No eyes, no ears, no applause — what would you make then?

If it stayed hidden — unseen, unheard — would you still make this?

Every time I sit down to write a song, produce a track, even just practice — this is the question that's been coming up.

There’s a split version of me, looking over my shoulder, saying:

“You should do it this way because it’ll be more digestible.”

“That idea’s pretty ‘out there’ — it’s not listenable or singable.”

But I didn’t come to music through digestible.

I studied art music — the kind of music that takes time to absorb. Hour-long orchestral works. Twelve-minute avant-garde jazz. That’s what I bathed in from the age of 10 to 21. I loved pop music too, I listens to the radio, but what I studied was weird, complex, and wonderful.

It’s the kind of music no one wants you to play at a family gathering.

I would watch the lights fade behind my auntie’s eyes when they asked me to play something— because she didn’t recognise it or enjoy it. And that was fine by me. I was surrounded by other nerdy kids, lecturers, and niche communities who were into it. That was the culture. That was the point.

I loved learning obscure classical pieces. I loved diving deep into jazz standards (and whether jazz is art music is still up for debate).

But the jump from that world into a professional music life changed everything. I had to stop exploring that terrain, because suddenly there were sixty+ years (1950’s onwards) of popular music I had to catch up on, learn and reproduce. I was now dealing with the public — and what they wanted to hear wasn’t what I listened to, made, or consumed.

Ironically, the one thing I felt I was good at in music school was composition. I naturally wanted to write things that had hooks — not meandering melodies, but something ear-wormy and singable. It was personal taste. Or maybe the early onset of being a dopamine junkie with zero attention span that we all felt 15 years later.

When I started singing, I started writing “songs.” And I felt lucky — it fit with how I liked to write, but now it lived inside pop structures and I was pulled into the dorky world of lyric writing.

The annoying part of knowing a lot of theory, and being a general nerd who dives into rhyme schemes and music structure, is that you start to believe you can just do anything. Break down form, break genre, reverse engineer production — take whatever style you want (country, pop, rock, EDM), study it, and make your version.

Eventually, everything becomes nothing when you’ve seen music broken into parts for long enough. After a while, everything just sounds like something else. Especially now — where the 2020s are nostalgic for everything that came before, and music is being regurgitated to a younger generation that’s discovering retro 80s synth scores (thanks, Stranger Things).

And now with AI rapidly reproducing the easy, non-descriptive library music stuff — meditation instrumentals, lofi beats, background music — what’s going to be left?

Just real life. Just your taste. Just your identity.

In this middle-class working musician life, there’s a common refrain I hear again and again:

“I made this song. I worked really hard. I put it out. No one listened. What’s the point of making music if no one hears it?”

Side note- My first thought when I hear this is always basic promotion skill, which most musicians don’t do, because it’s hard. Promotion is a whole skill in itself. I’m not talking about social media posting everyday. I’m talking about the part that bigger labels throw half a million dollars per release into. It takes money, effort, a learning curve and trial & error  — Facebook ads, Instagram, Google, all the rest. Every other industry does it. We pretend good music will just rise on its own. But that’s not what this is about.

What I’m really asking is:

If no one ever hears the music you’re creating — what’s the point?

I have a sneaking suspicion this question is actually at the heart of most of our creative ailments. Because the truth is:

We don’t have control over who listens.

We only have control over how true we are to our own taste.

And the longer you’ve been in music — the more you’ve learned about how people do things “successfully” — the more you start to sand down the edges of your most bizarre (and probably best) ideas. That voice in your head tweaks everything for accessibility. I see it all the time, especially when musicians give or receive feedback.

There’s this “down the line” way to steer someone away from their weird choice — like you’re gently guiding them back to safety. But sometimes that choice isn’t wrong. It’s just un-conventional. The real question is:

Are you breaking the rule on purpose? Or did you just not know the rule existed?

Breaking the rules on purpose is a great. Flipping conventions is awesome when it subverts expectation.

Not knowing the rules in the first place can also have the same effect, could be seen as unconscious genius… But more times I’ve heard the non-genius version of this where the backing vocals would sound much better if you didn’t have parallel Fourths destroying your country BV’s…  Just because they’re the only ones you can hear doesn’t mean they’re the right ones. (Remind me of the chicken and egg theory of hearing music for a later post).

