The Unreasonable Silence

Making Sense of the Human Condition

Category: Music Page 1 of 2

It’s time for everyone that cares, to call out AI generated music..

By

On 10 December 2025

In Music

I can’t keep quiet about this any longer. It needs calling out.. I’ve recently been alerted by a good friend and colleague, to the fact that there are now new albums circulating in the prog world that have been 100% created with AI. No, not just the artwork, literally albums of songs with NO musicians playing on them at all.. completed songs made from text prompts!. Fake guitars, fake vocals and the music written with AI generated algorithms based on original music.

I always knew this was coming, but I didn’t quite factor that it would happen so fast.. There is now a new breed of AI software out there, the leader in this field being an app called Suno that enables anyone with no musical ability whatsoever and little imagination, to create an ‘original’ song…from the briefest of instructions, anything from audio riff ideas down to a simple text prompt.

But what is much sadder than that is that I’m already seeing people that have skin in the game of reviewing, playing and promoting works from original hard working artists, that are seemingly endorsing this crap…And let’s not make any bones about it…it is crap…Utter bollocks in fact…

My friend sent me a link to one new prog album that is out there now, doing the rounds, getting airplay, getting reviewed as if its some sort of work of genius… No, it’s the work of AI that ripped off decades of genius before…the original work of thousands of artists that probably didn’t even get paid.

It took me about 30 secs to spot the fakery… The chopped up intonation on the vocals, the horrendous AM broadcast sound quality full of compression artefacts…and the guitar and keys samples that have no playable dynamics or nuance in the expression of the instrument. There are other clues…100% AI artwork, Mysteriously anonymous band members…,AI generated ‘band photos’, and a distinct lack of track record and traceability to the project.

My only hope is that the people lapping this stuff up have momentarily let their collective guards down or just don’t realise what they are listening to… If they are knowingly promoting this kind of AI slop whilst hard working and dedicated bands are busting a gut for thousands of hours and risking their life savings making that one killer album the proper way, then I have nothing but contempt for them…

Or perhaps it’s time for anyone like me that believes in the true craft of making a proper album, to step aside.. and accept it’s Game Over…?

Like most of you I use AI outside of music, and we live in a digital world, but if you claim to love our music and don’t at least insist it is made by ACTUAL REAL MUSICIANS, you will get what you deserve…

(Please don’t ask me to speculate about names here. It’s up to you do to the due diligence, if you care about real music)

Robin Armstrong in his studio

My Favourite Vocalists

By

On 8 October 2025

In Music

A recent review of my new album was rather complimentary about my own vocal abilities which was reassuring given some of the terrible comments I’ve received in the past, some even implying I probably shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a microphone.

Nearly, all of my favourite vocalists wouldn’t have got through the first round of a current TV talent show, but they know how to tell the story or convey emotion with their voices. That’s what interests me about singing.

I thought it would be fun to list some of the artists I’ve always admired and who inspired me, many of which were also pilloried at times for their own vocal abilities.

In no particular order or rank:

Roger Waters – Known of course for his acerbic narrative and grandiose conceptual story telling, he remains one of my biggest inspirations. He also had a reputation for not being able to sing, but no one does the angry man shouting at the world like Roger. He’s a controversial figure now of course, but I can’t help finding a deep resonance in almost every song he’s written. Listen to ‘The Last Refugee’ on ‘Is This the Life We Really Want’. It’s his Johnny Cash ‘Hurt’ moment. The kind of delivery only a man with a lifetime of trauma and regret behind him can deliver.

Thom Yorke – The aforementioned Waters rather disparagingly described him as a ‘timid little man’ but that seems to me to be a diss more related to his opposing political viewpoint. Yorke’s vocals defined the late 90s/early 2000s for me. His epic melancholic delivery on ‘The Bends’ had me hooked for life. His lyrics are so unbelievably depressing but simultaneously beautiful , and his vocal delivery at times can make you feel like every emotion you’ve ever felt is being dragged out of you all at the same time. Few vocalists ever will reach that level of penetration to people’s deepest fears and darkest thoughts. One of the few Gen X vocalists that will achieve legendary status.

Chris Martin – Coldplay is like kryptonite for prog fans but I was young and in love during the era of Parachutes and the next couple of albums, and it was the soundtrack of my life for a while. His singing is often wayward and pitchy but his transition from chest to head voice coupled with that open tuned acoustic never fails to give me goosebumps. Listen to the concluding falsetto refrain of ‘Square One’, absolutely heart rending beauty. Chris Martin was my singular inspiration for my vocal performance in ‘You Didn’t See The Thief’ on The Orphan Epoch.

