I found these old ramblings I’d obviously posted somewhere years ago. Thought I’d add them here as it’s quite an interesting look at my headspace from about 2005 
When I was a kid, I thought like a kid. At 14 I wanted to be the best guitarist in the world. At 17 I wanted to be the best bassist in the world. At 21 I realised I was never going to be either, so I set my heart to making the music I wanted to make. I’ve built myself up, technically, to a level where I can play what I want, pretty much, and I can record whole albums without involving anybody else. Whether or not I choose to bring other people in is irrelevant. I’m doing my thing, painting my picture, writing my story, singing my song. And that’s what I see is important.
It’s the same thing with influences… too many people focus on one person (be it Jordan Rudess, Rick Wakeman, Steve Vai, Lars Ulrich, whoever) and aspire to be that person. But guess what? IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN! Listen to everything, soak in everything. The more restrictive you are with your music listening, the less you will grow as a musician. The more negative you are towards other musicians and other styles of music, the less you will grow. The more anal you are about sitting in your room practicing in minutiae instead of getting out there, getting sweaty and tired, playing in front of (and with) other people, the less you will grow.
Music is one of the most accessible art forms we have available to us. With the internet, we have the ability of reaching out to millions of people. But we as musicians have as much responsibility, if not more so, as the general listening public to appreciate all styles of music. Otherwise, why should anyone listen to us and the music we play? We need to open our eyes, our ears and our minds to new things. Just because somewhere is playing hip-hop or reggae or funk or whatever, it’s still music, and there are still things to be learnt from it.
It’s no use bemoaning the state of the music business. Moaning won’t do anything to improve things! We should be going out and asking bar and club owners whether they’ve got any plans to have live band nights. Encourage our friends to do the same. Keep up the pressure, and things will improve, club owners will see there is a demand for live band nights and will start to have them more often. I was once in a band that was one of the main live music attractions in our town. When we all left to go to college, the number of live music venues halved in about three months. Why? Because while we were going around hassling club owners for gigs, and taking out new bands as support acts, the other musicians in the area were too self-absorbed and just let all their possible outlets dry up.
I love progressive music. I really do. But it’s on a level that a lot of people simply won’t appreciate. Those less passionate about music than ourselves, want something to listen to in the background, something that is a distraction but doesn’t require absolute concentration. Prog doesn’t offer that. Even the hard rock with prog-tinges that comes around every now and then isn’t quite there, but it is more approachable. Concentrate on the musicality, not the techniques, and it’ll stop prog being such a clique and start opening other people up to it. We owe it to ourselves!
