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We often take Customer Support for granted. It is there when we need it – or is it? 

I have been forced to contact the customer support of various music related services several times when things have gone wrong. Generally speaking, things run smoothly; however, when you have a problem, you expect that someone from the company will be able to sort it. The following catalogues some of my experiences with Customer Support. 

PRS for Music Problem: Various, but mainly obtaining an exclusion licence: PRS for Music has two sections: PRS which protects copyright and collects royalties, and MCPS which collects mechanical rights. There is an excellent book, “The Guidebook to Self-releasing Your Music” by Matthew Whiteside, which explains things further, and which is very true to its title. I have contacted PRS for Music several times, mainly to sort out my tracks registered by PRS. Although I have experienced the odd glitch in my dealings with PRS, most of my requests were dealt with expediently and to my satisfaction. The same cannot be said about MCPS. According to the aforementioned book, I needed an AP2 exclusion licence to release my CD, which contained twelve tracks composed by me. I presume that they normally deal with big business, because they sent me on a wild goose chase and, no matter what extra information I obtained, it was still not good enough. The members of their licensing group refused to communicate with me directly, and I had to speak with support staff who were unaware of the details of the licence. One gentleman at MCPS tried to be helpful but the licensing group wouldn’t even listen to him. In the end, I emailed Matthew Whiteside who told me to ignore the licence. 

SongU Problem: Various, but mainly issues with my debit card. SongU are always attentive and courteous when I ask a question. In all but one case, they have answered to my complete satisfaction; however, when they take my quarterly fee from my debit card, there is always a problem. It seems like their collection system and my bank’s paying system are not in sync. Lots of polite and well-meaning communication failed to solve the problem. I have had to use my credit card instead, although it is not my preferred choice.

Songtradr Problem: Usually something to do with my latest release. I have contacted support on a couple of occasions. For the most part, they have responded quickly and been very helpful. I did have a problem with my last release, when they were much slower in responding and didn’t completely deal with my concerns. It was the same person that I had dealt with before, so I assume that she was just overworked. 

Spotify Problem: The wrong track was being shown as my latest release. I was not optimistic with this one as I didn’t think that Spotify would be interested. How wrong I was. Support answered promptly, were extremely courteous and sorted the problem. 

SoundCloud Problem: I couldn’t monetize my track. I have had little problem monetizing my tracks on SoundCloud except on one occasion. I produced a remix of one of my tracks, “Aurora Skies”, and was informed by their bot that they couldn’t monetize remixes. I changed the song’s classification as a remix but still included the word “remix” in the song title. Still no joy. I contacted support and they told me that they couldn’t monetize remixes, even if I had written the song myself. I preferred the remixed version, so I took down the original, removed the word “remix” from the title, and it worked fine. 

WordPress Problem: None. I have had problems using WordPress for my music website but, so far, have found that their online help has always answered my questions.

Suno Problem: I couldn’t log into my account. I joined Suno using a free account which I then upgraded to a Pro account. Apparently, if you use a country code, you should remove the leading ‘0’ from your phone number. Unfortunately, my autofill was unaware. A few days later, I tried to login without the leading ‘0’. This created a ghost free account with a random handle. At first, I could login to my Pro account if I included the leading ‘0’, but then that stopped and I could only log into the ghost account. I contacted support and billing on Suno, but heard nothing. In the meantime, Suno took my monthly fee despite billing being aware that I couldn’t login. I then cancelled the ghost account, but still couldn’t login to my Pro account. I have tried Suno’s help channel in Discord but they are just as invisible as support and billing. I still cannot login and don’t know if my Pro account is still active. If it is, I cannot cancel it as I cannot login and, presumably, will have to contact my bank to cancel it. I have asked Suno if my account is active but, so far, no response on that or my original query. 

If I had to order these in terms of efficiency, Spotify support would be at the top, although WordPress gets a special mention for good online support, while PRS and SongU have generally been excellent. MCPS licensing and Suno would most definitely be vying for bottom, depending on whether you prefer obstinacy or being totally ignored. I would point out that these are just my experiences and, perhaps, I was just lucky or unlucky with my support requests.