Glenn Hughes – He was regularly touted as The Voice of Rock but to me Glenn Hughes voice had it’s origins more in 70s soul. Technically, for me the best singer in my list. His work on ‘Come Taste The Band’ is always a standout for me, particularly his performance on ‘This Time Around’ but his voice even today still shows the raw power that he’s famous for.

Kate Bush – There’s no way a young Kate would get anywhere in a TV talent show today but that says everything about the cookie cutter expectation we have for young female artists now. Her voice is unique, often made fun of, being particularly English but anything but reserved, instead more performative and theatrical. The concepts were so much deeper and more interesting than singing about your sex life which seems to be de rigueur again for any young aspiring female artist.

David Bowie – It’s been said my own vocal style is channelling Bowie or maybe an amalgam of Bowie and Waters with added Yorke. Whatever you think, I certainly don’t have his incredible charisma and stage presence. I love singers that mix their own spoken accent into the sung performance and he’s one of the greatest exponents of that.

Freddie Mercury – Queen were omnipresent in my childhood and it felt like all the lights of rock had gone out when Freddie died. Even now I can’t get through the footage of his vocal warm up with the crowd at Live Aid without welling up… or indeed the epic ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ which was once the closing theme of one of my daughter’s dance school ballet performances. It caused some embarrassment when Dad’s eyes started leaking mid performance. The phrase force of nature doesn’t cover it, Freddie was sent for us from another universe.

Ronnie James Dio – I could never reconcile the power of Ronnie’s voice with his diminutive stature. He was like a heavy metal Yoda. ‘Voodoo’ lives rent free in my head for eternity for a lot of reasons but the vocal is a masterclass in bringing the heavy into metal.. I believe Ronnie wasn’t that comfortable with the ‘devil worshipping’ lyrics but he certainly gave it his all. ‘Sign of the Southern Cross’ is his seminal work in my view and also has the best heavy metal riff of all time…

Paul McCartney – It would be a crime not to have him in the list. One of the most versatile singers ever, over decades of releases, almost spanning the history of recorded music. His voice is sadly fading now, but I have a deep love and respect for him, like a musical dad. It warms my heart that my lad age 20 is an even bigger Macca fan than me.

Karen Carpenter – One of those singers of that take you right back to your childhood. She had a unique vocal control that didn’t rely on vibrato or melismatic delivery, instead concentrating on rock solid pitch control and beautiful vowel expression. She was a master technician and just as incredible as a drummer.

Phil Collins – Another incredible singing drummer…Dave Grohl should be on that list too. Controversially with prog fans, I prefer Collins era Genesis by some margin…Their slow evolution into a rock band with commercial hits allowed him to find his wings vocally. The vocal on ‘Mama’ get me every time. ‘Snowbound’ on And Then There Were Three also evokes all sort of memories for me and the delivery of the lyric ‘They say a snow year’s a good year, Filled with the love of all who lie so deep’, hits hard…

Peter Gabriel – Again controversially, I think his best work was post Genesis where I found his vocals often too whimsical both in delivery and lyrics for my tastes. His solo work allowed him to explore much more freedom, experimentation and ultimately more self expression. He’s in the list not so much for the lyrics but for the wonderful sonorous tone his voice has, which often sounded like he had 3 larynxes singing in unison. I’m a sucker for the big 80s hits and ‘Red Rain’ and ‘Sledgehammer’ do it for me.

Ian Gillan – His screaming delivery on most of Deep Purple’s ‘In Rock’ captivated me when I was 15. ‘Perfect Strangers’ is a masterclass of his vocal ability. I found some of his lyrics a bit facile and shallow, but he could be here just for ‘Child In Time’ of which I don’t know any other singer that could get anywhere close…

Jon Anderson – I think Yes was the first proper prog band I truly connected with. The way in was John. His voice was so clear and distinct above all the other musical mayhem going in the band and that caught my attention. The fact that the lyrics spoke of strange spiritual things I didn’t really understand didn’t matter. In fact I later pondered that my favourite prog rock song of all time, Awaken, could in fact all have been a collection of hippy dippy abstract words. It doesn’t matter…

The list is getting too long and so many I’ve probably missed but some of the other greats I must at least mention.

