Daphne Kalfon

Staff Writer

dkalfon at maccompanion.com

Real Job: composer/songwriter

daphna at daphna.ca

Daphna.ca

About Me

I would like to first briefly explain how macCompanion Magazine came to my attention. In the spring of 2004, I was poking around on a newly established site for GarageBand users, macjams.com, when I saw a contest announcement: “MacCompanion Magazine Hosts Song Contest”. It went on to say that what they were looking for was essentially “...a love song about the Mac”.

Well, being the kind of songwriter who loves a challenge, plus the fact that I just happen to love my Mac anyway, I jumped at the opportunity. I arranged the song in GarageBand, and sent it in to macC. Not long after, I received the wonderful news that my song, aptly titled “I Love My Mac”, had been awarded first place!

Subsequently the song enjoyed great popularity at both macjams.com and iCompositions.com, and even went on to be translated and recorded into German, Swedish and Japanese, by international fans. A website was created entirely for the song and all things relating to it: ilovemymacthesong.com

The song was included on MacAddict’s December 2005

issue CD-ROM, and two months later, became available on the iTunes Music Stores. The song’s popularity has surged, and I’ve been contacted by many fans, some of whom have offered to create other foreign language translations.

My background is in classical piano and theory. I received an ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and I also studied jazz piano, orchestration, film scoring and lyric writing. You can check out my other music at daphna.ca

Why Macs?

I started using a Mac in about 1997, and soon after, learned the ins and outs of Cubase to arrange and record the music scores I was writing for short animation projects. When it came to writing orchestral scores, I learned to use Finale and Sibelius.

Why write for macCompanion?

In October of 2005, Robert Pritchett invited me to join macCompanion to write a monthly column for the magazine under the heading “Music and the Mac”. Writing the columns is always a learning experience because I find that I usually have to do a bit of research to gather my material. Besides writing the column for macCompanion, I also do the occasional review.