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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 16/07/2026

Some more pics of Strong Songs Live, courtesy MirifotoPDX:

Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 14/07/2026

Strong Songs Live was unbelievable. I am thrilled, and still recovering. THANK YOU to everyone who came out, and who tuned in to the stream. I’m already planning the next one, haha. Here are some early video stills, shot by Kevin Jardin:

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 27/05/2026

This piece goes through some of my favorite Rollins recordings, with special focus on Sonny Side Up. That's a very important record to me, not just for the famous sax battle on "The Eternal Triangle," but for Rollins' absolutely burning stop-time solo on "I Know That You Know"

Rollins’s solo is entirely in stop-time, meaning that the rhythm section plays only downbeat hits every other bar while Rollins blows through the spaces in between. Over the course of a handful of breakneck choruses, he lets fly a rhythmically wild, almost comically inspired cavalcade of ideas that leaves no inch of the saxophone unexplored. In another world, Stitt might once again have followed Rollins with a flashier solo, successfully matching if not outshining his bandmate. And he gives it his best shot, filling several choruses with his usual impressive machine-gun swing. But to my ear, there’s no touching Rollins. The song had been his from the moment he began to improvise.

I sometimes imagine what it must have been like in the studio that day, listening to Rollins blow and knowing that you were going to have to follow that. Then again, maybe I know exactly how that feels. It’s what I and countless other musicians have been doing for years: trying to figure out how to follow Sonny Rollins.

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 17/05/2026

If you enjoyed this episode, I highly recommend Ashley Kahn's 2000 book about the making of Kind of Blue. It's a great resource if you want to learn more about the players, the time period, and the music.

The cover of Ashley Kahn's 2000 book "Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece"

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 28/02/2026

I hope Capcom never stops using the flashlight-to-shoulder reload animation

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 06/01/2026

how do you know what I expect

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 03/01/2026

How many different ways can a single paragraph tell you it was written by AI

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 02/01/2026

This piece features some good quotes from thoughtful people - I love how both Miranda Sawyer and Jad Abumrad approach the question

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 28/11/2025

This is a fantastic interview in general, but the realness of this particular answer stopped me cold

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 17/10/2025

Strong Songs is now an internationally award-winning podcast! A jury at the Reeperbahn Music festival in Hamburg, Germany awarded Strong Songs the 2025 International Music Journalism Award in the audio category. I'm super proud and wish I could've flown out to accept in person. Thank u Germany <3

A pair of people on stage at the Reeperbahn Festival present an award while Kirk's acceptance speech is projected on the screen behind them

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 28/09/2025

The Strong Songs Patreon voting bracket is down to the elite eight, and the votes have been CLOSE. Winner will get a guaranteed episode in the upcoming season. All patrons get a vote, so if you've been thinking about supporting the show, now's a good time! www.patreon.com/c/strongsongs

A voting bracket with a bunch of legendary musicians and bands, which has been winnowed down to Queen, Talking Heads, Prince, Paul Simon, The Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Electric Light Orchestra, and Joni Mitchell.

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 14/09/2025

I love Shakra’s singing and wanted to play along - 🎶🪡

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 04/09/2025

The Dies irae is extremely strong in Silksong

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 31/07/2025

I love the expression Link makes whenever he learns a new Ocarina melody. He's like holy shit is there anything this instrument CAN'T do??

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 14/07/2025

Triple Click Live was SO FUN. I couldn't have asked for a better night, and am still emotionally recovering. Thanks to everyone who came out! Let's do it again sometime!! 🎶🎮🎤

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 22/06/2025

I had fun reworking the outro to "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" on the latest ep of Strong Songs, so I made a video showing some of the different parts and instruments. I really could just hang out on this vamp forever ❤️ 🎶

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 20/04/2025

On my Muppets episode I did an arrangement of Walt Kraemer’s “Pinball Number Count” from Sesame Street - it was a lot of fun, so I made a video breaking down the counting. Count along if you can! And check out the episode for more 🎵

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 19/04/2025

love when a blue prince dartboard is just a neat little piece of math art

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 24/02/2025

turns out my entire sense of humor is "jack reacher uses the world's tiniest phone"

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 24/01/2025

I finished organizing the studio storage space and honestly... it might be even more pleasing than the studio itself

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 05/01/2025

January is for drumming! Been getting my chops back up and drilling basics for the past couple weeks - also finally tuned my drums & started figuring out how to get em sounding better in the studio. First lesson is next week 🥁

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 09/12/2024

my favorite game genre is "water puts out your torch"

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 06/12/2024

The Prestige def has a noticeable lack of TARS

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 04/12/2024

I’ve been messing with one of those voice replacer plugins and they really do sound cool on saxophone

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 03/12/2024

The HBO Yacht Rock documentary is pretty great! It really captures the scene and the music, however you feel about the genre name. When they called up Donald Fagen I was like this is gonna be good

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 30/11/2024

I actually made all three episodes in the same Logic session, and looking at them side by side really illustrates how much more complex each one was than the last. Like a visual representation of my learning process haha

A Logic session with a looooot if audio regions (probably too many)

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 30/11/2024

Finishing up the Triple Quest finale - one of the most involved podcast episodes I’ve ever edited. Almost 2 hours of action, drama, silly sound effects and new music. I’ve never scored a project like this before - it’s been a lot of work but I learned a ton doing it!

A Logic recording session with a lot of different tracks and colorful audio blocks

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 30/11/2024

just a cool game about having fun with your friends!

four video game characters have a nice party with a cake

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 27/11/2024

Been working on this Larry Carlton lick 🎸

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 27/11/2024

I did it, I finally got an e

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 28/06/2023

My favorite little Australia-ism was that when you’re ordering food, instead of saying “for here or to go?” they say “have it here or take away?” There’s a hundred other little things like that, it rules anyway here’s picture of a koala

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Kirk Hamilton @kirkhamilton.com · 22/05/2023

dang it’s kinda nice to only have 12 followers. here’s my dog!

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