Mikael Akerfeldt (who’s vocal talent is out-shadowed by the whole growling thing. Listen to ‘Burden’), Steven Wilson (for doing incredibly brilliant things with a fairly average voice), Alison Goldfrappe (Queen of synth pop), David Coverdale (early days), Dave Grohl (one of the best screamers in Rock), Brett Anderson, David Longdon (who had much of the 3 larynx ability of Gabriel and will doubtless remain the best singer I’ve ever worked with), Billie Eilish, John Wetton, Stevie Wonder, George Michael and many, many more…

AI and the brain

Why AI isn’t going to replace creatives.

By

On 21 July 2024

In Music, Random Thoughts

I’m definitely feeling a current mood amongst creatives that AI isn’t really adding anything to the mix. At the moment, the technology seems to be like a small baby taking its first clumsy steps. We are amused for 10 seconds at the novelty of the most powerful learning machine in the world, but can’t help worrying about the potential of what that new entity will become. I guess the question for all of us, is where will we sit in a world where we will be able to summon the output of all the world’s most talented artists at the click of a mouse or voice instruction? I think history may show us the way.

Technology is there to make difficult tasks easier. We were promised that AI would do the difficult, tedious, labour intensive, jobs that sap our time and energy. But instead we are the ones stuck doing the chores and AI is doing the fun stuff. This can’t be sustainable. History would suggest that when a technology alters our lives so completely for the better, it enjoys almost complete adoption, but the past will stubbornly remain if we feel we will lose something.

AI is making some of our lives better but at the moment, also worse. This will lead it to a situation where many of us will utterly reject it in all its forms. Art is about the struggle, our interaction with basic materials, paint, canvas, sound, musical instruments.. It teaches us to enjoy the process, not be fixated by the output. That’s something that just occurs when the artistic endeavour ends.

There are some of us that persist in using older technologies because we don’t believe the replacement is a worthy successor. Classic cars, vinyl, CDs, mechanical watches, guitars. The craft, the materials, the form are revered and hence preserved over and above the newer supposedly better replacements.

Scientists, engineers and philosophers have already predicted that AI will become so powerful that everything we know will eventually be controlled by a super being entity. At some point they will transgress being simply software and hardware and being organic synthetics, and then into elemental all knowing forces free from the constraints of bodily form. We need to hope they are benevolent.

However to make that transition they need our input, to feed from our knowledge, to understand the values we hold dear.

As long as there are still enough of us that value art and the process of making it, things might be OK.

AI and the brain

(Image: Leonardo AI created with the prompt, “A brain generating thoughts about the future.”)

Neuroplasticity for Musicians

By

On 18 July 2024

In Music, Self Improvement

I want to talk to you about Neuroplasticity. It’s the phenomena of the brain’s ability to rewire itself in response to repetitive stimuli. We are maybe more familiar with talking about our subconscious, the part of our brain that has been ‘programmed’ and acts immediately without thought, well neuroplasticity describes the brain’s incredible ability to rewire itself in response to repetitive training. This is really important for musicians. Imagine trying to play a guitar if you had no memory of the song but also had to consciously think about where to put your fingers on the fretboard. There certainly wouldn’t be much chance of playing anything more complicated than a few notes per bar. I’ve been playing guitar now for nearly 40 years but I can still vividly remember the cognitive effort of trying to work out which fingers go where. If you want to re-live that experience, try playing a guitar the opposite way. I used to wonder why as a right handed player why my right hand was so utterly useless trying to fret anything on a left handed guitar but yet as a keyboard player my right hand is 20x faster more dexterous than my left. There’s no physical difference in the flexibility or muscles, it’s just down neuroplasticity, how the brain is wired and how you’ve trained it.

So here’s the exciting bit…. once you realise the brain is elastic and can be rewired, you can do really amazing things with it.

If like me you’ve also wondered why you’ve been playing for long but you can’t play anything better then you did when you were in your 20s, then don’t blame old age or ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’, it’s just that you relying on ‘replay’ from your brain and not spending enough time in ‘record’. You just forgot how to learn. Give yourself a challenge. Write your next solo without using a single one of your favourite techniques that you keep going back to and replaying like a broken record. Learn a solo from another player, then you will realise how prescriptive and limited your own playing is.

