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Replaced by Robots.   The truth is that AI has already taken over.     Before I read my new essay, I just wanna let you know that everything on our website is now half price. Whether you’re a complete beginner wanting to learn how to make music for the first time, or whether you’re intermediate (or even advanced) wanting to elevate your music from good to great, there’s a course or PDF to help you reach that next level. And they cover all genres, too.   And just a heads up that unless the AI robots stop stealing my work, I’m going to have to close down Hack Music Theory on May 1st 2027, so if you’ve ever been tempted to learn my secret Song-Whispering method for making great music, then enroll soon!   To be clear, I’ll still be posting regularly, but only on Substack. If you wanna keep following my work, then please subscribe at rayharmony.substack.com. It’s free to subscribe, and I don’t put any of my posts behind a paywall, they’re all free!   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Enjoy, and now here’s my latest essay, which explains the reason for having to close down Hack Music Theory after being in business for 10 years. Thanks for reading, and a heartfelt thank-you for being here. You are deeply valued.   There’s been a lot of talk recently about the alleged over-reaction to threats of AI stealing jobs and replacing people, but in reality, AI has already stolen countless jobs and replaced countless people. This is not speculation, it’s recent history. I can personally confirm this, because I’ve been replaced by robots.   Have you been replaced, too? If so, please share your experience in the comments. It’s vital to speak out about this, as it seems most people don’t know that this has already happened for many of us. Or maybe they’re just in denial? I guess it’s all fun and games until the robots come for their jobs. Then they’ll believe us.   So why is there all this talk about people over-reacting? Well, it’s a textbook gaslighting campaign. If you’re like me, then you can spot these a mile away nowadays. Same technique, different details. Welcome to Animal Farm.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   They need us to deny our senses, because we’re looking around at the world and can see all the robots that have already replaced humans. Just look at the checkouts in stores. They’re almost all self-checkout robots. There are hardly any checkout staff any more. And when you email most companies now, you get a reply from an AI agent. That’s at least one or two humans replaced by robots in small companies, and tens or even hundreds in big corporations. The evidence is everywhere. We can all see it (and verify it) for ourselves.   So, this essay is my attempt to counter the gaslighting campaign, and to acknowledge all my fellow brothers and sisters who’ve also been replaced by robots. I see you, and I see your suffering. Please know that you’re not alone, and you’re definitely not crazy. We are indeed living in a world where humans (and humanity) are rapidly disappearing. And please know that you’re in the right for not being happy with how things are unfolding.   Here’s some more evidence, from my experience. Google analytics emails me a report every month for the Hack Music Theory website. When I compare the numbers from 2021 to 2026, Hack Music Theory turned up in a similar amount of searches. There are still almost 100K people every month being offered my teachings in their search results. But (and it’s a massive but), the number of people who actually end up on our website has decreased by about 90%.   And in turn, our income has also decreased by about 90%. And for the record, we weren’t making tons of money before the AI era, we were getting less than a high-school teacher makes.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So when all these AI fanboys on all these podcasts are saying that AI won’t steal jobs, please know that they’re lying. AI has not only stolen countless jobs already, it continues to violate copyrights and steal intellectual property every second of every day and night.   When people ask AI about music theory, it comes to my website and YouTube channel (as well as other teachers’ websites and YouTube channels) and steals our teachings, then gives it to the person who searched, as if the robot wrote that explanation itself. And now that the person has that explanation right there on the same screen, there’s no need for them to visit our website. Every day and every night AI continues to steal our intellectual property and give it away for free. How is this legal?   And yes, I’ve heard all the defenses and excuses and arguments, and how I just need to get with the times and change how I do things. But I’m a teacher. I’m in my late 40s, and teaching is the only thing I’ve ever done. After high school, I moved to Los Angeles to study music, then moved to London where I was a college lecturer for 10 years, and then transitioned to teaching privately and online when I moved to Canada. I teach. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done for over 30 years.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   And this is not about identity, because I don’t see myself as a teacher, it’s just my job. Whether or not I have a natural talent for teaching is irrelevant, because I’ve spent decades learning and practicing in order to continually improve my teaching skills. And teaching is certainly not a lucrative career, so while it’s common for people my age to own a house and have kids, I rent a basement suite, I don’t have any kids, and I only spend money on bills, food, and books. Yet I’m still struggling to scrape by every month.   But I’m told: I just need to retrain as something else. Apparently one door closes, and another one opens. Or so they say. Retraining costs money, though, which I don’t have, because we’ve had to spend our savings on paying rent and buying groceries. So at the age of almost 50 I have to somehow find the money to retrain and launch a new career?! Oh, and then after all that, I’ll be competing with people half my age. Will all those people who’re telling us that we just need to retrain be telling themselves that story when the robots steal their jobs? Probably not.   And then there’s the lie of “transferable skills”. Have you also heard that one? “Oh don’t worry, the skills you gained from teaching music for 31 years are transferable, you can use them in a different career.” I know there’s an element of truth in that. Of course there is. But as always, the best lies are built on foundations of truth.   So yes, maybe 10% or 20% of my skills are transferable, but 80% or 90% of them are not, because those skills are specific to music. And anyone else who’s also decades deep into a career will have the same problem: Our skills are highly specialized, and therefore hardly any of those skills are realistically transferable, in any meaningful way.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So, what’s the solution? I don’t know. All I know is that resistance is the first step. Resist the robots. Avoid AI. Support humans. Don’t use the self-checkout in stores, go to the human instead. Look them in the eyes, and connect. And when you do online searches, always go to the source websites that the robots are stealing that intellectual property from.   Also, please visit the website Writers Against AI and check out my fellow writers who’re celebrating human creativity and resisting the temptation to use AI in their writing. These courageous humans deserve our support.   Anyway, I’m sorry for the depressing topic today, but it’s vital that we have these difficult conversations now, before things go any further. So I hope this at least gave you something to ponder. And just before I go. If you’re interested in making music yourself, you can download my Free Book and Free PDF Tutorials. I’ve got resources for songwriters and producers at every level, from complete beginner all the way up to advanced.   Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, you can become a paid subscriber on my Substack.   And a heartfelt thank-you to all the kind people currently paying. There are 19 of you at the moment. I know each one of you by name. I see you, and I thank you for sticking with me through this difficult time. It means the world to me. And please know that I’m working really hard on overcoming my depression and anxiety, so I can post more regularly once again.   If you can’t afford to become a paid subscriber or make a one-off contribution right now, though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps support my work, too. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are truly valued and appreciated. I’m Ray Harmony, and I hope you’ll join me again next time. Until then, remember to stop and smell the music.     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.     Photo by igovar igovar       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any pod

Overwhelmed With Content? Use This Method.   One simple question can get your time (and your life) back!     I deleted all my social media accounts 11 years ago, yet every day I’m overwhelmed with things to listen to. And that’s just on Spotify. There are countless fascinating podcast interviews, and more and more being uploaded every day. If you’re on social media, I can’t even begin to imagine how many choices you have. It’s beyond overwhelming!   I’m obsessed with learning, and my main interests are philosophy, theology, psychology, anthropology, and history. But, all the waking hours each day aren’t enough to listen to all the podcast episodes I’m interested in. So I prioritize, then listen at a high speed in an attempt to learn as much as humanly possible. But this is utterly exhausting. Humans are not meant to take in this much information.   And as there are still only 24 hours in the day, despite the ever-expanding universe of things to watch and listen to, I’m realizing that the more podcasts I devour, the less time I have for music. And when I say music, I don’t mean background music. I’m listening to Beethoven’s beautiful and uplifting Serenade for flute, violin and viola in D major (Opus 25) as I write this. But, I’m not actively listening. When we give music our full attention, it rewards us by changing our mind, body, and spirit.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Just a few minutes of music can change our biochemistry, which in turn changes our mood and our outlook. Or maybe it’s the other way round? Either way, music is magic. It’s arguably the most powerful thing that most of us have access to. If they could bottle the power of music, we’d all be rushing to buy it. Yet somehow, despite the fact that most of us have free music on tap, we spend hardly any time actively listening to it each day. That’s mad. I’m mad! Are you mad, too?   