Shruthi Rajasekar reflects on growing up in a deeply musical household shaped by her mother’s work as a Carnatic vocalist and collaborator across cultures. She and Tyler talk about the intersections of Indian and Western classical traditions, early encounters with instruments like the cello and clarinet, and the way curiosity and openness became part of her musical DNA.

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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For Graeme Shields, composing started as play—long afternoons with friends huddled around the family computer, experimenting with Finale and discovering the thrill of sound on command. Those early experiments evolved into something more intentional: arranging, composing, and eventually finding community at the Junior Composers Institute, where he met living composers and heard his music performed for the first time. A conversation about how curiosity becomes commitment.

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.

For Fire Ecologies, Christopher Stark spent months working with field recordings made near California wildfires, and just as much time deciding what not to include. A long recording of an actual forest fire originally closed the piece; he cut it less than a day before final production, leaving behind only indirect traces — water that sounds like fire, a Sierra Nevada power line slowed down until its buzz becomes something closer to marching boots. The same instinct shaped his choices in the field: standing in a town that had just burned, camera in hand, Stark found he couldn't bring himself to record people in front of what remained of their homes, even as a documentary-minded friend urged him to. The excerpt sits inside that tension — between bearing witness and observing from a respectful distance, and what it means for work like this to edge toward activism without losing the line between representing something and exploiting it.

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.