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Phil, Neel, and Amanie

Writing a multilingual song with Amanie Illfated

Amanie Illfated (pronounced: ah-MAH-nee eel-fay-ted) is an award winning South Sudanese born international recording artist. Her music consists of thought-provoking multilingual mixed with a dynamic blend of R&B, Afropop, Reggae and Trap, all combined with her signature, clear-toned vocals. She incorporates her personal experiences growing up as a refugee in Canada to deliver inspirational messages of empowerment, healing, diversity and fun, and captivates audiences with her energetic, inclusive live performances.… Read the rest

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Phil and Neel

Songs with odd time signatures

For this special episode, Phil joined Neel in his studio to record our first in-person episode since early 2020!

We dove deep into songs with odd time signatures and talked about:

  • Our songwriting challenge for 2023
  • How time signatures work
  • How odd time signatures can introduce a lot of tension in your song
  • How complex time signatures with 5, 7 or 9 beats to the bar can be subdivided into 2s, 3s, and 4s to make counting them easier
  • How the emphasis on certain beats are important to defining the time signature

The songs:

No.

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Neel and Phil

Songwriting Challenge 2022: Listener Songs Volume 3

On this special episode, we share the third and final batch of listener answers to our 2022 songwriting challenge to write a song with the title Why Do You Cry?

We talked about:

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Neel, Phil, Lexie, and Jordana

Voices Only with Jordana Talsky

We have a fascinating show this episode with our special guest, Jordana Talsky. Jordana is a singer, songwriter and vocal looper who fuses multi-genre influences into her own sound. She accompanies herself by voice with a Roland Boss RC505 loop station.… Read the rest

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Mike, Neel, and Phil

Music – the International Language

This week SongTalk tried something a little different. We brought in some our favourite songs sung in a different language than English.

They say music is the international language so we thought we would put that to the test. Phil, Neel and Mike each presented three songs in a language other than English and we talked about what it was that made them so appealing.… Read the rest

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