Or to put it more accurately, we’ve been mind-controlled. If the masses were spending many hours actively listening to uplifting music every day, instead of scrolling on their phones, it would be extremely difficult to keep everyone fearful. And if the masses aren’t fearful, it’s pretty much impossible to control them. So they feed us fear propaganda 24/7, which we gobble up like fiends, and then waste our one precious life being scared of everything.   This isn’t a new technique. It’s as old as civilization. They’re just getting exponentially better at influencing our beliefs and behaviour - thanks to progress and technology, which we’re constantly brainwashed into believing are great advances that make us so much better off than all the hunter-gatherers around the world who live happy and healthy lives without progress and technology.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So here’s how I’m trying to take back control of my time, and therefore, my life. Before clicking on something to watch or listen to, I’m asking myself this simple question: Is this art, or is this merely content?   You can define art however you want, but at the end of the day, art nourishes and enriches us, while content only fills us. Not many of us need more content, but all of us could do with more nourishment and enrichment. Also, I’m thinking about what type of relationship I’d have with the thing I’m considering watching or listening to. Art is a two-way relationship, because it activates our imaginations.   For example, the author Alexander McCall Smith, whose writing I love, has a new podcast called Positive Distraction. Each episode is a short story, written and read by the author. It’s a wonderful way to take a break from reality for a few minutes and withdraw into our imaginations.   Content, on the other hand, is a one-way relationship: It feeds, we eat. Gobble, gobble, gobble.   Another technique I’m trying out before watching or listening to something is asking myself this question: Will I feel better listening to one of my favourite albums instead of this thing? If the answer is yes, then I know what to do. And when all else fails, I simply ask myself: Can I live without watching or listening to this, or is this thing actually vital to my wellbeing?   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So to summarise, when we encounter art, it invites us into an all-encompassing experience of heart, mind, and spirit. That’s how we can tell what’s art, and what’s merely content.   And by the way, here’s a little tip for getting the most out of your listening. Research shows that listening to music alone actually increases its intensity. Yes, listening to music with other people is great for communal reasons, but being alone with the music is more intense. So if you’re listening to music to change how you feel, then do it privately. Eyes closed and headphones on gives an extra boost, too.   Anyway, I hope that gives you something to ponder. And just before I go. If you’re interested in making great music yourself, you can download my Free Book and Free PDF Tutorials. I’ve got resources for songwriters and producers at every level, from complete beginner all the way up to advanced.   Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack, or making a one-off contribution. And a heartfelt thank-you to all my paid subscribers. There are currently 18 of you. I know each one of you by name. I see you, and I thank you for sticking with me through this difficult time. It means the world to me. And please know that I’m working really hard on overcoming my depression and anxiety, so I can post more regularly once again.   If you can’t afford to become a paid subscriber or make a one-off contribution at the moment, though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps support my work, too. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are truly valued and appreciated. I’m Ray Harmony, and I hope you’ll join me again next time. Until then, remember to stop and smell the music.     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.     Photo by Andrea Piacquadio       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

AI Hitmaker to AI Hitman.   Wow, that escalated fast!     It was only two years ago that I was sitting here at my desk watching a video on how generative-AI was now able to make music. I remember thinking: Man, that song sounds awful, and super fake too! Fast forward a couple years to now, and hardly anyone can tell the difference between human and fully AI-generated songs.   In fact, it’s worse than that, because humans have a bad habit of editing and tuning their recordings until they sound 100% mechanical. So, most AI-generated songs actually sound more human than human-made music. Sad, but true.   However, we can forget about AI making hit singles that everyone loves, because now the AI Hitmaker has become the AI Hitman. And it wants to kill everybody!   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Full disclosure here. I try my best to avoid the news, but Spotify keeps recommending podcast episodes about how AI wants to kill everyone, so I’m guessing that’s a thing now. If I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, great. If not, whatever. Because if there’s one lesson that the Covid era and its global fear campaign taught us, it’s that no good ever comes from making people fearful.   So even if it’s true. If we are indeed on the metaphoric Titanic and it’s going down, then we might as well enjoy the music and be kind to each other. Doom-scrolling and panicking are not going to improve the situation.   So if you’re sick of all the sensational headlines and fear propaganda, then come hang out here with me for some old-school human thinking and creativity. I deleted all my social media accounts 11 years ago, so if you click Subscribe below, I can guarantee you’ll be getting the most non-trending, non-sensational, non-divisive, non-AI-generated ideas on the internet.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Also, please head on over to the website WritersAgainstAI.net and subscribe to my colleagues, too. If you’re passionate about saving human skills as the world rushes headlong into transhumanism, then join me in supporting other people who’re also keeping the art of human creativity alive. We can’t do this without you.   On that note. If you’re interested in making great music, you can download my Free Book and Free PDF Tutorials. I’ve got free resources for songwriters and producers at every level, from complete beginner all the way up to advanced.   Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack, or making a one-off contribution. And a heartfelt thank-you to all my paid subscribers. There are currently 20 of you. I know each one of you by name. I see you, and thank you for sticking with me through this difficult time. It means the world to me.   If you can’t afford to become a paid subscriber or make a one-off contribution, though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps support my work, too. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are valued and appreciated. I’m Ray Harmony, and I hope you’ll join me again next time. Until then, remember to stop and smell the music.     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.     Photo by Pavel Danilyuk       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Counterclockwise Music.   This Song Makes You Feel Good.     When I listen to “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys, I’m instantly transported back to my childhood in the ‘80s. In fact, if I close my eyes while listening to it, I’m right there in my childhood house lying on my back with my headphones on, singing away to Mike Love and the boys. I can actually feel that old carpet under my back, and the warm African wind blowing in through my window. In my mind, I’m really there. And I’m a kid again. It’s so powerful that it feels like magic. And maybe it is.   When I use “Kokomo” to time-travel back to 1989, I feel better within seconds. The darkness that surrounds me breaks up. As long as the song is playing and my eyes are closed, I don’t feel the depression. I know it’s still there, but as long as I’m back in 1989, the depression transforms from an unmovable, solidified reality, into a movable, quantum probability. And yeah, I know it’s escapism. But hey, there’s far worse ways of escaping reality than listening to a song, right?   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   “Kokomo” was my favourite childhood song, so its power is second-to-none. Yet I hardly ever listen to it. Why? Well, I’m worried that if I listen to it too much, I’ll become acclimated to it. Like with coffee. If somebody doesn’t usually drink coffee, but then they have one mug of it, they’re bouncing off the walls. But if someone drinks coffee every day, it’s impossible for them to get the same boost as a non-coffee drinker. And the more coffee someone drinks, the less effective it is.   That’s what I’m concerned about. The more I listen to “Kokomo”, the less effective it may become at transporting me back to 1989. So I use it sparingly. Very sparingly. I don’t have any other songs that possess that same level of magic. There are other songs that have a similar effect, but compared to “Kokomo”, they’re decaffeinated. So for now, I’d rather listen to it too little, rather than too much.   Right, here’s my question to you: Do you have a song that instantly transports you back to a happy time earlier in life? And it doesn’t have to be your childhood, as a lot of people (including me) have childhood trauma. So your happy time could be when you were in your 20s or 30s, or whenever you were feeling good in the past.   I’d love to know what your time-travelling song is, so please drop it in the comments. And I invite you to carve out a few minutes today to listen to it. Find a time when you can stop everything and listen with your eyes closed. And remember to put your phone in flight mode while you’re time-travelling. Nothing kills the magic like a notification. And it is magic, so I’m excited for you to feel it, too.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   This topic reminded me of the mind-bending work of psychologist Dr Ellen Langer, who conducted the famous “Counterclockwise Study” back in 1979. She got a group of elderly men to live in a house that was retrofitted to look exactly like the year 1959. There were old black-and-white TVs, radios, books, magazines, and music. All of it was at least 20 years old. And these elderly men were also asked to speak and behave as though they were 20 years younger.   What happened next is shocking. Utterly shocking! After only five days of living in this house, Dr Langer measured their biomarkers. These men had literally reversed the aging process and become biologically younger. Even their eyesight improved! If you’re interested in reading more about this study, as well as Dr Langer’s other jaw-dropping research, I highly recommend her recent book The Mindful Body.   So, inspired by this Counterclockwise Study, I’m now thinking of my magical time-travel song as Counterclockwise Music.   And if you’re interested in making music, you can download my Free Book and Free PDF Tutorials. I’ve got resources for songwriters and producers at every level, from complete beginner all the way up to advanced.   Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack or making a one-off contribution. And a heartfelt thank-you to all my paid subscribers. There are currently 19 of you, so I know each one of you by name. I see you, and I’m deeply grateful. Thank you!   If you can’t afford to subscribe at the moment though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps support my work, too. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are very much appreciated.   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.     Photo by jonas mohamadi       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Odd Time Signatures That Aren’t Odd.   Rare Rhythms That Move People.     American band Death Cab for Cutie recently released their new album “I Built You a Tower”, and the song “Stone Over Water” is a brilliant example of how to make music that’s rhythmically interesting without sacrificing its ability to move people, aka its danceability. And that’s a vital element of music, not to be underestimated. Because, if people can’t tap their foot or bob their head along to your song, they’ll find it frustrating and will probably hit that Skip button.   To be clear, it’s easy to make rhythmically interesting music, but the cost is usually danceability. There’s an inverse correlation between how interesting a rhythm is and how danceable it is. The more interesting the rhythm, the less danceable.   A great example of this is the Swedish band Meshuggah. I’ve seen them live numerous times, and watching people trying to dance to their songs is funnier than Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch! And then on the extreme opposite side of the spectrum, you’ve got the classic four-on-the-floor dance beat, which is the easiest groove to dance to, but it’s also the most boring, by far.   So how do Death Cab for Cutie achieve this blend of danceable yet interesting? Well, they use a less common time signature: 6|4. While 6|4 is (sadly) rare in popular music genres, it doesn’t sound weird at all. That’s because the most common time signature is 4|4, so 6|4 is merely 4|4 with two 1/4 notes added.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   And 6|4 is still an even time signature, so listeners can move along to it just like they can to 4|4. In fact, 6|4 feels just like 4|4 but with an extra half bar. The only people who would even notice that it’s an unusual time signature are musicians.   6|4 is arguably the most underused time signature. To understand why, we first have to talk about how popular musicians tend to informally group time signatures into two categories: 4|4 and Odd-Time.   I think this is because the word “odd” can either mean odd as in numbers (like 3, 5, 7, etc.), or odd as in unusual. So despite the fact that it’s actually an even number time signature, 6|4 tends to be unofficially thrown into the odd-time category. What a rare gem! And that’s why it’s such a shame that there aren’t way more songs in 6|4.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   And on that note, please open your Digital Audio Workstation and change your time signature to 6|4. This increase in bar length will spark your creativity too, because you’ll automatically write longer melodies, chord progressions, bass lines, and drum beats. This unusual characteristic will bring out some creative ideas, and it’s also super fun to be liberated from the constraints of 4|4.   Anyway, I hope that gives you some ideas and inspiration for your music making this weekend, and if you want more, then download my Free Theory Book and Free PDF Tutorials.   And if you’ve got a spare 60 minutes, then I can teach you all the music making essentials in a series of short step-by-step videos. After this one-hour Songwriting & Producing “Crash” Course, you’ll know how to make good music with all the instruments working together: lead melody, counterpoint backing melody, chord progression, bass line, drum beat, and more.   So if you’re super busy, then enroll right now and you can go to bed tonight knowing how to write good music.   Thanks for being here, my friend, you happy music making!   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.     Death Cab for Cutie - I Built You a Tower       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Wanting Fans Is Not Wanting Validation.  Music is social. No fans = No relationships.     My previous essay, titled “Making Music Is Bad for Mental Health”, was a kind of eulogy to the pre-smartphone fan. You know, that person who used to listen with all their attention. Nowadays, people don’t really do anything with all their attention, and this indifference is why us creatives are struggling so much with our mental health. It’s painful to share our art with a world that’s too addicted to their phones to even give our work a few minutes of their attention.   And while I did receive comments from people who were feeling the same, I was rather surprised to see so many comments from people telling me that I was seeking validation, and that I should be happy to make music even if nobody listens to it. This saddened me. Deeply. Because it revealed how isolation is considered to be totally normal now in every part of life, even the parts that were previously considered to be social events, like playing and listening to music.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So, this post is to set the record straight. For all those people who think that it’s perfectly okay for music to be an isolated experience, please understand this ancient fact: Music is communal. And it always has been, up until very recently. For evidence, please read some anthropology books to see the role that music played (and still plays) in the lives of hunter-gatherers. Then, please read some history books to see the role that music played in society through the centuries.   Whether it was singing around a fire or in a church, whether it was listening to music in a concert hall or in a pub, music was always communal. Thinking of music as an isolated activity is like thinking of a tree falling in a forest when nobody is around to hear it. Did it make a sound? No.   And just like that falling tree, when our songs don’t have listeners to hear them, they don’t make any sound either. This is not poetic. It’s literal. Human ears transform our songs from mere vibrations in the air into music. But here’s the catch: Those ears need to be attached to a human who’s actually paying attention.   We’ve all experienced that bizarre phenomenon of talking to someone who’s scrolling on their phone, only to realize later that they didn’t actually hear anything we said to them. No attention, means no listening. Therefore, without someone’s attention, our music does not exist. And, the beautiful human connection we could have enjoyed from feeling the music together, never happens either. This is tragic.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So, as artists, it’s okay for us to want people to give our creations their attention. That’s how human cultures have always connected. So please, don’t let anyone gaslight you. And don’t gaslight yourself. Don’t convince yourself that this is the “new normal”.   Even if it is, we’re creative people, so let’s use our imaginations and keep pretending that we live in a world where people value art and creativity. And I mean human art and human creativity. It’s crazy that we have to say that nowadays, but there you go.   If enough of us imagine the world we want, maybe, just maybe, we can change this simulation.   Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack, or making a one-off donation. If you can’t afford to at the moment though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps a lot, too. And be sure to grab your downloads of my Free Book and Free PDF tutorials. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are very much appreciated.   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI.   Photo by Matheus Bertelli       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Making Music Is Bad for Your Mental Health.  Songs need listeners, but most people are too busy scrolling nowadays.     You’ve just finished a new song. You love it! You’re beyond thrilled. You can’t wait for people to hear it, so you excitedly upload it and click publish. And you wait. And you wait some more. Then you refresh. Maybe it just needed a refresh. No. Still nothing. Ah! There’s a notification now. Jack192837465 gave it a thumbs up!   But, your song is five minutes long, and you uploaded it three minutes ago, so Jack192837465 couldn’t have listened to the whole song. Well maybe he’s loving it so much that he couldn’t help himself and simply had to hit that Like button mid-song. If he’s enjoying it that much, he’ll definitely leave a comment after he’s finished listening to the song. Definitely.   So you wait. And you wait some more. Then you refresh. Maybe it just needed a refresh. No. Still nothing. After another half an hour, you close your laptop and go eat chocolate. You’re defeated. What’s the point? Songs need listeners, but most people are too busy scrolling nowadays. And even if they do listen, they’re not paying attention, they’re just playing your song in the background while they scroll.   And that, my dear friend, is why making music is bad for your mental health. Technically speaking, it’s not the making music that’s the bad thing, it’s the sharing it with a world that doesn’t value music anymore. And to be clear. When asked, people will say they value music, but their actions say the opposite. And always listen to people’s actions, not their words. Because their actions reveal their true values. Remember that. Actions reveal values.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   It seems that the first principle of philosophy in this brave new world is: “I scroll, therefore I am”. Any time the smartphone user is not scrolling, they feel like they don’t exist, or maybe they feel that the world doesn’t exist, or something like that. I don’t know, I deleted all my social media accounts 11 years ago, so I don’t scroll.   The bottom line is this: If you do choose to share your music, then don’t expect people to give it their attention. That’s exclusively reserved for their phones. The best you can hope for is that people listen to your music in the background while they scroll. That’s it. But how horrible is that? And it’s okay to admit it. We pour our heart and soul and mind into making a song (or a painting, a piece of writing, a garden, or whatever art you create), and then we share it with the world, only to be told through their actions that they can’t even give our creation five minutes of their attention.   The world’s indifference to our creation is a form of rejection. And it hurts. A lot. Indifference is arguably a worse type of rejection than someone not liking our music, because indifference leaves us with no hope, whereas rejection leaves us with the hope that people might like something we create in the future.   