How do you make epic music?

Announcing my new series coming out on Substack this year.

TL;DR: I’m starting a new series, in writing and audio, called How to Make Epic Music. It’s my first attempt to offer a Substack paid membership, and I’m putting a lot of time and love into it. Listen above or read on for more details, and then subscribe! There’s a special 20% discount if you sign up right away…

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I love epic music. Always have.

To me, epic music pushes you to the limits of what you thought was possible and then tips you even further over that limit. It’s the sort of music where your insides start to re-arrange themselves because of what you’re hearing.

When people hear the word “epic,” they might think “bigger.” And yes, that can be one type of epic. The Grand Canyon is certainly epic. War & Peace is epic. You’d probably describe a massive stadium show with backup dancers, choreographed drones, a marching band, holograms, and a laser light show as pretty epic.

But epic isn’t just “big.” Sometimes big is obvious or cliché or overdone. If you experience that same stadium show a few times in a row, it starts to not feel epic anymore. The epic stops being epic if you do it the same way again and again. A 26 minute Godspeed You! Black Emperor build is pretty epic, but so is John Cage’s 4’33” of total silence.

So… how do you make epic music?

It might have something to do with confounding expectations — with setting the table for a listener in a certain way, only to then rip off the cover and discover there’s a hidden and complex world beneath.

Or maybe it has to do with relative scale, the act of taking something further than common sense would dictate. It’s the repetition that lasts way too long, or the intensity level that continues to rise long after you thought it couldn’t rise any higher. There’s definitely something unreasonable about things that are epic, something that defies logic and the acceptable bounds of normalcy.

All I can say with certainty is that I know it when I hear it, and I know I want to make it.

That’s why I’m starting a new series called How to Make Epic Music. It’s an exploration into the artists and songs that feel epic to me and what makes them so. I’ll start by committing to one deep dive a month, with audio versions as well (because it’s more fun that way) — the first one coming next week. It’s primarily for musicians and creatives, but any music lover is welcome.

This will also be my first foray into a premium Substack offering. You can see the options for supporting me below. I’ve tried to keep the cost low and will make parts of it free, but I am hoping to cover some of my time and research costs so that I can make this with care, depth, and hopefully impact, especially since I’m hoping to make original music for it too. You’ll notice there’s an option there to bundle this with a Soundfly.com subscription, which also gives you access to 60+ online courses on topics like production, mixing, theory, songwriting, and more. What a deal!

So much of modern life is full of routines, administrative stuff, and mundane to-dos like responding to emails. So much of our lives are spent on screens, where the incredible volume of content and information is no longer epic, but rather ceaseless and increasingly meaningless — a prospect made more daunting by AI-generated content.

A dash of the epic can remind one how truly miraculous it all is. In the words of Carl Sagan, it can remind us that “we are made of star stuff,” comprised of the same atoms produced in the Big Bang. It can wake up that small-but-powerful or part-of-something-bigger-than-ourselves energy we all have somewhere inside.

Some of the episodes I’m thinking about include topics like:

• Phish, jam bands, and the art of epic music live

• The best hype up songs of all time

• Epic pop music — does it even exist?

• Epic ephemera

• Post-rock music and epic builds

• The epic use of leitmotif and theme in The Lord of the Rings score

• Epic harmonies, and which chord progressions are the most epic

• Putting choirs on non-choir music and who did it best

• Prog rock and epically constructed rock music

• ‘80s epic and synth music

• Lots more…

So what do you think? What’s your favorite epic music? Interested? If so, the first episode is on the epic insistence of a particular 19th Century pianist in the face of operas, illnesses, and 88 keys on the piano. I’m very excited to share it with you.

Thanks for all the support,

Ian Temple

PS. If you’re already a Soundfly subscriber, you will be automatically added to the list to get this series. Let me know what episodes you’d like to see!