Nicky Sohn traces a real shift in how she lives and works back to meeting her husband Nate, whose ordinary nine-to-five routine — gym at six, regular hours, a clean line between work and the rest of life — struck her as almost unbelievable after years immersed entirely in musician culture, where identity and self-worth get tied up completely in career outcomes. Watching her brother Justin's old nine-to-five (before he left it to become a ceramicist) planted a similar idea: what if composing worked that way too. The bigger realization underneath both is that music isn't life or death, despite what conservatory training can leave people feeling — that a slow commission year doesn't make her a terrible person. She's since pulled back from all-night writing sessions and constant email responsiveness, trying to build in actual breathing room. Marrying outside the music world has helped in another way: Nate offers something composers rarely give each other, plain, unguarded encouragement, alongside occasional outsider feedback sharp enough to be genuinely useful, like noticing that an opening passage didn't sound like a beginning at all.

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

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Han Hitchen shares how his identity as a queer, transgender, nonbinary man has shaped his music, from early subconscious works to intentional explorations of belonging and transformation. He reflects on the freedom he’s found in embracing both masculinity and femininity, and how composition became a vehicle for expressing identity with honesty and depth. For Han, music is not just notes on a page—it’s a way of making visible the truths of selfhood.

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.

Michael Frazier outlines three guiding pillars that now shape his creative life: fun, patience, and the embrace of identity. Reflecting on earlier periods where composition felt more dutiful than joyful, he describes how reconnecting with jazz, rhythm, and later his Latino heritage fundamentally shifted his relationship to writing music. Fun becomes not a distraction from rigor, but a necessary condition for sustained artistic investment; patience allows musical ideas the space to unfold fully; and identity offers a source of sincerity rather than constraint. Through recent works shaped by rhythm, dance, and cultural memory, Frazier describes a turning point where composition becomes not only meaningful, but genuinely enjoyable again.

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 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.