It’s vital to be gentle and compassionate to your inner artist in these situations, because rejection activates the same part of our brain as physical pain. The hurt is real. Rejection feels painful, precisely because it is painful, in the most literal way.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So what’s the solution? A time machine. Then we can all go back to before the smartphone zombie apocalypse. Remember when people actually walked around looking up? And even better than that, when people used to drive their cars and look at the road, instead of their phones. Aaah… those were the good ol’ days!   Okay, so while we wait for someone to invent a time machine, how do we cope with this rejection in the meantime? Great question. And please do let me know if you figure it out. I’m all ears! The only partial solution I can currently think of to prevent this rejection, is to avoid the cause of it. In other words, don’t share your music. Or share it, but don’t expect any response. The only thing you should expect is indifference.   That second option is way more difficult, though. Maybe impossible. I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Maybe you can share your music and not expect a response. I certainly can’t. The indifference is just too painful. A few years ago it sent me into depression, which I’m still struggling with. That’s why I took a break from making music, and focused my creativity on writing about music instead. But now, thanks to AI, it turns out that people no longer value writing either. So I’m currently thinking of becoming a baker. People still value bread, right? Well for now, at least.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Anyway, I’d love to know how you’re coping with the pain of releasing songs into a world that doesn’t value music anymore, so please let me know in the comments.   And if you’re one of the last remaining humans in the world who’s avoided the smartphone zombie apocalypse and you’re actually still interested in creating (and not just consuming content), then please visit my website, as I have a whole collection of free resources for songwriters and producers at every level. If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. If you’re intermediate, download the 30 free PDF tutorials. They cover many different genres and instruments: melody, chords, bass, drums, and more!   And if you’re too busy for all that, I’ve got just the thing for you! It’s a one-hour “crash course” where I teach you all the music making essentials in a series of short step-by-step videos. Imagine that, if you enroll now, you could go to bed tonight knowing how to make good music!   Thanks for being here, my friend, you are very much appreciated!   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Life in a ‘90s Grunge Band. Comparing the music world of 1996 to 2026.     It’s 9pm. Friday night. December 20th, 1996. Cape Town, South Africa. I walk out on stage. The air is thick with smoke from the fog machine and cigarettes, and probably something else too. A bright spotlight is in my face. The light’s hot. The weather’s hot. That middle-of-an-African-summer kinda hot. All I can see beyond the spotlight is a sea of people. The venue is sold out. In fact, it’s probably over capacity.   We’re opening for South Africa’s biggest rock band, Springbok Nude Girls, who’d just signed a major label deal with Sony. But my band ROYD wasn’t far behind them, all thanks to the support of legendary DJ Barney Simon, who hosted the only rock show on national radio. His heavy rotation of our debut single led to it climbing up the national rock chart until it reached No. 1 just a few weeks before. To get there, we beat out Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. Recalling this makes it feel like a distant dream, but it was in fact, reality. And I was only a teenager. This was truly a dream come true.       The roar of the crowd intensifies with every step I take towards the microphone. I swing my long hair to the side of my face and pretend I’m about to speak into the mic. The crowd quietens. In this silence, without warning, we launch into the heavy opening riff of our No. 1 single “Impression X”. They. Go. Crazy! The dancefloor instantly erupts into a dangerous (yet friendly) pit of hair-windmills, body-slams, and flying flannel shirts. Welcome to life in the ‘90s.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Fast forward 29 years to December 2025. I get an email from the bassist, my best friend Rob Krammer, who now lives in Austria: “Dude, we should totally do something special next year to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of our debut release”.   After the initial shock of realizing that three decades had somehow flown by, we decided that it would be awesome to get all our recordings re-mastered and re-released as one epic album. We excitedly emailed the drummer, my brother Tony Holroyd, who now lives in Japan. He’s one of those people who doesn’t show his excitement, though, or maybe he just doesn’t get excited, I don’t know. But after he revealed a sliver of enthusiasm, we knew we were onto a great idea!   ROYD was formed in 1995 (out of the remains of a previous band) and broke up in 1999, when I moved to Los Angeles to study at Musicians Institute. In our four years together, we recorded one demo and four EPs. We went to record at Paris Studios once each year. And no, unfortunately it wasn’t in Paris. That was the name of the owner. But he was great, so we didn’t mind the fact that Paris was just down the road.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Back to December 2025. So I got in touch with my favourite mastering engineer, Tony Lindgren, over at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden, to see if he was up for the job. He was, and his genius has not only revived these dusty old ‘90s recordings, but he’s masterfully brought them up-to-date with the big, loud, modern music industry, without compromising their old-school character though.   You can hear the results for yourself on Spotify, Apple, or any other streaming platform, just search for ROYD - The ‘90s Recordings. Or if you’d like to download the album for free, then head on over to HackMusicTheory.com/Royd.   ROYD • The ‘90s RecordingsCover art hand-drawn in 1996 by Ben Ludik and his ballpoint pen     So coming back to the title of this post. What was life like in a ‘90s grunge band? In other words, how does the music industry of 30 years ago compare to now?   Instead of focusing on all the obvious things, like recording to tape in the studio, or running a newsletter and fan club using snail mail, or selling CDs at shows, or playing in front of people who were actually looking at us (not their phones), instead of all that, I’m going to focus on the feeling that us musicians felt about life in the music industry back in the ‘90s. And what feeling was that? Hope.   You see, the music industry back then was a hopeful place to be, because every year it was getting bigger and better as music continued to become a bigger part of our shared culture. The future was not only hopeful, it was expansive. Opportunities were increasing with every passing year. There was a shared belief that music was a vital part of our daily life.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   If you didn’t live through this era, then watch the movie “Singles” from 1992. It perfectly captures how important music was in our lives back then. And it’s a really good rom-com, too! And if you prefer your movies a bit sillier, then watch “Airheads” from 1994. It’s silly, yes, but it totally embodies that feeling of hope we all had back then. The future was bright.   And music was arguably the biggest shared cultural experience that people bonded over. It was a significant part of people’s lives, and it took up a significant amount of our time. We would spend hours every day listening to music. Recorded music and live music. And the music wasn’t in the background. It was the main event.   ROYD • Paris Studios • 1999Tony Holroyd (drums), Rob Krammer (bass), Ray Harmony (vocals, guitar)     The music industry in 2026 is the opposite. Hardly anyone listens to music as the main event nowadays. Music is almost always a soundtrack to something else: working, studying, driving, walking, exercising, cleaning, cooking, etc.   Yes, people listen to lots of music in 2026. Maybe even more than we did 30 years ago, because everyone has a phone that plays music now. But, music has been relegated to the background. It’s pretty much never the main event, and if it is, it’s usually just a song here or there, not a full album followed by another one, and on and on, which is how we used to listen to music back in the ‘90s.   While music was a bonding experience back then, it’s now an isolating one. There are numerous reasons for this shift, which we don’t need to get into here, but the evidence for this change can be seen on Spotify or Apple or whatever streaming platform you use. Look at the biggest artists in the world, with tens of millions of monthly listeners. Forget about the artists who are no longer with us, like Michael Jackson, just look at the living artists. How many of these massive artists have you never heard of? A lot, right? Another way this can be seen is by looking at the artists playing the arena in your city. How many haven’t you heard of? A lot, again. Right?   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   That never happened in the ‘90s. We all knew the big artists in every genre, even if we didn’t listen to that genre. This was largely due to radio being the main source of most people’s music. That level of gatekeeping has an obvious downside, which is actually what the “Airheads” move is about, but the gatekeeping is precisely how the shared culture was created and sustained.   So, despite the frustration that us musicians felt back then from trying to somehow claw our way through the gate, I think it was worth it. Because we now know what happens when the floodgates are opened.   Yes, everyone can release music to the world nowadays, but the price we paid for that privilege is the loss of our shared culture. If you’re a Gen Xer like me, or perhaps you’re a Boomer, what do you think? You’ve experienced both worlds. Was it worth it? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear your perspective.   Paris (owner, engineer) waiting for the tape to rewind. Studios in the ‘90s never had computers, they were reserved for boring office workers!     While there are many other differences between the pre-internet music industry and the industry we’re living in now, the main difference (by far!) is generative-AI. This isn’t so much a difference as a demolition. I’ve said a lot about this topic in other posts, so check those out if you’re interested, but suffice it to say that AI has single-handedly killed the hope for a bright future. Generative-AI is narrowing the future. Every month there are fewer opportunities in the music industry.   And while I’m a proud old-man luddite shouting at the AI clouds, this is not my opinion. It’s a fact. The AI narrative that mainstream media outlets and all the big YouTubers and podcasters are pushing (in a suspiciously co-ordinated fashion) is that everyone loves generative-AI and everyone’s using it.   But, if you do some digging, you’ll quickly hit a very different level of reality, where young people are rebelling against AI because it’s robbing them of a future. To learn more about this rebellion and how it’s developing, I highly recommend subscribing to Brian Merchant’s brilliant subtack Blood in the Machine.   These youngsters pushing back against AI fill me with that ‘90s hope once again, and remind me that it’s worth boycotting generative-AI. It’s not too late. And we owe it to the younger generations.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   I’ve had my time in the spotlight, literally, but if we don’t boycott generative-AI, these young musicians will never get their time in the spotlight. And it’s already happening. All the biggest artists in the world are mostly dead, and if they’re not dead, their band broke up decades ago. The Beatles. Elvis. Michael Jackson. Queen. Frank Sinatra. On and on. Read the legendary Ted Gioia’s recent post on this bizarre phenomenon.   And don’t get me wrong. I love old music by dead people. In fact, my favourite artist of all time died in 1750. But, every Friday I listen to the new releases in search of new gems. The treasure hunt is thrilling! We can’t give up on new music and young musici