 

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In my musical journey, I have always done most things myself. From writing, through arranging, recording, mixing and mastering, I have always felt that you should understand the various processes involved in creating and producing music. It didn’t help that my three attempts at collaboration didn’t end particularly well.

My first attempt was with a lyricist on SongU who sent me a lyric to work on. Although I wasn’t particularly impressed with the lyric, I made an attempt to write a melody which I felt was quite good. When I didn’t hear back from her, I contacted SongU who informed me that she had left. I ended up writing my own lyric to the melody, which I must add was nothing like her lyric, and “Rainbow’s End” was the result.

My second attempt was with another lyricist from SongU. The lyric he sent to me was better than the first and I wrote a melody to it. I then took it to the mentors on SongU who suggested so many changes to the lyric that my lyricist gave up.

My third attempt was with my wife, Roberta, who composed a lyric which she suggested should be a rap. I turned the lyric into a novelty song – I don’t really write raps – and “Jukebox in My Head” was the result. Roberta felt that this would be her only attempt at writing a lyric, so that particular collaboration died as well.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I put my latest Trance track on a Trance Discord group and asked for comments. A top professional American Trance DJ said that it had promise but needed a fair amount of work and asked if I could send her the unmastered and mastered WAV files. I duly responded. A few days later a long email came back explaining how it could be improved. Of course, I had heard of mixing issues like aliasing, phase cancellation, and stereo field issues but have never seen such a clear description of how to test for them and fix them. Normally, I use a plugin called Expose 2 which highlights issues like these but I tend to take its word as gospel. I also have a few books on mixing but have never heard of some of the techniques she uses. I have just sent her the corrected files and await her response.

Around the same time, I received an email from SongU saying that another member lyricist wanted to collaborate with me. She was a winner in the Lyrics category in the UK Songwriting Contest and lived less that thirty miles from me, so I thought I might give it a go. We had a quick Zoom meeting and decided that I would write music to one of her lyrics and she would write lyrics to one of my instrumentals. As neither of us were great singers, we would use Suno AI for the demo. I looked at the lyric that she recommended and came up with music within a day. It seemed very easy to write music to the type of lyrics she wrote. Although I say it myself, the result is a power ballad which I think is pretty good and we are investigating ways of taking it forward. She has produced lyrics to “Music of the Fjords” and we are now looking at what Suno AI makes of that. I am no expert on Suno AI, but the logic is that if you write the melody, chords and lyrics and use AI software only for the demo, you can pitch the song to artists without infringing copyright. Also, I am finding Suno quite a lot of fun to learn.

The moral of it all, is that you should never say never to anything. I might even get around to eventually writing a rap.

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As I mentioned last month, I recently had the opportunity to visit GLOSS (Glasgow Library of Synthesized Sound) situated in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. GLOSS is a non-profit, artist-led and community-based organisation, providing access to electronic music gear, instruments, education, workshops, performances and more. It may come as a surprise that, as someone deeply involved in synthesized music, I had never handled a hardware synthesizer before. For me, it has always been about software synthesis using computer plug-ins such as Serum 2, Equator 2, and Massive X or software emulations like Arturia’s CS-80 V.

The experience itself was very interesting and I spent most of my time there playing with an analogue synth called Fourm. It is made by a company called Sequential which was founded by synthesizer legend, Dave Smith, who is perhaps best known for his previous company Sequential Circuits, which gave us the famous Prophet-5 synthesizer. In the early eighties the Prophet was owned by lots of big names including Gary Numan, Phil Collins and Vangelis. I was told by Lewis Cook, the main driving force behing GLOSS, that the Fourm synth had only recently been acquired by them and this gave me the opportunity to work out for myself the purpose of all the knobs, buttons and switches. I have to admit it was great fun. In the short time that was left after I had worked out the basics, I had a go at a fairly straightforward drum machine to complete my visit.

