I have a friend called Jamie.
No, not me. A different Jamie. I realize that’s confusing. This is like that time in school when there were two boys named Timothy and the teacher tried calling one of them “Timothy 2” to differentiate, and he immediately burst into tears.
Anyway, Jamie (not me) is a walking, talking, possibly slightly cursed encyclopedia of music knowledge. I don’t mean he “likes music.” Everyone likes music. Even people who say things like “I mostly just listen to podcasts about concrete.”
No, I mean Jamie knows everything about music. Like, not in a normal-human way. In a “he might be a time traveler who went back and personally attended every key moment in music history” kind of way.
He’ll casually say things like:
“Oh yeah, the Roland TR-909 was crucial to the development of Chicago house, but it’s often misunderstood in terms of its swing timing. Also, did you know that when Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he was actually using a borrowed Stratocaster that later ended up in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next to Keith Moon’s dental records?”
WHAT?
Meanwhile, I’m sitting there thinking:
“Is it the red cable or the blue one that makes my amp stop screaming?”
Now here’s the twist: I also love music. I play guitar for at least an hour a day. I’ve done this since I was fifteen. I have keyboards. I own actual analog synths, the kind that hum when you turn them on and possibly trigger a local weather event.
I create stuff all the time. Songs, loops, weird little noises that scare the cats. And yes, I do investigate, but only when it feeds something I’m trying to build or figure out. I go deep when the inspiration strikes, when a sound or tool sparks something. But I’m not out here memorizing which mixing desk Brian Eno preferred during his ambient glacier phase just for trivia points.
I’m not against knowledge. I just don’t collect it for its own sake. My brain’s wired for momentum:
“IDEA → DO IT → DONE → NEXT IDEA.”
If the rabbit hole helps me build, I’m in. But if it’s just a rabbit lecture about boutique preamps, I’m already two ideas ahead.
I don’t read the manual. I don’t care how the sausage is made. I want to eat the sausage, possibly while also playing the intro riff to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for the 400th time, but this time with more feeling.
My wife says I’m not very detailed. And that’s true. I once built an IKEA shelf that somehow collapsed sideways. But this is how I’m wired. I move fast. I create fast. Sometimes I finish things before I fully know what they are. Like this blog post. Which, to be clear, I wasn’t even planning to write — it just hijacked my brain and interrupted my breakfast.
And this brings me back to Jamie (still not me).
He doesn’t make music. He doesn’t write, produce, or play. But he’s absolutely passionate about it. He could explain to you why trance became trance, why jungle isn’t drum & bass (unless it is), and what obscure German label was secretly behind 40% of the ambient techno movement in 1997.
It made me wonder:
Is there a split between creators and researchers?
Jamie absorbs information. I hurl it into the void and see what sticks. He explores. I build. He’s a patient historian. I’m a caffeinated raccoon with a DAW.
Sometimes I feel lazy next to him. Like, am I a fraud for not knowing the exact filter chip used in a Juno-106? Am I just some musical gremlin poking buttons with no clue what any of them do?
But then I remind myself: I make stuff. I share stuff. I live in the mess of it all. I watched an hour-long interview with the Radiohead guitarist — Ed O’Brien — and it’s clear that this is how Radiohead developed: through experimentation, risk-taking, and chasing sounds into weird corners. Creativity lives in the margins.
So maybe we need both types.
The explorers, and the builders.
The map-makers, and the maniacs who run off into the jungle with a guitar and a sandwich.
And if one of them is named Jamie, that’s just a bonus.
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