Creating Calm Through Song Structure.   How to make a sonic sanctuary, like Tamikrest.     My favourite Saharan rock band Tamikrest just released their new album “Assikel”, and I’ve had it on repeat this week. Why? Well firstly, this is a mesmerizing collection of songs that make me feel good. I can sense the warmth emanating from their laidback desert grooves. And considering it’s the middle of May and we’ve just had more snow here in Alberta, I’m well up for their hot Saharan vibes!   Another reason I love this album is that it was recorded live in the studio, to analogue tape. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! It’s the only way to capture the magical synergy that’s created when a great band performs together. It’s been a rare method of recording since the 1950s, when multitrack recorders became common in studios. So for this reason alone, Tamikrest’s new album is worth a listen.   But my favourite thing about “Assikel” is the unusual song structures. And that’s something we can all learn from this band. Their songs are not structured like regular songs, which switch back and forth between verse and chorus sections. When it’s done well, that switching is stimulating. But, the downside of being stimulated is that it’s the opposite of being relaxed. There’s nothing wrong with a coffee in the morning. But a coffee before bed? Well, that’s a very different story.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   And as our fast-paced modern world speeds up exponentially, the calm that Tamikrest’s non-switching song structures create is a sonic sanctuary. In the sizzling Sahara, it’s far too hot for stimulation. The wisdom of the desert invites us to sit in the shade. This shifts our attention to stillness, and awakens an idea that maybe we don’t need anything out there. Maybe it’s perfect right here in the shade.   I was born and raised in South Africa, and I remember that feeling of being so hot that you’re forced to sit as still as possible, because any movement creates heat in your body, and that’s the last thing you need. So you sit still. Sweating and contemplating. Contemplating and sweating. Until the need for water outweighs the need for stillness, so you stretch out your arm, slowly, and reach for the drink.   So here’s the songwriting hack that we can all learn from Tamikrest:   Songs don’t always have to be journeys through different sections, they can instead be contemplative explorations of one section. Stillness is a sonic sanctuary.   For all these reasons and more, I’ve got Tamikrest “Assikel” on repeat. I’d love to know what you have on repeat this week, so please let me know in the comments. And thanks for listening, my friend, you are very much appreciated here.   Ray Harmony :)           Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!           Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

A Couplet a Day, Keeps Insanity Away.   Daily creative habits for better mental health.     We’ve just moved. Again. For more than a decade now, Kate and I have been averaging about one move per year. Last year we moved twice, but our record is an impressive three moves in one year!   The reasons for moving so often are numerous. Sometimes it’s our decision, sometimes it’s not (like the move we just made). The owner of the property we were renting sold it, so we had no choice. Time to pack up our lives. And move. Again.   Psychologists say that moving is one of the most stressful events in life. Having immigrated twice, having lived in four countries, and having moved so many times that I stopped counting when the number of places got to the mid-20s. I agree. Moving is stressful!   And for creatives like us, one of the worst things about moving is the loss of our routine. We work so hard to carve out a little “me time” in our calendars for making art, and then we work so hard to protect that precious time against the countless encroachments. But once our creative routine is established, it’s life-changing. We’re better humans when we’re being creative.   Creating is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. Our bodies need to consume air, water, and food. Our souls need to create art. And for the record, when I say art, I mean anything original that we make. Yes it could be a song or an oil painting, but it could also be a flower arrangement or a loaf of bread. I have my own soda bread recipe that I’ve been honing for years, and making it puts me in the flowstate.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   But when we have to pack up our lives and move, making music and baking bread both come to an abrupt stop. This sudden cessation of creativity is devastating to our mental health. That’s why I began a new creative habit on January 1st this year. It’s a daily habit, and I haven’t missed a day, despite all the time-consuming activities that were added to my schedule over the last few months, like house hunting, packing, moving, and now unpacking.   It’s for that reason that I started this new creative habit. Over the last few years my creative output has been dwindling, mainly due to depression, but that’s a story for another day. Back in December last year, I knew we were probably going to move again this year, and I also knew that there never seems to be enough time in the day to justify spending some of it making art, so I knew I needed a daily creative habit that could be sustained through all the inevitable disruptions.   I actually got the idea from our daily yoga habit. Kate and I have been doing yoga every day for many years. Every morning, seven days a week, we do yoga. If we’re busy, we do less (on moving day, it was only 10 minutes). And when we’re not busy, we do up to an hour. But every day we do yoga. No excuses. It’s been life-changing, and I think it’s one of the few ways we’re hanging on to a tiny bit of sanity through these mad times!   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So, here’s my new daily creative habit: writing a couplet. If you aren’t familiar with couplets, they’re simply two-line poems. And no, they don’t need to rhyme, unless you want them to. So every night in bed, I reflect on my day and think of the most important lesson I’ve learned. Then I write a couplet about it. And inspired by Wendell Berry, I write these with pen and paper.   I love the limit of having to say everything I want in only two lines. It’s similar to a haiku. That strict limit forces us to think more creatively. It’s counterintuitive, but the more limits we have on our creativity, the more creative we need to be in order to express ourselves.   Also, the concise nature of couplets means that we always have time to create one. We’re never too busy to write two lines. And the habit is working. It’s stuck. We’re in May now, and I haven’t missed a day. It’s also pretty cool to see my notebook filling up with creations. I’ve already got over 130 couplets.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   The last thing to mention about my new daily creative habit is that I decided before starting that I would not publish any of them. They’re like a journal. Personal. For my eyes only. I’m not even sharing them with Kate. The reason for this is to allow myself complete and utter freedom.   As soon as we know that we’re making something that will be shared with other people, we start restricting ourselves. Sometimes that’s good. For example, if you want to start a band and play live shows, it is kinda essential that your songs are enjoyable to at least some people, otherwise you won’t get many gigs. On the other hand, if you’re making music exclusively for yourself with no intention of sharing it, then you can do whatever you want. Anything goes! And that’s liberating.   So this is my invitation to you to start a daily creative habit. Today. And… make it small enough that even on your busiest days, you can still find a few minutes to do it. make it simple enough that you can do it even if you’re away from home.   Yes we can (and should) still write songs and paint canvases and make all kinds of other creations, but all those bigger projects require more time and more equipment than just a few minutes spent with a pen and paper. So do both. A small daily creation, which is sustainable. And then larger projects that are ongoing.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   I’m interested to know if you have a daily creative habit, and what it is. And if not, are you feeling inspired to begin one? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear from you! And if you’re looking for help with your creativity, then I’ve got you covered. From beginner to advanced, there are loads of free resources for you on my website.   If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. If you’re already making music, though, you can work your way through 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” you follow to instantly make better music. All genres are there, too. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. Enjoy!   On top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either. I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all these free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much! And welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production       About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Forget Meditation, Listen to Music. Meditating isn’t effective enough anymore.     As people become more addicted to their phones, society’s obsession with mindfulness meditation grows. I think that’s because the collective unconscious knows that we desperately need to take back control of our minds, as our lives are being wasted through endless hours of meaningless scrolling.   