The experience made me think of  the development of the synthesizer from the early days of the Moog Modular and ARP 2600 through to the Korg M1 of the late eighties and early nineties and, in particular, the cost of these instruments back in the day. For example, the Fairlight CMI, which was one of the first synths to include sampling, cost in the region of £20,000. What is amazing is that you can still buy the CMI from co-designer Peter Vogel for £14,500 or you can settle for the software emulation from the same company for around £40. Indeed, there exist many software emulations of these grand old machines from companies like Arturia and GForce, incorporating extra features such as arpeggiation, for a tiny fraction of the price of the hardware original. There are many purists who say that the analogue hardware versions are still superior to their software equivalents, but even they admit that the gap is narrowing.

What the software synths will never have is the history, including the chart-topping records that were produced on these analogue machines. I have the greatest respect for the effort and expertise that went into their invention and production, and enjoy reliving the pleasure that it brought me as a listener and DJ playing eighties music at the time. It is clear that they brought about a revolution in popular and film music that is still evident today.

I think, however, that I will be continuing to use software synths for my productions for a whole variety of reasons such as cost, ease of use, and the fact that very few people can tell the difference.

 

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It is virtually impossible to achieve anything in life without help from others. Reading books and watching YouTube videos are great for learning, but feedback and some sort of teaching and/or mentoring is essential to get you started and keep you progressing. Composing and producing music is no exception. If, like me, you are interested in producing EDM instrumentals, you need to know where to look.

When I started producing my own songs, I found song contests a good place to start. In particular, the UK Songwriting Contest was where I first tentatively entered a couple of the songs. The outcome was encouraging if not outstanding. One of the prizes for entering a song was a free trial of the songwriting teaching facility, SongU. I started my trial and found SongU so useful that I am still a member some fifteen years later.

SongU is based in Nashville and is entirely on-line. It caters for all types of ability and genres but is more suitable if you write country music. At the time, I was writing in various genres; however, when I strayed into EDM, I managed to find a couple of mentors on SongU with expertise in that genre. The one downside of SongU is that many of its pitching opportunities are for country artists, so I had to look elsewhere as well. I came across Songtradr, another on-line facility, which had both EDM pitching opportunities and the ability to release members’ music to on-line stores such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. Although pitching opportunities on Songtradr are much reduced these days for some reason, I still use it as a distributor for my music.

About a year ago, I decided that I needed to improve my EDM sounds, so I bought some from an English EDM creator and music producer called Luke Bond. Not only were the sounds excellent, but, by purchasing them, you became a member of his Discord group which included some top EDM DJ’s. I have received some excellent feedback from these guys which has been very helpful.

So far, I have only discussed on-line networking. I was also interested in meeting with some local people who shared my passion. Unfortunately, I live in Clackmannashire and, when I entered “Clackmannanshire electronic dance music” into the Co-Pilot AI system, the first thing that appeared was “Electronic Octagenarian”, which is the title of this series of blogs. There was also a bit on the album I released in 2024 but little else. There is a minor music festival called ‘Tilly in the Park’ held annually in Tillicoutry (about three miles from where I live) and a couple of night clubs in Stirling (five miles away) and Falkirk (15 miles away).

Separately, I came across GLOSS (Glasgow Library of Synthetic Sound) and attended a session there hosted by Lewis Cook, who is one half of the synth group Free Love. It was an interesting experience playing with hardware synthesisers and drum machines; however Glasgow is more than thirty miles from where I live and, as such, is not exactly local. I am still considering whether or not I should become more involved with GLOSS.

Having said all that, I am still on the lookout for networking opportunities. There are plenty of them out there, especially on-line, but it is important to choose the right ones which fit your needs.

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It is well documented that, when Paul McCartney started working on the song “Yesterday”, he gave it the title “Scrambled Eggs”. According to some sources, “Yesterday” is most recorded song of all time. Would the same have applied if the song had kept its original title? I doubt it, and I strongly suspect that McCartney meant the original title to be both a working title or placeholder and a bit of a joke. In this and many other cases, the title forms the hook of the song, meaning that the song is easily recognised from its title.

What is the purpose of a song title? In most cases, it gives a first impression of the song and reveals the song’s theme. It needs to be memorable, but also easy to discover, e.g on a playlist, and able to connect with audiences, e.g. by evoking emotion or imagery.

