriously—to let labor, tradition, and experimentation coexist in the work.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

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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!

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Support Loose Leaf Transmissions on Patreon at patreon.com/LooseLeafTransmissions.

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micro/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.

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