There are only 24 hours in a day, and despite the fact that most people (including myself) don’t sleep nearly enough, we do still sleep some of those 24 hours away. Then the remaining time each day seems to disappear in a blur, and suddenly it’s bedtime again. So we close our eyes. The alarm rings. And we do it all again.   I think it’s safe to say that no kid dreams of spending their one precious life this way. The people who viscerally sense this horror of modernity usually end up turning to some form of meditation as a path back to reality. And for the record, I meditate every morning, so I encourage this practice. However, I’ve come to think that meditation alone is no longer a powerful enough method in this modern world.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   It’s easy for us to forget that throughout the ages, the people who meditated were living in a completely different world. Not only did they not have social media and smart phones, but their pace of life was unimaginably slow compared to ours. Think about it, a hundred years ago most people still walked everywhere they needed to go. Now there are cars that drive themselves! And progress just keeps speeding up.   So when people in the old-world meditated, it wasn’t for stress-relief or relaxation. It was mainly for religious reasons. Different meditation practices were used for different functions, but none of them were designed for improving mental health in the age of social media, smart phones, and AI.   Once again, I encourage people to meditate, just remember that these practices were not designed as a technique for coping with our modern world. If you’re looking for help with that, there’s a far more effective method: listening to music!   You see, actively listening to music not only helps to focus our minds, just like mindfulness meditation does, but music also resonates with our hearts and makes us feel. It instantly changes our emotions, which instantly changes our energy. If there was a pill that could do that, it would be the best-selling drug on the market. But all drugs have negative side-effects, whereas listening to music doesn’t.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Also, when we sit in silent meditation, we might get a break from outside stimulation, but if you’re an introverted intuitive like me, then this practice usually results in our thoughts getting even faster and louder in this silent, empty space.   But if we actively listen to great music, like Bach or Vivaldi, it doesn’t allow our minds to wander. The music acts as a tether to our minds. And for people with obsessive thinking patterns like me, this mind-tether provides a deeply welcome break from our thoughts. And not only that, as I mentioned earlier, the music also tugs at our heartstrings and activates our emotions, which further helps our minds relax.   So the opportunity cost of doing silent mindfulness meditation is expensive, because we could be listening to music instead. And if we choose the music wisely, and listen actively with our eyes closed, the music will literally change our physiology, and therefore our mood. Better moods lead to better days. And better days lead to better lives.   This serves as my invitation to you to start practising music meditation today. If you’re not sure what music to choose, my favourite is an 18-minute long EP of Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater by the phenomenal Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Now, the only thing more magical than listening to music, is creating your own music. So if you need help making music, I’ve got you covered. From beginner to advanced, there are free resources for you on my website. If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. If you’re already making music, though, you can work your way through 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” you follow to instantly make better music. All genres are there, too. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. Enjoy!   On top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either. I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all these free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much! And welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production         About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Photo by cottonbro studio       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Writers & Readers Against AI.   If you’re pro-human, join Paul Kingsnorth’s campaign.     The brilliant English writer Paul Kingsnorth recently launched a campaign for everyone who loves humans and human creativity. So if you also miss the good ol’ days when you could read, listen or watch something and know that a human made it, then please join this campaign. And please do it today. This is urgent!   Due to generative-AI, humanity is at a vital fork in the road. In all honesty, I think it’s probably too late to save human-made art, but if we don’t try, we’ll never know (and we'll always regret not trying, too!). And if you’re a Gen Xer like me, or a Boomer, then we seriously owe it to the kids, because we know how life-changing real music was to our childhood development.   The term “life-changing” is thrown around a lot nowadays, but music literally changed our lives when we were growing up in the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s. It’s heartbreaking to think that kids are no longer experiencing that deep and profound meaning that music gave to our lives. Those bands that we lived for (and couldn’t stop thinking about) not only made us who we are, but they helped us to cope with a screwed-up world that just keeps getting more screwed up!   This is why we owe it to the kids to try our best to wake people up to the consequences of generative-AI. And that process begins by having conversations like this with our friends and family. On that note, please share this post with any open-minded person willing to listen.     WritersAgainstAI.net     Here’s an example of the reality we’re living in with AI. So the other day I was listening to the new album by Icelandic singer-songwriter Ásgeir. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. But while I was halfway through the title-track “Julia”, a thought popped into my head: “He could’ve used AI to write this!” I really hope he didn’t, but we’ll never know.   And that’s what most non-musicians still don’t seem to understand about generative-AI. It’s ubiquitous. It’s being used in most new songs. In fact, when asked off-the-record, a shocking number of professional songwriters and producers admit to using generative-AI when making music. This has been confirmed by well-connected industry insiders like journalist Kristin Robinson, who’s a Senior Correspondent for Billboard, and writes their “Machine Learnings” newsletter that covers the rapid impact of AI and other emerging tech on the music industry.   And just a quick sidenote. If you wanna learn my fast, easy and fun method for making music, then visit my website. From beginner to advanced, there’s something for you there. And most of them are free, so enjoy!   If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. If you’re already making music, though, you can work your way through my 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” that you follow to instantly make better music. All genres are there, too. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. Have fun cookin’ up some new tunes!   Then on top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either, as I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all my free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much, and let’s get back to the topic at hand…   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So, even old-school garage bands that record directly to vinyl could still be using generative-AI in the writing process. Most of the band members would not even know. This disturbing fact is what we need to help people understand.   You see, every time I speak out against AI, people leave comments saying that they’re not fooled by AI-generated songs and that they can tell the difference. For now, let’s forget about Deezer’s recent survey that found 97% of people can’t tell the difference between fully AI-generated songs and human-made songs. So putting that data to the side for now, here’s the bigger problem, and I’ll illustrate it with an example.   When the new Foo Fighters album “Your Favorite Toy” is released in a few weeks, how will we know that Dave Grohl didn’t use generative-AI in the writing process? We can’t. That’s the short answer. Because, he could easily have used AI secretly at home while writing the songs. The other band members wouldn’t even know.   From what I’ve read it sounds like the album was recorded in Dave’s usual old-school way, and with his preference of analogue gear. That’s all great, but the fact remains. He could have used generative-AI to help him write the songs. I really hope he didn’t, but we’ll never know. That’s the problem. That’s what we need to help non-musicians understand.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So when people say that they can tell the difference between AI-generated songs and human-made songs, they’re just uneducated on the way that generative-AI can be used in the writing process. This is our reality. Right now. And it’s been like this for the last couple years.   To be clear. There’s literally no way that anyone can know if a new song was written by a human, by AI, or by a combination of the two.   If we want to be guaranteed that the music we’re listening to is 100% human-made, then our only option is to stick with old recordings. I recommend albums from before 1997, because that way you also avoid Auto-Tuned vocals. Yes, the transhuman music agenda has been underway for decades! If you want a short history of this, check out my previous post, titled: AI Human vs Human AI. Logo designed by Justin Clark     Now, back to Paul Kingsnorth’s vital new campaign: Writers Against AI. The first thing to know is that it’s actually for writers and readers. So even if you’re not currently writing anything, you can join as a reader. Having said that, though, I definitely encourage you to start a daily writing practice, but that’s a topic for another post. For now, all you have to do is make three pledges and you’re in. Here they are, in Paul’s words:   “To support the campaign, a writer must make three pledges:   I will not use AI in my work as a writer. I will not support writers who use AI in their work. I will support writers, illustrators, editors and others in related fields whose work is entirely human-made.   The first of these points draws a line for our own creative work. We say, as storytellers: we will remain human. With the second, we refuse to lend our voices or our money to anyone who uses this technology to replace human creativity. Finally, we commit to doing something positive: supporting, financially and morally, other creators who are drawing the line too, and refusing to be dehumanised. If you are a writer who agrees with these pledges and who wants to sign up to this campaign - well, that agreement is all it takes.”   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   So if you’re feeling inspired to get involved, head on over to WritersAgainstAI.net today and download the logo, then use it on your website and social media to let your audience know that your creations are 100% human-made. And if you’re a reader, you can download a “Readers Against AI” logo and post that on your social media and anywhere else that you can. Let the world know that you’re pro-human, and that you support human creativity! And please, do this today. Time is of the essence. Logo designed by Justin Clark     A heartfelt thank-you for reading/listening, and welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)     Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.   Photo by Mart Production         About.   Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!   Photo by cottonbro studio       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".       Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