I noticed that when my friends with similar backgrounds entered the pop world, we started playing down our quirky playing. We did less interesting things on our instruments. We just “played the part.”

That’s good advice when you’re learning what the part is.

But once you know? If anyone can play it… where’s your artistic fingerprint?

Ten years into the producer/recording side of things, I’ve realised how much I love my friends’ personalities in their playing. When I’m doing remote sessions, I always ask for three styles of takes:

1. What you think you should do.

2. Something odd or alternative.

3. A bull-in-a-china-shop take — overplay, give me the dirty fills.

More often than not, I use the third one.

I love the dirty loops version. That’s the real tasty bits for me.

But our personalities get beaten out of us.

So what I’m saying is:

We need to reclaim the quirks of our musical personalities. That’s the way forward.

If no one ever hears your music — and we only have so much time on Earth — shouldn’t you make the things you actually want to make?

I feel weirdly apologetic about the music I’ve released. Not because I don’t like it, but because it’s such a tiny, narrow sliver of a lifetime in music — not the full picture.

Sometimes I’m embarrassed by the quality. The early recordings when I wasn’t a great singer. 

My jazzy classical brain hears it and says: “What is this pop bullshit?”

My pop brain says: “This needs a better vocalist and slicker production.”

My Bon Iver brain says: “It’s too polished — it should be layered acoustics or hard autotune #22amillion.”

My neo-soul brain says: “Where’s the Dilla beat and auto-wah?”

Every version of my taste has a different critique.

But what I’m not saying is:

Don’t study music. Don’t educate yourself. Don’t learn theory — you’ll be boxed in.

It’s the opposite.

You’ll have more freedom. More options.

You’ll know the rules so well that you can choose whether to lean into them, or break them.

Music theory is a guide, not a set of laws.

What I am saying is:

Take a moment before you cut a strange idea.

It might be the most unique and beautiful part of the thing you’re making.

Music is something we give ourselves and give each other. But lately, I’ve felt more isolated musically. Not because I don’t love music — I’m still writing, producing, gigging 3–9 times a week — but because I’m far from the people who shared that early nerdy obsession. Adulting, parenting, geography, constant punters asking for Valerie and Horses — it all adds distance.

I think about what I want to pass on to my kids are not the famous “names” in music. The fame part of music is new in the scheme of human evolution.  I want them to feel the beauty in being in sync with others. To know what singing in harmony with someone feels like. What being in the pocket feels like. What it means to write something from nothing. The complexity that live within the music itself.

I don’t want them to associate music with making money — or needing to justify it with a career. I felt like if I was going to do music every day, I had to monetise it. But that’s not true. (Well, it’s kind of true — time and pressure do make you better. But that’s a more nuanced subject for another day.)

I want my family to experience music as part of everyday life.

We should be making music just to make music.

To fill the cup.

To fill the space in a day.

To make something because making something is the point.

We’re drowning in music — 100,000 songs uploaded to DSPs every single day.

If this is about legacy, it’s kind of pointless.

The biggest artist today will be a vague footnote in 200 years.

Can you name the biggest musician from 1825? Have you thrown on one of there jams lately?

Make something for yourself.

Maybe someone else will like it too. And if not, you still win.

But if you make something you hate — and then people love it — you’ll be expected to keep making things you hate.

That’s a trap.

So make what you love.

And if someone happens to like it — that’s a gift.

For me, I just want to purge the ideas that have lived in my head for too long.

They’re not all great. But they’re mine.

They come back over and over. The main thing holding them back is time — and good old Steven Pressfield-style Resistance.

And perfectionism.

But honestly, it doesn’t matter. Not really.

What matters is that I’m a better human when I’m making things — not complaining about not making them. Not being a shitty partner or father because I’m bottling it up.

Really this could be summed up in MonoNeon’s unofficial motto:

“Stay bold. Stay peculiar. Stay ratchet.”

Stay bold – Take creative risks. Be fearless in your sound, your choices, your voice.

Stay peculiar – Embrace the weird. Let your individuality lead, not follow.

Stay ratchet – Keep it raw, funky, unfiltered — don’t over-polish or sanitize your art.

But just be a good human.

And let music be a lifelong friend.