It works with any creative endeavour. I’ve written so many songs now that my neural pathways are tuned to finding a route through writing one without thinking about it. This is also dangerous because it’s the reason why many songwriters just end up putting different lyrics to the same four chords. They simply don’t notice because it’s what they’ve always done. Other song writers spot it instantly though.

But when it works for you it’s amazing. I’ve recently been hammering my brain with studio time trying to get this album finished. On playing back a certain section of a song I was mixing for the umpteenth time, it struck me I had no conscious memory of writing any of that music. To me it felt like it had been written by someone else and I’d been possessed by some other worldly creative force. The exciting bit for me is that I didn’t recognise the style I was playing in. It felt entirely alien to me, in a good way. A lot of musicians describe their work writing songs in a spiritual way, as being some sort of conduit where they are gifted a song from the ether and they just channel it into reality. I love that view of it, but I think it also demeans their own talent which is that they’ve spent hours, days, months, years, decades rewiring their brain to make song writing seem that unconscious and effortless.

As a post script to this, you will of heard of musicians being gifted songs and music in their dreams. Paul McCartney famously created Let It Be from a dream about his Mum. Somehow last night my brain had managed to create an entire new piano section for a song I was working on late in the studio. I can remember some of the chords I was playing whilst asleep, but sadly there’s just not enough detail there to recall into reality.

Why many new artists struggle to get anywhere with their music…

By

On 10 October 2023

In Music

I’ve been recently reading about this concept of ‘Priming’ in relation to psychology, and how we all unconsciously respond to marketing around us. Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. It has a particular relevance for any artist trying to get interest in their music because we are all ‘primed’ to take the most interest when our favourite artist releases anything new.

Imagine two artists presenting the exact same album, literally the same songs, same singer, same band, same audio. One is released by a high profile artist that we know, the second is released by a completely unknown artist. Each is given the exact same marketing budget, is promoted on the same platforms, with the same advertising copy. It will be no surprise that the high profile artist will enjoy much greater interest, and will generally receive more engagement. Less surprising is that they will also receive much more negative criticism… The reason for this is that the audience has been primed with an expectation of how that music should sound. The reality may not meet their expectations. There are other priming influences; People will respond generally when they know other people will respond, a rolling snowball of engagement fuelled by feedback from others… The signal to purchase will be much stronger because people are primed to respond to similar buying signals when others do the same. There is a reason that people buy more band merchandise at gigs, this is priming in action.

The unknown artist will present their same album to an empty room. Much like an exhibition stand at a sales conference, the lack of interest, will fail to create any more interest. With no existing priming information, there is no reason even to walk over and investigate, no reason to click the link and hear the music. When you understand that people need to be primed to act, the way the marketing world works starts make sense, why large organisations spend millions putting logos in weird places with seemingly no context about the product they are selling. They are seeding primes… At the mere mention of the artist name, will have a view of what we think about them. This dictates all our future responses to anything they have to sell or promote.

When the product comes, we will all respond..or not..

A Musician’s guide to self worth.

By

On 2 April 2023

In Music, Random Thoughts

I was asked recently about self worth as a musician and how to maintain it. I’m probably the worst person to ask as in many cases I’ve utterly failed to find it on many occasions. But like losing your car keys for hours and then suddenly finding them, I can at least offer some insight into what I’ve done to restore the equilibrium. I think the present landscape presents a fairly bleak outlook for any musician, but that’s not to say it’s hopeless. The problem is we are approaching the end of a unique and golden time in the history of the music industry, the era of the recording artist. It’s nearly done, over, and many of us are struggling to see the transition into something else.

A key tenet of maintaining any sort of self worth is to feel valued in what you do. So how do you remain valued when the world largely is increasingly indifferent to your art…. Music is now free right? I’ll aways remember an old work colleague saying to me once, when I told him that I was leaving the corporate world and was going to spent more time on my music career, he asked me to ‘send a copy of the album because I never pay for music…’ There was no joke or laugh at the end of his sentence, he was deadly serious and had no reason to suspect I would refuse such a generous offer of his interest in my labours. This was a nice guy who I’d worked with for many years who had just told me straight that he thought what I would be doing was utterly worthless to him in financial terms even though he was a music fan. If I’d offered to clear his gutters or change a tap washer for him he’d have got his wallet out and paid much more than the cost of a CD with no issue.

And there you have it. Self worth for musicians in one nugget. If the world doesn’t value you, you have no option but to do that for yourself.