Some song titles are clever plays on words, while others are commonly used phrases. The intention, in both cases, is that the name will stick in the mind of the listener. “Take Five”, a jazz instrumental by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, is named after a common phrase, used by musicians and others, meaning to take a short break from their work. It is also meant to draw attention to the fact that the piece is in the fairly unusual 5/4 time signature. Common phrases such as “Poker Face”, “I Should Be So Lucky” and “Who Do You Think You Are” have all found their way to the top of the charts. Songs, which are based on analogy, sometimes use the analogy to form the title. “From a Jack to a King” and “The Gambler” are songs about love and life, but use the analogy of a card game both in the lyrics and the title. Some titles, such as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Viva La Vida” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”, don’t even appear in the lyrics. Titles can be made memorable by shocking the listener, some of the Sex Pistols songs being good examples.

Creating titles for instrumentals needs a different focus. Sometimes the title is taken from a film or TV show where it appears, e.g. the Eastenders or Coronation Street themes. Otherwise, the mood of the piece is what usually leads to its title. I have already mentioned one instrumental, “Take Five”, where the title is a play on words but also helps to convey the mood. Titles such as “Side Saddle”, “Apache” and “Albatross” create mental images in the brain, and are appropriate for the music. Other criteria for creating titles include using the rhythm pattern of the instrumental hook to suggest a lyric, e.g. “Wonderful Land”. Indeed, some versions of ‘instrumentals’ such as “Zambesi”, “Mouldy Old Dough” and “One Step Beyond” feature a voice singing only the title of the song. Twenty-first century instrumental hits such as “Levels”, “Sandstorm” and “Animals” tend to have more subtle titles; however, the principle is the same.

Since I mainly write instrumental music, I am influenced by the concepts mentioned in the last paragraph. Some people recommend that you start with the title, but I find that doesn’t work for me. This means that I have to find a title after a fair proportion of the piece has already been written. This can be difficult and sometimes the final title is my second or third attempt. Indeed, I often ask mentors or friends if a certain title is appropriate.

My latest release, “Tempura Mutantur (Changing Times)”, uses the “Take Five” technique of having two meanings – the change in time signature from 6/8 to 4/4 and back, plus the fact that the style of the arrangement is from two very different eras. The piece on which I am currently working has no title as yet, but has the name “Trance 2” as a placeholder. In fact, “Song 2” by Blur was originally a working title! Choosing a better title for “Trance 2” is the number one item on my ‘To Do’ list.

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First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anyone who reads this. This year has been a busy one, although I managed to avoid the mayhem of releasing a 12-track CD, which I achieved last year.

For the first time, I was able to get two songs through to the Semi-Final stage of the UK Songwriting Contest and am still waiting to hear if either has been selected as a Finalist. The songs, “Classical Trance” and “Trance Mission”, are both entered in the Instrumental category and, as such, are up against opposition from classical, jazz, blues, orchestral and pop instrumentals, among others. For this reason, the Instrumental category is considered to be one of the most difficult to win. Becoming a Finalist is also considered to be very difficult in any category with less than two percent of songs making it through. I wasn’t aware of this in 2020 when “To Andromeda and Beyond” was a Finalist in the EDM category, which sadly doesn’t exist anymore.

“Trance Mission” also gave me my first track which was accepted on Beatport, which claims to be the world’s largest DJ store for electronic dance music, so that aspect of my journey appears to be going in the right direction. I am also in contact with other EDM producers in the Luke Bond group on the social media platform, Discord, where we exchange feedback on each other’s music.

I am currently working on an orchestral track, “Tempora Mutantur (Changing Times)”, which morphs into EDM and back in just over three minutes. The time signature changes from 6/8 to 4/4 and back and this represents a new direction for me. I have received some encouraging feedback for the piece on SongU, so hopefully you will like it when it is released, probably in January.

My aim for 2026 is to carry on with the EDM theme, probably in the Trance genre, but I want to include contributions from my ROLI Seaboard 2 keyboard, with its emphasis on MIDI Polyphonic Expression, and from my Kontakt 8 library, with particular emphasis on sampled orchestral instruments. That combination, which I believe to be unique, should give me something different on which to work. Watch this space.

