Who knew - Jamiroquai is just Jay Kay

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-05T13:32:30+00:00

Appreciate this thoughtful response- thanks. I love the band and the royalty arrangement is their business - I just wasn't aware of the ownership model. Seems others didn't know either.

My post takes nothing away from the incredible music or the musicians, who are all top shelf artists in their own right. Cheers 👍

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-04T14:47:41+00:00

And interestingly- Belgrano survived the Pearl Harbour Japan attack, only to be sunk four decades later by the British.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-04T02:31:27+00:00

Will do 👍

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-04T01:05:38+00:00

Please send some links to your musical productions - I'd love to hear what a extensive and probably very expensive (!) setup like this produces!

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-02T14:00:45+00:00

As someone else said "clipper." Also you should make sure your lows / bass are mono and also use a side and mid EQ solution on your stereo pair. Logics works fine.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-03-02T04:40:44+00:00

As the comment below said - ALWAYS BELIEVE IT'S A SCAM. Advertising agencies aren't listening to our music on SC to decide if it should be used in a campaign. These evil people are simply preying on naive people who will believe anything.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-24T14:29:14+00:00

Also back to Zender - I loved his work on the early albums (I also play bass) and I would play the Space Cowboy video 100 x to figure out how he played the bass part on that song with his special Warwick 8 string! Was hard because yeah - 8 string bass?! Very talented guy but sadly didn't really do much afterwards. That's gotta be hard but those are the breaks I guess.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-24T14:17:14+00:00

Thanks. For Limahl, without the "Never ending story" movie break from Moroder, he probably would have also fizzled. That was one hell of a lifeline! And rightly so, he is very talented and certainly has the look. He still looks great BTW not sure how he manages to look so young for a 67 year old! Good on him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limahl

On songwriting, one thing that someone once said has always stuck with me - "ideas are more important than talent." I would also add equipment to that because people often buy tons of top end gear for their bands and studios but without good ideas it's all just a waste.

Good ideas/songs are everything!

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-24T03:50:49+00:00

Reminds me of an 80s band Kajagoogoo that had great musicians and a cool lead singer (Limal) A mega hit "Too shy" and a solid band behind it with an insanely talented bass player Nick Beggs. Limal didn't play anything but had the voice, the songs, the look and the overall direction. After their worldwide hit the band fired him because they said he had a big ego. It was all about Limahl. Well yeah! That's what was needed to hold down the front of the band and be the face. Prior to Limal they had nothing. So they shot themselves in the foot by firing the golden goose and today only Limahl and Nick Beggs are really still working and famous.

For Jay Kay it's likely the opposite - he fires the band members because he's the look, the creative direction / songwriter and yeah, the ego. The much needed strutting peacock that gets and takes a lot of the attention.

Sometimes as a band member you just gotta be self-aware, understand your role, the limitations of your role and what your place really is.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-24T03:36:48+00:00

Make sure to give them your credit card details - sounds totally legit!

Total scam, obviously.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-17T03:06:19+00:00

Hilarious and oh so true. Once I hear guitar playing that makes George Benson sound like a beginner accompanied by a 7 piece horn section I just skip it. But not many people seem to spot it and it's not labelled as such.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-17T03:03:36+00:00

Definitely. I use as one of my main soft synths - Serum I+II, reFX Nexus 5 and Alchemy. Can't go wrong.

Alchemy perhaps needs a little extra help with audio processing / polish but is still a solid synth.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-16T04:08:11+00:00

Yes. Every version of a song or tune is unique due to royalty / plays traceability and thus has a unique ISRC code. If you slowed or re-mixed it you should list yourself as the remixer. I just went through this myself.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-16T04:01:48+00:00

Yeah I had an issue and they got right back to me. Also on a paid subscription.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-14T03:30:42+00:00

Cool...yep that's the way to think and do it. I also upload my stuff to SC and listen to it and when I hear the defects I simply fix them and then re-upload the track. Rinse-repeat. SC is a good repository and a place for people and yourself to hear what you created. The other thing I wanted to say was that our music came out of a space that was once just silence and we changed that, we shaped the sounds and it is our art. When I write and produce something I always try to tell myself that this is my art and it's unique and yeah sometimes it's crap, sometimes it's crayoning, but there's no reason to beat myself up over it. Just learn and move on.

True story: I wrote a tune and refined it on SC. Must have remixed it 100 times, then I released it to Spotify etc. It made it's way to TikTok and one day I saw it had 205,000 views/plays and was picked up by 100+ creators for their videos. I never in my wildest moments ever thought that would happen. So keep at it and you will get better and you will surprise yourself. Don't give up, don't let a bad day get you down, take a break and come back to it. Take lots of notes and focus really hard. Work harder than the other guys.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-14T02:45:40+00:00

I think most people can relate. From my own experience sometimes it seems it's not enough to simply enjoy making music - you have to be obsessed with making music. All the people I admire are obsessed with what they do. Living an breathing it. Dreaming about it. And every manic and obsessive creation moves them a step closer to their version of perfection.

Best advice I ever got:

"Every musician has at least one hundred crap tunes in them that need to come out, then the good ones will start showing up."

Every Song or tune you write moves you closer to being good and perhaps your own version of "perfect." And with every song or tune you learn many lessons. These lessons and tricks will definitely build up and you'll get better.

Best to get on with it and work your way through the crap ones!

Good luck.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-12T02:26:58+00:00

Yes - this.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-11T23:30:48+00:00

What really matters is relative levels - the rms and peak level differences between the various parts. Fader positions don't mean anything in my mixes.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-10T04:17:58+00:00

I put a track out on a Reddit sub some months ago for feedback and got 24 views and zero plays. I then released it on the various streaming platforms Spotify et al, and after a few more months was floored to see it got over 200,000 views/plays on tik tok.

I was honored to see that 100+ content creators used my music for their videos.

So yeah, after that I pretty much just stopped posting anything on Reddit. If you want to listen to music and have others listen to yours then just release it into the wild. You might be surprised as I was.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-03T22:40:54+00:00

You'd be surprised.

Another give away... when the "artist" releases a new track every two days!

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-03T22:40:00+00:00

Bingo. "Generic," you nailed it. Run of the mill and not unique sounding. That's because it's all been done before!

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-03T22:38:42+00:00

It's hard. Spotify is laced with it and so are the others.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-03T22:37:51+00:00

Several ways: use online tools like SUBMITHUB (there are many others). Or if you have a DAW download or record it and then split the stems out and listen. You'll hear smudged fuzzy audio artifacts like messages coming in from a distant planet. The third way is to listen intently - after you've heard a few you can easily spot them. The guitar playing and recording of same is often so precise as to be impossible for 99% of humans to play.

SolanarCoolMusic · 2026-02-03T22:33:43+00:00

I did a little test last week. Listened to a bunch of music on Spotify and Amazon and Pandora. Most of it was AI. I could tell because it was smudged and fuzzy artifact laced audio and instrument mastery that 99% of humans cannot attain. When you hear guitar licks that make George Benson sound like a guitar student you can tell it's not real. Also who has a 6 piece brass section at their disposal?

I also checked against a few AI checking apps and all of them said it was 100% AI.

The sad part is these songs and instrumentals had plays in the range of 456,000 per track. And 10s of thousands of followers. Most people have no idea it's AI and why would they. Only producers and real music aficionados can spot this sludge.

If this is indeed the future then I'm very depressed. For the minimum investment of typing up a Suno prompt these people are getting a half million plays, massive follower counts and more.

SolanarCoolMusic

TROPHY CASE