Hack Music Theory

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 t...

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...

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...

  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...

  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...

  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 so...

  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 sp...

  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 pedi...

  The Music Theory of Fun . These two things make songs feel good…     In my previous essay  Who Killed the Fun, Fun, Fun? I told the story of how music was intentionally transformed from a fun and communal activity into fear propaganda that’s consumed alone. All within a few decades. I concluded with an invitation to make something fun, and then to share it with the world. We need it!   The most...

  Who Killed the Fun, Fun, Fun ? Music used to be our greatest joy, then this happened…     1964. Fun, Fun, Fun. That was a song on the album “Shut Down, Volume 2” by my childhood heroes, The Beach Boys. Go have a quick listen, the song is only two minutes long. But they’re two minutes of pure joy!   “Fun, Fun, Fun” was released 62 years ago. So now I’d like you to compare it to any new single fro...

  Musical Memoirs & Sonic Scrapbooks . How to find purpose, passion, and meaning in your life.     Okay so what’s a musical memoir? Well, the Oxford Dictionary defines a memoir as “an account written by somebody about their life and experiences”. So a musical memoir is a  musical account written by somebody about their life and experiences.   This is an idea that’s been on my mind for a while,...

  An Effortless New Year’s Resolution . One simple question that will change your future.     New year’s resolutions don’t work. All the studies on them reveal this same finding. Yet every January 1st, millions of people make them. Again. Knowing that they’ve never worked before. In fact, the only thing that works about a new year’s resolution is its ability to make people feel bad about themselve...

  The Best Music Is Behind Us . But that’s a good thing! Here’s why…     This essay began as a “Best Album of 2025” post, where I was going to share my favourite album of the year and what I loved about it. As you would have noticed from the title, though, it grew into something entirely different. Why?   Well, according to Spotify’s Wrapped analytics, my favourite artist of 2025 (who I listened t...

  The Geography of Musical Scales . Finding peace in pentatonic places.     It’s thought that pentatonic scales are the most ancient of all the musical scales. Regardless of whether that’s true or not, it’s worth paying attention to these five-note scales because of their unique consonance. You see, they contain two fewer notes than the scales we’re used to hearing, so they have a spaciousness tha...

  Music is Mind Control . Lyrics are little Derren Brown’s in your brain.     Do we have free will? That ancient question actually misses the point, because the concept of free will implies that we’re free to act on our desires. Okay. That’s fine. But where do our desires come from? That’s the real question!   For example, if you get home from work and you’re trying to decide whether to go for a r...

  This Is The Only Pure Music . A celebration of non-classical absolute music.     Music has united people for millennia, but nowadays it’s been weaponized to divide us. I’ve personally experienced its uniting effects, though, so I know what’s possible.   You see, I was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. I lived there until 1999, leaving a few months after Mandela’s presidency ended. I lov...

  Don’t Lie! You Listen to AI Songs .   There’s no way to avoid them, unless you do this…     I’ve been speaking out against AI-generated music for a while now, but people keep telling me (proudly) that they don’t listen to songs made by AI. They also keep telling me (proudly) that AI songs are crap. Sadly, the only thing these comments tell me is that those people don’t understand that AI has a h...

  Music Is Dead . Good Riddance!   AI killed the recording star. Now what?     Have you heard AI-generated music? It’s better than most of the music that humans are making nowadays. Even worse than that, though, is the fact that music generated by machines ironically sounds more human than most music made by people.   But that’s nothing new. There’s been a dehumanizing trend in music ever since th...

  You vs Phone . Who Will Win?   A musical method to take your attention back!     How many seconds can you sit still and focus on your breathing, without your mind wandering? If you’re like most people nowadays, your answer to that question is somewhere under 10 seconds. Seriously. And that’s the “new normal”.   Ever since the neolithic revolution, when humans first began to live in an unnatural...

  The Uglification of Music .   Can a return to beauty save music?     Okay I know you’ve just started reading this, but please stop (temporarily), then go and listen to the second movement of J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. Its nickname is “Air on a G String”, so just search for that. Even if you know this piece, please go and listen to it again. Then come back. I’ll wait…   So how...

  Don’t Trust Me, I’m an Expert . Confessions of an INFJ.   I’m a multi award-winning music lecturer with over 30 years of teaching experience, 10 of those years being at one of the UK’s largest colleges. I studied classical guitar, piano, and music theory (all to the highest grade) at the world-renowned Royal Schools of Music. Then I moved to Los Angeles to study contemporary guitar and vocals at...

  You Can’t Make Music without Using Theory .   “I don’t use music theory, because rules limit my creativity.” If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that in my 30 years of teaching music theory, I wouldn’t be living in a rented one-bedroom apartment, that’s for sure!   The Oxford dictionary defines language as a “system of communication.” We can’t communicate through speech without...

  Hearing Music from the Future .   Materialist science tells us that we hear with our ears, and see with our eyes. But if that’s true, then how do we explain extra-ocular vision? If you haven’t come across this jaw-dropping phenomenon where blind (or blind-folded) people can see, look it up, and be prepared to have your worldview flipped. If you don’t know where to start, I recommend the work of...

  You’re Listening to Music Wrong .   You’re Listening to Music Wrong. I am, too. We all are. It’s tragic, but we can fix it.   Over the last 20 years, music has been devalued and demoted. It used to be the hero. Now it’s the sidekick. The soundtrack for working or socialising or whatever.   However, if you’re a Gen Xer like me, you’ll remember spending countless hours sitting in front of your hif...

  The 4 Types of Artist . Which Are You ?   Every song is born from an idea. So where do ideas come from? In other words: What or who is the cause of your imagination? Your answer to this question is tied to your worldview, and that determines what type of artist you are.   The first type of artist believes that ideas come from the brain, and are a result of firing neurons. If you believe this, yo...