AI Human vs Human AI. A brief history of transhuman music.    Most AI-generated songs now sound more human than most human-made songs.   How did music go so horribly wrong? It all happened so fast, too! If you’re a Gen Xer like me, you’ve witnessed this whole process unfold from start to finish in just a few decades.   As a kid I remember the first time I saw Depeche Mode performing live on some TV show. I was so confused. I heard drums, but I didn’t see a drummer!? What kind of sorcery was this? Remember, this was before the internet, so I had no way of finding out how they did that.   Then a year or so later, I saw these little black boxes in my local music instrument store. “What kind of instrument is that?” I asked the long-haired store clerk, who was rather busy air-guitaring along to some ‘80s shred album. “It’s a drum machine,” he told me. “How does it play the drums?” I asked, with even more curiosity than before. He laughed, and then explained how it doesn’t physically play drums, it’s a computer that replicates the sound of a drummer. I was shocked!   “But then bands won’t need drummers anymore?” I said, hoping that he would tell me I’d misunderstood his explanation. But no. He confirmed that the future indeed did not look good for drummers. “Are you a drummer?” he asked. “No, I play piano and guitar,” I replied. “Well you’ve got nothing to worry about then!” he assured me, trying to put my young prophetic mind at ease. But the writing was on the wall, and it was obvious to all with eyes to see.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   The release of drum machines did two things, which together formed the catalyst for the death of music. Firstly, a lot of drummers lost their gigs. You see, the fewer people in a band, the more money each member makes. And remember, for working-class musicians like us who are just trying to scrape by, that increase can be the difference between paying rent and being homeless. So I’m not judging any bands that replaced their drummers with drum machines. I know the struggle. The drummer in my band was my brother. So who knows, if it was someone else, I may have done that too.   The second consequence of replacing drummers with drum machines was that all the drummers who still had bands, like my brother, were now being compared to drum machines. No matter how tight their playing, it was never as tight as the machine. This destroyed most drummers’ confidence, and it began the false idea that having everything perfectly on the MIDI grid was the best way. This is a lie.   The feel of a great drummer is exclusively due to them not hitting everything on the grid. A well-played soul groove that’s slightly behind the beat feels a million times better than a drum machine. And a well-played punk groove that’s slightly ahead of the beat feels so intense compared to a drum machine. There’s nothing perfect about playing perfectly on the grid. It just feels dead. Like the machine. Also, the slight variations that you get from a human drummer throughout each song is priceless, and breathes life into every single bar.   Now, the next stage in the death of music occurred in 1997, with the release of Auto-Tune. This was the first time that the pitch of vocals could be corrected. It was dark sorcery, too. I remember the first time I experienced this. I had just walked into the beautiful Metropolis Studios building in London, and my engineer friend Rohan Onraet met me with an excited “Dude, you gotta see this!” as he quickly ushered me into Studio C where he was working on a mix.   He sat me down and proceeded to play a Before and After version of a vocal track. I still remember who the band was, but I won’t mention them, as the first rule of Studio Club is: You don’t talk about what happens in the studio!   The difference between his Before and After versions of the vocals was shocking. The singer was not very good, but after my friend had auto-tuned him, he sounded just as good as anyone else. I could not believe it. “That’s cheating” I protested. “Yep” he agreed. And after a dramatic pause, he added: “This changes everything.” Turns out he was far more prophetic than he realized.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   By the early 2000s, pitch correction software had been adapted to be able to tune any and all instruments, including guitar. Around the same time, rhythmic correction software was also developed. Now it was possible to record a live drummer, but then using software like Beat Detective, every hit could be perfectly aligned to the MIDI grid. This is why the drums on most recordings from 2001 onwards start sounding like drum machines, despite often being human drummers.   So 20 years ago, singers were already sounding like robots, and drummers were sounding like drum machines. And many bass guitarists had already been replaced with synthesizers by then, and the bassists that remained, were heavily edited as well. For a brief period, us guitarists were the last musicians standing.   But that didn’t last long, as not only did pitch and rhythmic correction software start making guitarists sound like robots too, but then virtual guitars started appearing. And as with all virtual instruments, they sounded terrible at first. However, it didn’t take long for them to start sounding convincingly realistic. And eventually, they would also become indistinguishable from the real thing.   And that concludes the bizarre story of how human musicians turned themselves into robots, long before AI turned up. So by the time AI-generated songs began to infiltrate the airwaves in 2022, music already sounded robotic. But now in 2026, AI is able to replicate old recordings, so it’s sounding more human than the humans.   In fact, a recent study by Deezer found that 97% of people can’t tell the difference between fully AI-generated songs and human-made songs. They also discovered that around 50,000 fully AI-generated songs are now uploaded to streaming platforms every day, accounting for 34% of all daily deliveries. That’s utterly horrifying!   In my view, there is literally only one good thing that could come from generative-AI, and it’s the fact that AI is working relentlessly to sound human. That should be a huge wake-up call for us! Think about it. If sounding like a robot was ideal, then AI wouldn’t be constantly learning how to sound more human.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   There’s hardly anything that we can do without any effort whatsoever. But sounding human is one of them. So please, embrace your human imperfections. It’s precisely those imperfections that bring your music to life and make it soulful.   So this is my invitation to start being human again. If you’re a musician, don’t edit your recordings. Those little pitch or timing issues are the magic that makes you unique. And if you’re a producer, then I encourage you to get a MIDI keyboard and start practising. Even if you can only learn to play your drum beats and bass lines on the keyboard, that will still add a significant human feel to your recordings.   On that note, if you need some help with your music, I’ve got you covered. From beginner to advanced, there’s something for you on my website. If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. If you’re already making music, though, you can work your way through 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” you follow to instantly make better music. All genres are there, too. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. Enjoy!   On top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either. I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all these free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much! And welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)       Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production         About.     Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Photo by Magda Ehlers         Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".         Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

Musical Heroes in the AI Age. Nø Førmat! You need to know about this record label.     Nø Førmat! is an independent record label based in Paris. They’ve been around for over 20 years, and they’re one of my favourite labels. I love so many of their releases, but my current favourite is the album “Synthetic Hearts” by South African duo Msaki & Tubatsi. It’s a masterpiece!   I’ve got a soft spot for South African music because I was born and raised there, but they’ve got artists from all over the world on their label. I’m confident that you’ll find an artist of theirs that resonates with you. And for the record, I don’t know anyone at this label, so this is not a promo for them. I’m just a fan of theirs.   Another one of my favorites is the album “Our Calling” by the English singer-songwriter Piers Faccini and the Malian kora-player Ballake Sissoko. It’s a truly unique collaboration. The beauty is heartwarming, and the catchy melodies will have you joyfully singing along.   Do yourself a favour, and spend some time checking out the artists on this heroic record label. So why are they heroic? Because they’re one of the very few labels in the music industry who are brave enough (and awake enough) to be rejecting generative AI. Here’s a quote from a recent newsletter of theirs about this topic:   “We refuse to let what artists have spent a lifetime mastering be melted into billions of data points and regurgitated as artificial music by Udio, Suno or others. We refuse to let music, and more broadly, art, be reduced to robotic excrement, just to fatten a tech unicorn.”   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Now you can see why I love this label! And there’s more. They continue:   “This is not the world we want. Not for our children, not for all the world’s children, who dream of one day learning to play a couple of notes on a guitar. Because, how, in such a world, can we transmit the teaching, the effort, composition techniques, the love of practicing music and the social bonds it creates?”   