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Creating electronic music requires that you are reasonably proficient in modern computing and technology. The use of DAWS (digital audio workstations), the requirements of a music studio, and even the necessary administrative tasks of registering, releasing and promoting your music online require a certain level of tech and computer knowledge.

In other posts, I mentioned that I worked previously in scientific and medical image and data analysis and used computers for implementing techniques like spectral analysis and early experiments with AI. All that was done, however, using specialist computers that used the UNIX operating system with the C/C++ programming language, and not the systems designed by Microsoft and Apple. It was therefore a bit of a learning curve understanding the ins and outs of various incarnations of the Windows operating system. I have friends and relatives who use Macs and swear by them, but it not something that I have ever considered – the price alone puts me off.

Getting the hang of the Windows system was one thing, but understanding audio software and plugins was quite another. I also like to make visuals to go with excerpts of the tracks (called shorts or reels depending on your preferred social media platform), so that involved learning the technology for photographs and videos. Even learning to distinguish between file extensions like vst, aax, au, ini, mp3, wav, jpeg, tiff, mp4, etc., may be easy for the youth of today but is a bit of a learning curve for older guys like me. Knowing what to do with them, when they don’t work in the way you want, is quite another story.

Then there is the hardware. Buying the correct cables (TRS or RCA, 1/4 inch or 1/8 inch, balanced or unbalanced) and the correct connectors (USB Types (A, B, C, Micro, Mini) And USB Versions (USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.2, 4)) can also be a bit of a nightmare, not to mention the bigger items such as speaker monitors, microphones, headphones, and audio interfaces. Even when you feel like you are getting on top of it, something odd happens which can take ages to fix, while getting a delivery of an item or buying one from a shop can be a nerve-racking experience, wondering if that, indeed, is what you actually need.

In the end it is quite gratifying when you get everything to work. Fortunately, there is online help in the shape of manufacturers’ help pages, user forums, social media specialist groups, Google, and even AI bots to provide you with the information you need. To be fair, it can be fun at times.

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After I graduated from Glasgow University in 1967, I moved to Edinburgh where I became an astronomer for three years and four months. I was a PhD student at Edinburgh University’s Astronomy Department which was based, not at the University itself, but in a section of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

In these days, the spectra of stars were obtained using a telescope linked to a diffraction grating which acted as a prism spreading the spectrum onto a photographic plate. The plate was analysed by having its density along the spectrum plotted on graph paper by a machine called a densitometer. Absorption lines, caused by elements in the star’s atmosphere, produced a dip in the graph which could be measured by drawing a line along the top of the recorded graph and counting the squares on the graph paper caused by the dip. From these values the abundance of elements in the star’s atmosphere could be estimated.

The densitometer was also capable of producing a paper tape of the graph’s values and this could be read by a computer, which, in those days, filled an entire room. My PhD supervisor realised that by using this method it was possible to compute the absorption line measurements. My project was to help him do this, apply the method to a real astronomical problem, and write a computer program to calculate the abundances of the elements from our measurements. By doing so, we were among the first globally to analyse spectra using a computer.

Over fifty years later, while I am still interested in astronomy, I have developed a keen interest in music composition and production. We now have computer software called a digital audio workstation (DAW), where we record audio or MIDI tracks on our PC or laptop for each vocal or instrument involved in the creation of a piece of music. We display these tracks as horizontal bands on a timeline and can also display the frequency spectra of the sound of each track at any point on that timeline. By manipulating these spectra, using a technique called equalisation (EQ), we can help separate the sounds of these vocals and instruments, so that they sit comfortable in the mix. Indeed, EQ is considered to be one of the most important factors in mixing a piece of recorded music.

As a music producer in my early eighties, I often get asked how an old guy like me manages to handle modern techniques like EQ. I find it quite a difficult question to answer without giving the history of my early life. Like many older people, I sometimes struggle with modern innovations like QR codes and robotic answer machines. Fortunately, for me and my passion for music production, EQ is not one of them.

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I have blogged in the past that tracks like “Levels” by Avicii and “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia started my EDM journey. These songs, however, appeared pretty late in my love of music.

Although I had liked a few songs in my childhood, I was fortunate that my adolescence coincided with the birth of rock’n’roll. The charts were full of songs by the likes of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. It was a great time to develop a serious interest in pop music.

I had started to learn to play the piano at the age of five, taught by my talented brother, Robert, and had managed to keep it going off and on. I had advanced to playing Mozart’s Sonatas and would often play these at after-school parties to the appreciation of the adults present. It was about this time that pianist Russ Conway burst onto the scene with UK number one hits “Side Saddle” and “Roulette” and a top five hit with “China Tea”. I quickly learned to play these – quite well, if I say it myself – and played them at the after-school parties. All of a sudden, there was considerable interest from some schoolgirls present and Mozart’s Sonatas were sadly a thing of the past.

My interest in pop music developed and I soon accrued a great selection of records which led to invitations to parties, which had now moved to the evenings and beyond. I had a particular liking for the Everly Brothers, Neil Sedaka and Del Shannon who were successful at the time. I particularly remember one party where I turned up with just one single to the dismay of the hostess. It was “Please Please Me”, which had just given the Beatles their first top ten hit. I told the assembled party-goers that it was the only record they were going to need.

My interest in pop music continued through the sixties with acts like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Hollies, Manfred Mann, the Yardbirds and the Turtles, and into the seventies. It peaked again in the eighties when, for seven years, I became a part-time DJ in Gosport, Hampshire. It was a pleasure playing records by Madness, ELO, David Bowie, Queen, the Police and Michael Jackson. I also enjoyed playing most of the New Romantic music. I spent a lot of time in the British Newspaper Library and on my Tandy TRS-80 computer compiling a database of the pop charts as used by the Guinness Book and was in discussions with the Official Charts Company when it formed.

The nineties saw me step away from DJ-ing and, although I still followed the music and kept the charts up-to-date, it wasn’t quite the same as before. That is, until I heard “Levels” by Avicii.

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In February 1963, when I was eighteen years old, I was invited to a party by a girl. I was used to getting invited to parties, not because of my good looks or outstanding personality, but because I had the best record collection in our group and could bring the music with me. On this occasion, I turned up at the party with only one record; it was “Please Please Me” by the Beatles. When I arrived at the party, the hostess looked disappointed that I had only brought one record but I announced that it was the only record that they were going to need.

This particular song had just entered the NME Top Ten and would go on to be a number one, although that fact is not recognised as the “official chart” uses the charts of a music newspaper that no one ever bought. It was not the Beatles first hit; “Love Me Do” had scraped into the Top Twenty but had largely passed everyone by.

So what was it about the Beatles, and “Please Please Me” in particular, that was so revolutionary? They lined up as a foursome with whoever was doing the lead in front, very much like Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The harmony style in the main chorus was very much taken from “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers; the change to falsetto and screeching “oohs” were similar to “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison and “Tower of Strength” by Frankie Vaughan; all previous number one hits in the early sixties. It was simply the fact that they took the best of what was around at the time, adding their own brand to create something which, as a whole, was both unique and original.

Even before the explosion of tribute bands that now exists, individual artists and groups unashamedly copied other artists and groups. Then we had impersonators, most notably of Elvis. Some of these enjoyed some success but none were lasting. So how much of the work of others should influence us and how much invention is needed in order to make an original brand.

“Standing on the shoulders of giants” is a phrase which has been used more than once to describe innovations in science and other disciplines. It is not problematic to use others as an influence but I would suggest that you need three things to call it your own brand. Firstly, let yourself be influenced by more than one artist or group. Combining attributes in this way, gives you a new take on what you produce. Secondly, you need some sort of inventive spark which makes you different. Finally, you need to develop your style with time in new directions. Most household names in the music industry have followed these steps.

The combination of influences, originality and development is the takeaway message for today. It’s far from easy, but realistically it’s the only way to get to and stay at the top.