Self-worth is one of the most elusive currencies in the music industry though. We are judged by how many streams we make, how many records we sell, how many people we played to… how many awards we have won.. In commercial terms, it’s a numbers game. When we do find a tiny fleck of success, it’s often fragile and fleeting. Even if you are successful, the world will judge the success of your next output by the metric of the previous one.

We are judged, scrutinised..We’re often bombarded with messages online that tell us we’re not good enough. We’re told that we need to sound like this artist, or that we need to play this genre, or that we need to do this to be successful. Then we are wrapped up in the game. We’re constantly comparing ourselves to other musicians and measuring our worth against external standards that have nothing to do with our own unique musical voice. He plays better than me, she’s got a better voice than me. He’s more confident on stage than me…We can also be defeated by our own expectations.

Seeking self-worth can be the foundation of a fulfilling musical journey. It’s the belief that we are valuable and deserving of respect, appreciation, and recognition simply because we have the courage to share our music with the world. It’s the understanding that our worth as musicians is not determined by external measures of success, such as the number of likes on our social media pages, the amount of money we make, or the size of our fanbase. Our worth is determined by our passion for music, our dedication to our craft, and our ability to connect with others through our art.

I’ve been doing this a while now, 9 Cosmograf albums and 10,000 hours of work. I still have the same enthusiasm to make and share music but the urgency of seeing my work in print and press has diminished somewhat…

In the early days I’d be seeking that external validation from reviews and comments, but now it’s more about what the music means to me. I’m also now slowing down on the output. An album release nearly every year was too demanding and to be honest I’ve no desire at all to repeat myself just to keep people happy.

Self worth means for me deciding that I want to do other things too, fulfilling personal projects and maybe things that will actually pay the bills. I’m also enjoying producing other bands, and musicians. Helping them out on their own musical journey is incredibly rewarding.

Some of us may decide that being a full time musician just isn’t realistic anymore and there’s no shame in that, none at all. Things have changed out of our control and you have to adapt. Being realistic and realising that you need to do other things to make money is definitely one of the best things you can do to protect your self worth.

Music will always be there for me, but I’ve consciously chosen to separate the art of making music from the expectation of being paid a living wage from it. There are easier ways to do that…and I’m working hard on those too. Touring isn’t featuring in this plan I’m afraid. There will be a few shows for sure, but I have no appetite for walking that perilous financial tightrope.

In some ways I’ve achieved the best solution. I am free to express myself as an artist without the pressure of making that output pay. This might mean I may move in unexpected creative directions as a result. I hope you’ll carry on listening…

Trigger’s Broom

By

On 10 March 2023

In Music, Random Thoughts

And the paradox of prog fans that won’t accept change…

Those of you based in the UK may have a fond memory for a certain UK sitcom called ‘Only Fools and Horses’. One of the main characters was a hapless and rather gormless road sweeper affectionately known as ‘Trigger’, on account of his searingly trigger fast wit and *intelligence (*British sarcasm). Trigger once proclaimed to Del and Rodney in a famous sketch in the show, that he had used the same broom for 20 years….even though it has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles.. Apparently this is also called The Ship of Theseus Paradox. Plutarch asked whether a wooden ship which has had every single piece of wood replaced was still the same ship.

The paradox is alive and well in the world of prog too. I’m sure we all know a band or two of a certain name where the substantial part, or just all of the original members are no longer present. I’m not mentioning names here, online wars have been started in the name of such conjecture and my flameproof suit is at the cleaners.

As many of you know, I love the expressive world of irony, metaphor and allegory, and I do find it hilarious that a group of people of advanced years, not untainted by the ageing process, seem to be the least tolerant when it comes to new music from ‘Trigger’s Broom’ bands.

Like perennial teenagers stuck in Boomer bodies, their minds are stuck somewhere in 1973 when the giants of prog were in their caped and Mellotron adorned prime. Their bodies tell quite the different story of course and some are much larger, greyer, follically challenged and generally world weary (I include myself in this). So then wonder why they have such unreasonable expectations that a band can form in their teenage years and remain in a state of perpetual youth and brio for some 50 years, without disagreement in creative direction, or suing each other… without illness, death or a myriad of other life circumstances that dictate a change in the band lineup. As anybody who has actually been in a rock band will tell you, keeping any band together for more than 6 months is more than a minor miracle.

Prog fans are difficult to please it seems.