If it sounds like they’re exaggerating, they’re not. I’ve been teaching music for 31 years, and I can confirm that interest in music education has almost entirely disappeared. The numbers don’t lie. It’s crystal clear: hardly anyone nowadays is willing to put in the work it takes to learn music.   The sales of my online courses and PDFs have fallen by over 80% since the release of generative AI to the public. And for music teachers like me, who are trying to survive on less than 20% of our previous income (which was low to start with), we’re no longer able to pay the rent. So unless people start choosing humans over robots soon, all the music making skills that have been passed on for centuries will be lost, because music teachers all over the world are having to find other work.   And with no music teachers, the tiny amount of people who still want to learn music and can concentrate long enough to do it, will have no other choice but to learn from AI. If you have kids, please think about this, because it’s happening right now. This will be your children’s reality within the next year or two, because when music teachers can make significantly more money stocking shelves in their local grocery store, what choice do we have? The rent won’t pay itself.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Right, back to Nø Førmat!’s newsletter now. So they continue:   “We believe in the power of artists over our imagination, our way of interacting with the world, our well-being and mental health. We believe in the profound impact of their work on our lives, and we want to continue nurturing this work. We believe that creation, -and the technique inherent to it, is a human miracle that must be fiercely protected and passed on to future generations. We therefore refuse any use of our catalog to train AI.”   As with everything in the world. If there’s demand for something, people will supply it. The people and corporations who are responsible for making the AI that’s killing our art (and a lot more too) are only doing it because it’s what the masses want. If the masses didn’t want AI, these corporations would’ve already moved on to something else.   I think this is one of the (many) times where we can learn a lot from the Amish. Every new technology that comes to market is assessed by the elders in each Amish community. If they decide the technology will deepen their relationships with each other and with God, then they welcome it. If it won’t, they reject it.   This is the nuanced approach that we all need to take when it comes to new technology. Our choices matter, because whatever we want, corporations will make it and sell it to us. They don’t care if it’s bad for us, our families, our communities, and our surroundings. So please, think about AI. Deeply ponder it. Ask yourself this question: By using AI, am I creating the world I want for myself and the kids?   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   Think about how much the world has already changed since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. That was just over three years ago. Mad times! I remember listening to songs from the first wave of AI-generated music a couple years ago. They sounded super fake and robotic. But now AI songs sound more real and organic than most human-made songs. That’s because humans are using auto-tune and a bunch of other editing tools, which iron out every crease of imperfection, and therefore every trace of humanity. Meanwhile, AI-generated music is doing the exact opposite, and as a result, it’s sounding way more human.   On that note. If you’re not okay with this transhuman agenda, then head on over to www.NoFormat.net and check out the artists on this heroic record label. They need your support! And if you make music, or if you want to start making music, then check out my website afterwards. There’s tons of free resources there that were all made by a human. Me! Whether you’re beginner, intermediate, or advanced, I’ve got something for you.   If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. If you’re already making music, you can work your way through 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” you follow to instantly make better music. All genres are there, too. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. Enjoy!   On top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either. I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all these free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much! And welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)         Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production         About.     Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Artwork by Jérôme Witz. Nø Førmat!’s graphic designer since 2004.       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".         Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.

We Are the Orchid Children. A call to highly sensitive musicians.    “Dandelion” children are those resilient and healthy kids who can survive and thrive under most circumstances. “Orchid” children, on the other hand, are those sensitive and fragile kids who need the right kind of support in order to survive and thrive.   This is according to four decades of research by the world-renowned pediatrician Dr. W. Thomas Boyce, who coined the terms “dandelion” and “orchid” in reference to how sensitive a child is.   When orchid kids don’t get the gentle childhoods they need, they go adrift. Drugs, delinquency, depression, and all kinds of other dark forces descend upon them. The silver lining of this cloud, though, is that orchid kids often turn to creativity as a way of trying to make sense of a world that seems upside-down.   That’s because the world is made by dandelions, for dandelions. If you’re a dandelion, you’re lucky, you naturally fit into society. Enjoy it! This post, however, is for the orchids. Why? Well, because I’m an orchid. And to be sure, the researchers tell us about all the advantages of being an orchid, and that we’re lucky too, just for different reasons. But, most days it really doesn’t feel like we’re lucky.   A quick sidebar. As with all categorizations, in reality this is more of a spectrum. In fact, further research identified “tulip” children. They’re the group in the middle. Not as robust as dandelions, but not as sensitive as orchids. Tulips apparently make up the largest portion of the population, at 40%. The low-sensitivity dandelions account for 30%, and us highly-sensitive orchids are the other 30%.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   This breakdown is slightly different to the research done by one of the other pioneers in this field, the psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron. Her data shows that about 20 to 30% of the population are Highly Sensitive Persons, or HSPs, a term she coined. Either way, the exact percentage doesn’t matter, what matters is that we’re not alone. About one in four or five people are also orchids, like us.   Let’s remember that next time we’re doing our grocery shopping and feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of noise, lights, smells, and most overwhelming of all, the frantic energy of other people. At that moment, look around. If you can see at least 10 people, then one of them is probably also an orchid. See if you can spot them. It’s pretty easy. They’ll be the one who looks as uncomfortable as you feel.   By the way, if you’re not sure whether you’re an orchid, you can take Dr. Aron’s online test for high sensitivity over at hsperson.com. And to be clear, orchids and HSPs are referring to the same group of highly sensitive people, they’re just different terms coined by different doctors.   Now, I mentioned earlier that orchids often turn to creativity as a way to cope with a world made by dandelions. This is why HSPs are over-represented in all of the arts. In fact, if you scroll through your personal music library, most of the artists in there will probably be fellow orchids. That brings me to one of the most important takeaways from the research in this field: Orchids are not failed dandelions!   Yes, the world is an overwhelming place for us orchids, but our high sensitivity is to everything. Bad stuff, yes. But good stuff, too. That’s why beautiful music can move us to mystical experiences. And fun music can lift our spirits within seconds. When we listen to music, it saturates our souls. We become the music.   Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.   I’ve mainly been listening to soothing instrumental music lately. I discuss the reason for this in a previous post, titled This Is The Only Pure Music. One of the many reasons, though, is for music therapy. You see, mental health problems like anxiety and OCD are common in orchids. That’s because childhood traumas imprint themselves far more deeply into the unconscious patterns of orchid kids.   Many of those traumatic events occurred before we learned to talk. Therefore, we weren’t able to process them in a rational way. Instrumental music has a magical ability to reach right back into our pre-talking baby brains and sooth them. Maybe that’s the reason why God gave us music? Music heals.   So if you’re a fellow orchid kid, this is my invitation to you. Start listening to soothing instrumental music today. And listen when you’re safe and sound at home, with headphones, and your eyes closed. If you’re not sure what to choose, I recommend John Field’s Nocturnes. My favourite recording is by Elizabeth Joy Roe.   And if you’re feeling inspired to play a more active role in your healing, and you’d like to actually create your own soothing music, then I’ve got you covered. From beginner to advanced, there are tons of helpful resources for you over on my website. If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. Next, you can work your way through 30 free PDF tutorials. They’re step-by-step musical “recipes” that you can follow to instantly make music in any genre. Electronic to hip-hop, classical to metal, and everything in between. It’s all there. Enjoy!   On top of the free book, 30 free PDFs, and over 220 free YouTube tutorials, I don’t paywall any of these posts either. I don’t want to exclude anyone. But, if you’re enjoying all these free offerings and want me to make more, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month, but if enough people join, then I can pay the rent and keep doing this work. To sign up, please visit HackMusicTheory.com/Join.   If you can’t afford to at the moment, though, no problem. You can give Hack Music Theory a 5-star rating in your podcast app, that supports my work too. Either way, thank you so much! And welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.   Ray Harmony :)         Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.     Photo by Mart Production         About.     Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.   Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!     Photo by itschansy       Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".         Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.