I've spent 25 years in the studio watching musicians with real talent not finish their music. Not because they lacked ability — because friction got in the way. The Quiet Rebel is where I share what those 25 years actually taught me. Practical frameworks, honest conversations, and the 20% of things that create 80% of finished music. No hustle. No gear obsession. Just the tools to help you make the music you actually hear in your head. — Mark
Do you still play?
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Hi Reader, Quick one. New video just went up. It's about a question I keep getting asked — "do you still play?" — and the strange half-second pause a lot of musicians have before answering it. It includes a story I haven't really told publicly before, about a song I wrote for my mother's funeral, and a night in intensive care where I worked out what I'd actually been avoiding. It's nine minutes. If you know that pause too, you'll know what I mean by the end of it. Mark |
The Quiet Rebel // Create more by doing less of what doesn't matter.
I've spent 25 years in the studio watching musicians with real talent not finish their music. Not because they lacked ability — because friction got in the way. The Quiet Rebel is where I share what those 25 years actually taught me. Practical frameworks, honest conversations, and the 20% of things that create 80% of finished music. No hustle. No gear obsession. Just the tools to help you make the music you actually hear in your head. — Mark
Hey Reader, For weeks I watched a number that wasn't moving. I'd built The Finish Line Challenge, a 14-day way to take one song from the hard drive to actually done, and I sent it out into the world with no real idea if anyone would come. Sign-ups trickled in slowly enough that I started rehearsing the version of this where it quietly doesn't work. Where I built a room and nobody walked in. That waiting is its own kind of friction, and nobody warns you about it. You can finish the thing...
Hey Reader, Someone left a comment a while back asking what my tinnitus actually sounds like. Not "do you have it," which people ask a lot. What it actually sounds like. I told them the truth. It's not one tone anymore. It's several, different in each ear, all going at once. A kind of chorus effect on the sound, guitarists will know what a chorus effect does to sound, a gentle phasing up and down, and that's built slowly over thirty years, getting a little worse every decade until it stopped...
Hi Reader, It finally has a date, 27th July 2026. That is when I will be bringing a whole bunch of likeminded musicians together who all want to finish one song in 14 days. It will include daily encouragement and prompts/suggestions via email, a group WhatsApp tp bring everyone together, and the promise of no gatekeeping, no divas, and nothing demanding, just a bit of fun getting back into the grrove of making music for entertainment. You don't have to release it (if you don't want to). You...