A post script to this is that according to research, our bodies replace many of their nearly 30 trillion cells regularly. About 330 billion of those cells are replaced every day. So by next week we could be almost entirely different beings than today. The bit that stops us morphing into multi-headed dopplegangers is that our DNA stays the same from the day of a cell’s birth until it dies. It also changes over time too, but much more slowly.

So we are all Trigger’s Broom… and as long as the music still sounds like your favourite band, I think it’s OK if they now don’t quite look like you remember.

Why You Should Support New Bands and not Pay £200 for a Concert Ticket.

By

On 1 February 2023

In Music

There was an interesting disturbance in the music world recently when Peter Gabriel announced his long awaited concert tour. Amongst the excitement and furious activity to obtain tickets, was inevitably the consternation about the prices..

I have to admit I was in that camp. With the average ticket price somewhere around the £200 mark, I just wonder what has happened in the music industry where this is an acceptable price for a gig, even one as illustrious as the return of Mr Gabriel to the stage for the first time in nearly a decade.

A friend on Facebook recalled that they saw Peter at Birmingham Arena in 1983, for the princely sum of £7. Accounting for inflation over 40 years, the equivalent price in today’s money would be £21… So how did we get from there to £200?. Is it just the built up demand to see this legendary artist? or are there other forces at work?

To examine that, I think we need to look at where the record industry is now. Technology, in particular the concept of streaming, has bent the traditional model of physical record sales so badly that an artist at Peter Gabriel’s level now is almost giving music away as a loss leader to promote ticket and merch sales. Peter is long past having a number one hit album and even further from becoming a streaming sensation with a single track, but he is at least blessed with an older demographic that have followed him since the early days of Genesis, and many have bought all the records along the way. But that model died when Spotify levelled the music industry as we know it and made the largest all you can hear buffet of music for the princely sum of FREE….

Imagine travelling back to 1980 and saying to your mate in the record store. “You know, one day someone will invent this thing called the internet, and then someone will put all the worlds music on it, and you’ll be able to listen to any song you want for nothing…” I think the response would be something like “Get out of here and stay off the drugs!”. But this is exactly what has happened.

Back in the day, artists sold millions of records and then toured the hell out of the album. These days you get to consume the record for nothing, with the hope that you’ll pay through the nose to see the artist on tour and buy a barrowload of merch whilst you are there.

For artists at the other end of the spectrum like me, we are to some extent trying to navigate our way through a sea of fog without a clear idea of where land is. In the modern progressive rock genre, we are at least blessed with a very high percentage of fans that still value the physical record. Somehow, we also still have record shops in 2022, and a new appetite for vinyl that the pressing plants are really struggling to satisfy. I’ve been waiting over 8 months now for my own latest album to be pressed.

But a world tour at anything like £200 a ticket is the pension benefit for the rock dinosaurs of another era. There’s nothing here for even moderately successful musicians in a marginalised and uncool genre of music. But I guess this is common whatever music is being played on the stage.

The most successful contemporary exponent of prog currently is the reformed Steven Wilson led, Porcupine Tree, selling out sizeable venues across UK, Europe and the US. The ticket prices are also much more reasonable £65. Still not cheap though.

As I said on Facebook it also boggles my mind that a lot of people in that Peter Gabriel audience have thought nothing about paying £200 for a ticket, but would baulk at the prospect of spending £10 on a record from a new band. This for me is where the danger lies…

The sad thing here is that there will never be another Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Yes, Floyd or King Crimson. And the reason for that is the fans of those bands won’t give them up… and they will always be willing to throw huge piles of cash at everything their record labels offer for sale. Yet another Floyd remaster packaged in in a fir lined case with a vellum parchment booklet? “Sir, take my money!” No one should have to give up their heroes of course, but equally people need to be aware that unless you support the small guys, there will never be anyone to fill their shoes. Maybe they don’t want anyone filling their shoes?…I still hear people saying good music died in the late 70s…The more informed of us know that there are incredible bands in modern prog that are making music the equal of anything produced then, and in all the same traditions.

But now the industry has unrecognisably changed, we are all struggling to come to terms with what success now looks like. One of my artist friends joked that he never foresaw that his band would actually effectively become a clothing brand, as the only money he made was from selling merch, mostly T shirts at gigs.

