This week, SongTalk welcomed jazz pianist and teacher Steve Koven. Steve is a composer, performer, producer and educator. He has one of the longest standing trios in Canada, performing, touring and recording together for over 26 year. Aside from performing and recording with his trio – Steve Koven Trio – Steve also has other recording …
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Bridging classical and pop music with Alex Whorms
This week singer-songwriter and Hamilton Arts Award for Emerging Artist winner (2019) Alex Whorms joined us to talk about her sophomore EP, Burgundy, and two of the songs. We talked about: FACTOR grants and Canada’s Music Incubator (check out our episodes on grants and music royalties) how long to take to get to the chorus …
Learning an Instrument for Songwriting: What You Need To Know
There are many benefits to your musicianship when you learn and master playing an instrument. You increase coordination, cognitive skills that include better memory, and create a higher level of social awareness. The piano works as a wonderful starting point for most musicians, as it provides a good base in music theory, and it helps …
Favourite Movie Soundtracks!
This week SongTalk welcomed our pal Matthew Reid to our studio to talk about movie soundtracks. We chose our favourites and talked about why they made the cut and what were the runners up. We talked about: what are the criteria of soundtracks – are they a collection of songs from other sources, are …
Creating Soundtracks with Jeff Alan Greenway
This week SongTalk welcomed Jeff Alan Greenway to our studio. Greenway is a film composer, singer/songwriter and pianist from Pickering, Ontario. He has written music for film, worked as a session player, orchestrator and arranger, released his own original album “Great Expectations” and wrote the score to the international documentary The Secret Life Of Frogs, …
Matthew Reid: Music Composition – Live, recorded and improvisational
This week SongTalk welcomed Matthew Reid to our studio. Matthew is a critically acclaimed, award winning composer for film, television, games and theatre. His funny songs have delighted almost a million people during his tenure as composer for Toronto’s world famous Second City comedy theatre. His comedic musical, The Second City Guide to the Symphony …
This Is Spinal Tap: 35 Years Later
This week SongTalk Radio has a special episode celebrating the 35th anniversary of the classic film, “This Is Spinal Tap”. And joining us in our trip down memory lane is one of our favourite guests on the show Blair Packham. We talk about where and when we first encountered this classic cult comedy and how …
What’s a cover song anyway?
Our own Michael Proudfoot proudly stepped into the world of cover songs. He uncovered a treasure trove of examples and ideas. Have a listen as the Song Talk Radio team plus Blair Packham (The Jitters) tackles: when everything was a cover the difference between 45, 78, and 33 1/3 rpm records professional songwriters writing for …