micro/Maker by Loose Leaf Transmissions

Phong Tran recounts the surreal experience of creating a graphic score for the A24 film Everything Everywhere All at Once. Alongside Darian Donovan Thomas, he created a piece not meant for the stage, but for the individual performer — crafting an intimate emotional space through simple musical gestures and imaginative prompts.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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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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, respond, and place real agency in the performer’s hands. That philosophy carries directly into his composing, where he’s actively working to escape what he sees as a decade of writing music that simply “sounds like a tuba piece.” Influenced by mentors and peers who pushed back against instrumental habits, Brett now approaches each new work as a stylistic challenge—asking what it would mean for a low-brass ensemble to think symphonically, or for electroacoustic music to function as art rather than a technical checklist. The conversation ultimately widens into a critique of contemporary low-brass culture itself: a commissioning-rich ecosystem that too often prizes correctness over conviction. For Brett, the goal isn’t just to add to the repertoire—it’s to help write the next piece that actually matters.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts.

Support Loose Leaf Transmissions on Patreon.

Follow us on Instagram: @loose.leaf.transmissions

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 on: rejection isn’t always the last word when performers champion the music.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on Instagram: @loose.leaf.transmissions

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

Support Loose Leaf Transmissions on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/LooseLeafTransmissions. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @loose.leaf.transmissions.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 being raised within a tight immigrant network to realizing that real community includes disagreement, multiplicity, and the difficult work of holding many viewpoints at once. Finally, she speaks to joy as the constant in her creative life—not as surface optimism, but as a commitment to imagining possibility even within serious or painful stories. Together, these three frameworks shape not only her music but the experiences she hopes to cultivate around it.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on social media @LooseLeafTransmissions.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 defines his creative practice.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @LooseLeafTransmissions.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 work today.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on Instagram: @loose.leaf.transmissions

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 open, even to hyper-experimental pieces that might alienate US listeners, perhaps because expectations about classical concerts were less rigid. Bolaños and his wife also launched Palenque Vivo, a home concert series funded by ticket sales from wealthy attendees, with free follow-up shows open to the public. The projects were flourishing when political crisis shut everything down. But Bolaños learned to conduct by necessity, and watching Norori pitch contemporary orchestra music to beer companies taught him how to frame the work's value from the ground up.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on Instagram: @loose.leaf.transmissions

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for what’s shifting—within the Earth, and within herself.

micro/Maker episodes release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

Support Loose Leaf Transmissions on Patreon. Follow us on social media @LooseLeafTransmissions.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 release every Tuesday and Friday!

Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.

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

Follow us on Instagram @loose.leaf.transmissions.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.