A successful artist now in the prog world sells a few thousand CDs per release and can probably get around 100 people in a room for a gig at £20 per ticket. It can take at least 10 years of endless work to get to that level too. I’ve always struggled with this protracted slog of effort with the reward of virtually no financial return and you might have noticed I regularly bleat on about it. In my previous life in the water industry it was possible to navigate an entire career and triple your salary over the same period, and I didn’t even work as hard as I do now. But then again, if I was back in 1973 too, I wouldn’t have been signed and none of my music would ever have been heard.

When you work through these modest numbers, it’s not difficult to understand why ‘successful’, critically acclaimed, and in some cases award winning artists are taking second jobs and struggling to pay their energy bills.

It’s a shit business….



Sharks

Swimming with Sharks – Why Bad Things Should Happen To You

By

On 2 November 2022

In Music, Self Improvement

Lies, Damn lies and Statistics
I’m sure you remember that old statistic about the likelihood of getting bitten by a shark. I just googled it again and apparently it’s 1 in 3.75million. Being the overthinking being that I am, I wonder how on earth they calculated that, and how absurd the notion is that the risk of being eaten by Jaws is the same if you lived in a suburban house in Reading, or if you were an Australian surfer on Bondi beach.

Of course the risk isn’t the same at all. Our own brains are as equally useless as averaged statistics in assessing the objective level of danger that you are in. The mind is unable to calculate the true risk of what lies before us and it actually takes an experience based approach to whether something is harmful to us or whether we are more unfortunate than other people in whatever event occurs.

Do you Feel Lucky?
One person’s assessment of whether a situation is risky or dangerous can be entirely different to someone else’s. Similarly it’s also impossible to objectively determine if someone has been lucky or unlucky. It’s just something we say… If our Australian surfer spends every day in the water in the known habitat and feeding grounds of a Great White, there is a good chance he’s eventually going to have a rather unwanted encounter. If he does, we might opine that he was ‘unlucky’ to get bitten, but given all the circumstances, it was bound to happen. We might also say he was ‘lucky’ to survive, which is surely the daftest statement ever if we are saying there was a 1 in 3.75million chance of being bitten in the first place. Our tiny brains aren’t very clever at objective assessment. We just say what we see, or say what we think we know from our own experience, or the experience of others that we are aware of.

Rock Stars Die Young
When I was a teenager I spent more than a few hours wondering why so many big rock stars that I dreamed of becoming, seemed to die before their time, often in some sort of hideous misadventure. Drugs, alcohol, helicopter, plane and car crashes, and various other unusual deaths seemed to be very common and certainly well above the statistical averages.

What was the reason for this? Are the music and creative industries really so inherently dangerous? We all know the 27 Club thing, right? It’s fuel for conspiracy theorists but also fun to try and take a more scientific approach, using things like reasoning and probability to analyse what’s going on.

I guess if we look at the activities that surround the art of making music in a bit more detail we start to get a more realistic picture. Logistics pay a big part, and back in the 70s and 80s, getting a rock star from A to B involved a great deal of fast moving and dangerous transportation in an era where we hadn’t even legislated on the safety benefits of the seatbelt, let alone the airbag.

Drugs and alcohol have always gone hand in hand with the music industry and in many cases were salves to the crushing boredom of life on the road or a way of coping with the pressures of fame, or an intangible artistic struggle.

I don’t think luck has much to do with any of this at all but yet the brain persists to draw its own erroneous conclusions. In my own life I regularly curse my own ‘luck’ and question ‘why me?’ on a whole variety of daily issues. The one parcel of CDs that our label sends without insurance will always get lost in the post and I then wonder why I’m almost on first name terms with the Royal Mail help team on Twitter. It’s because, just like those 70s rock stars, I’m ‘Swimming With Sharks’. I send a lot of post, therefore probability dictates that I will lose some stuff at some point.

Virtual Sharks
This all sounds very trivial until you realise that our mental health is really inextricably linked to the view we take of ourselves and that of the world around us. If we go through life thinking that we are cursed, or unlucky or that good things will never happen to us then the probability that life will get worse will increase for sure.

I wrote a song on my album Mind Over Depth, literally called ‘Sharks’. As with so many of my concepts, I’d taken a story and made it into an analogy or allegory for some other deeper meaning. The story in this was case was the fate of the crew USS Indianapolis that delivered components for the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in August 1945. The ship was holed by a Japanese submarine and all the surviving crew went into the shark infested waters of the Pacific, leading to the largest shark attack in history. In my song, the sharks represented the negative thoughts that attack us every day, and the thrashing movements of the stricken sailors, our futile attempts to defeat them. And furthermore, the very thrashing about and shouting in resistance, made things worse attracting even more ‘sharks’.

