When Not Knowing Meant More

If music was just about speed, we’d all be better by now.

More tools. More access. More shortcuts than ever.

And yet, the songs that actually stay with you don’t come from that.

I didn’t grow up with options. I grew up hungry. Hungry to work out how to play a song. Hungry to figure out that one lick you just couldn’t quite hear properly off a cassette.

The riffs of AC/DC. The gallop of Iron Maiden. Then discovering the LA sound and realising what Eddie Van Halen was doing felt like a different language altogether.

From there it kept opening up.

The legato of Joe Satriani.  The modal, slightly unhinged brilliance of Steve Vai.  The way Gary Moore could make a single note feel like it mattered. And the touch in Andy Timmons’ playing that somehow said more by doing less.

I didn’t know what any of it was called at the time. I just knew it felt like something worth chasing. That kind of hunger does strange things.

It had me riding my bike 10 kilometres to a music store just to stand there and sneak a look at a TAB book I couldn’t afford. Trying to burn the intro to 'Sweet Child O’ Mine' into my brain before I had to leave. Then riding the 10 kilometres back, hoping I’d remembered enough to get it under my fingers before it disappeared again.

So I’d sit there rewinding, guessing, getting it wrong, and trying again.

Now we can generate ideas in seconds. And somewhere between those two worlds is where I find myself now. Close enough to remember what it felt like to not know, and far enough in to start to see what actually lasts.

A bit older. A bit more aware of what lasts.  And experienced enough to know that more isn’t always better. The strange part is, I’m only really just starting to share my own music now.

So I’m looking back, while also trying to figure out what still matters moving forward. That tension is what this is about. And it’s something I’m going to keep coming back to here. Not as a series in the traditional sense. More as a thread that runs through some of the posts  I write from this point on:

• Sonic DNA - Looking at the players and songs that shaped me.  
• Analog Heart - The push and pull between instinct and technology.  
• The Long Play - And what time teaches you if you stay in it long enough.

Not trying to wrap it up. Just pulling at it.  From different angles.  

Seeing what still holds up.

Sonic DNA

This is where it starts.

The players, songs and moments that get into your system early and never really leave. The stuff you didn’t even realise was shaping you at the time… until years later you hear it come back out in your own playing.

For me, it was chasing a feel before I had the language to describe it. Sonic DNA is about going back to those influences. Pulling them apart. And understanding why they still show up in the way I write and play today.

Analog Heart

This is the tension I keep coming back to.

We’ve now got tools that can generate ideas faster than we can think them. Some of it is useful. Some of it is impressive. But not all of it means anything.

Analog Heart is about that line between instinct and technology. Where feel, touch and experience still matter. And where they either guide the process - or get lost in it.

The Long Play

This is what time gives you.

What sticks. What fades. What you’d do differently, and what turns out to matter more than you expected. It’s less about technique, and more about perspective. Because some things only reveal themselves if you stay in it long enough.

I’ve landed on these three because they seem to sit underneath everything I do now.

Looking back at what shaped me. Looking forward at where this is all heading. Trying to work out what’s actually worth holding onto.

Let’s see what holds up.

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