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
Finishing is only half the fear....
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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 you're building and still have to sit there and hope anyone wants what's on the other side of it. I thought about Kev, a friend, while I was sitting with that thought. You see, Kev played guitar in one of my old bands, many years ago. Still one of my closest friends, and still someone I work with on projects. He's spent the last, god knows how long,recording and finishing an album, White Lies Black Truths, under the name Midge Nuun. It's prog metal and if you don't know the genre, just know this: they are not an easy crowd to even get noticed, nevermind be taken seriously. They are often off the highly technical, crowd, and deeply unimpressed by anything that doesn't earn its place! He told me straight, in not so many words, that he expected it to land quietly. He wasn't making it for streams. He was making it because he needed to make it, whatever happened after that. After just the first month or two his YouTube channel has grown to 3,000 subscribers with one of the music videos currently sitting at 14,000 views. The full album playback on YouTube alone has 109,000 views, and that's before you count Spotify, or anywhere else it's living now. He was as surprised as anyone. Maybe more than anyone. I don't think the lesson here is that finishing guarantees an audience. It doesn't. Plenty of good work goes out quietly and stays quiet, and that doesn't make it less worth making. But I do think we both spent our own version of that waiting period assuming the quiet meant something final. It didn't. It was just the part before we knew, probably much you have before. You can't find out what the world does with a finished thing while it's still sitting on your hard drive. Make it real. 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, 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...
Hey Reader, I once set up a band for a level check. Nothing serious, just get the mics roughly right before we started for real. I asked them to run through their most energetic song so I could get some sound in the room, check for peak levels, make sure I had no dud cables, etc. I learnt right back in the beginning to record everything, so as always I hit record. If for nothing else I could play it back for the band to see if they were happy with the overall sound. This time, they were on...