We are all ‘Swimming with Sharks’ to some extent but more positively I think we can possibly reverse this mindset. If we consider we are ‘Dancing with Angels’, we might consider that ‘being lucky’ is surrounding ourselves in an environment where our productivity yields the most fertile results. Some would dismiss this as ‘being in the right place at the right time’, yet another fortune based idiom.

But how can we use this insight? Well, when something bad happens to me now, I try this trick:
Instead of saying “Why is this happening to me?”, I say to myself. “Why SHOULDN’T this happen to me?” This simple act of reversing the perspective defeats my brain into taking a more realistic view of the situation. I think a lot of really resilient people that I know do this automatically without even thinking about it. They accept that there is no immunity against life dealing them a bad hand, but they equally know the storm will pass, and they laugh in the face of the wind…

The Airfix Model – Rejecting Goal Based Thinking.

By

On 7 September 2022

In Music, Self Improvement

Many of us carry an inner philosophy of ‘goal based thinking’.  I know I do and like many learned behaviours it probably stems from childhood.  Much of our indoctrination in early life and at school is to strive and achieve.  Goal based thinking is being overly obsessed with the result of your endeavours and the expectation of achieving it.  Needless to say if all you can see is the end goal, you’ll never learn to appreciate the journey and your world will become pointless if the end goal is never reached.

As a child I used to make the odd Airfix model or two.  From the moment I took the plastic parts out of the box, I was in a race to produce a model that looked exactly like the picture on the box.  All I could see was the image of my gleaming creation, complete in its Humbrol’d livery and  carefully applied waterslide transfers…But it never quite ended up like I envisioned.  I’d get glue on the windows of the cockpit or I’d snap the undercarriage of the aircraft before I’d fixed it in place.  Then I might lose a few of the smallest pieces, spend a fruitless few minutes trying to find them and give up soon after in a heap of frustration..  The few models that I did finally get to fruition basically gathered dust on a shelf until wheels or wings got broken and they were discarded…

The journey to my goal was not at all enjoyable and if the goal was ever reached, it wasn’t valued.

An alternative approach to goal based thinking is ‘value based thinking’ where you consider the journey as part of the experience of reaching your goal.

In my Airfix model example I should have spent more time preparing my tools, mating the parts correctly, enjoying the progression of the build over a much longer time period.  Once it was completed I’d have looked upon the finished model with pride, and felt good about the journey it took to create it.  I’d have also valued the finished product more and taken more steps to protect it for the long term like putting it in a presentation case.

Although a complete failure at Airfix models, I’ve had more success applying this mindset to my music.  Just as with the Airfix model, I rushed my first attempts and made terrible mistakes that couldn’t be fixed without starting again.  I eventually learned to take more care, and thoroughly study the tools and the engineering and craft of producing music.  This provided a much deeper sense of achievement and enjoyment from making a new record.

But I have to be really honest,  once an album is released,  it’s creatively, a dead end for me. There is no joy creatively for me from that point on unless I’m going to make a video or some other artistic offshoot.  Once the album is finished I then have to switch from an artistic perspective to a marketing and business one in order to give it the best chance of being a success…and this can be a painful process.   For many artists it’s so painful that they neglect to give it any attention at all and their newly created masterpiece fails to find an audience.

Whilst it’s always gratifying to see people’s responses to the music, mentally I’ve moved on to the next creation, the next journey.

In an ideal world I’d like to completely bail out of the process at this stage and hand everything over to someone in the PR arena.  I’d argue that musicians are the worst people to promote and sell the record.  You need to be dreadfully thick skinned to take the rejection of a cynical and disinterested press and utterly persistent to the point of annoyance in doggedly getting the attention it needs.  

But hiring good PR professionals takes a great deal of money and there is no guarantee any of that investment will pay dividends.   I’ve learned a lot about myself over the last few releases and even more from running my tiny label Gravity Dream Music.  I have an endless capacity for details in pursuit of what I personally consider to be the goal, even if that goal is actually far removed from anything that the audience will ever recognise.   This is a dangerous path for any commercial venture because it means all your time and money will be eaten up in tiny details that your audience might not ever see.  But equally it’s your unique superpower.  When you spend a huge amount of time perfecting these tiny details, the overall impression of the finished product to someone else is that you’ve made something impossible or magical.     

Page 1 of 2

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén