The bits that never make the socials.
Real conversations with working musicians. No highlight reel, no careers-advice seminar, just what actually happened.
Why we're making it
The industry is good at teaching people to play and teaches them almost nothing about how to survive doing it. The money, the body, the head, the admin. All of it gets worked out alone, and usually the hard way.
That is the whole reason this exists. The long version, including the parts that are uncomfortable to write down, is on the Why page.
Why we're building this, and the film →
How it works
Every interview gets filmed once and cut three ways. The full conversation if you want the whole thing. Short clips by theme if you just want the bit about tax returns or bad backs. And straight evidence for students and teachers, so the next lot don't have to find this stuff out the hard way.
Same eight themes every time, so no two stories match but they're all answering the same blunt questions.
Who it's for
Working musicians navigating this world right now. Students and anyone weighing up whether to make music their career. Teachers and parents advising them. And anyone who's just curious what the job actually looks like once you scrape the highlight reel off it.
Two people who've lived it.
Short version: the industry's great at teaching you to play and useless at teaching you how to survive playing. Talking Notes is Nick's answer to that gap. True to the person behind the instrument, not the poster.
Read Nick's full story →Nick Robinson
Nick has spent thirty years as a working guitarist and musical director, playing across the UK, Europe and the Middle East. He has played for Gabrielle and Nelly Furtado, supported Motörhead and Saxon with his own band, and written music heard on the BBC and Netflix.
He ran a function band and founded a national live-entertainment agency he led for twenty-five years, then co-led one of London's busiest state school music departments in Tower Hamlets for fifteen years, and more recently ran operations for a national music charity working with adults with learning disabilities.
Player, bandleader, writer, agent, teacher, department head. He has seen this industry from every side it has, which is exactly why the project exists.
Adam Hollier
Adam is a photographer, videographer and author with over 20 years behind the lens. A former newspaper editor turned commercial and editorial photographer, he now runs a busy visual-storytelling practice in Hertfordshire, and shoots and edits the films.
His journalist's eye for the unguarded, decisive moment is why every interview looks and feels the way it does.
Away from the camera, Adam is a serious guitar enthusiast who spends most of his spare time playing, whether in bands with friends or in the Pepper Show, a yearly charity rock show in Hertfordshire.
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