People don’t choose what their next idea will be. If you go fishing in the steam of musical ideas, what you catch is what you catch, even if it’s not what you were hoping to catch. You don’t earn it, you can’t buy it; you can’t sign up for a subscription called ‘next idea monthly.’

 

For reasons unknown to him, Ready Ward sometimes hears music in his head that he’s never heard before. Sometimes the idea is fresh and exciting. Other times, he doesn’t like the idea enough to develop it. Many times, it happens when he’s busy doing something else and has no chance to stop and document the idea; too many ideas have been lost that way. Some ideas are persistent enough to demand documentation. All of the songs on this album are of that variety.

 

In Ready’s opinion, music should move you in some way. He is moved by melody, harmony, and screaming lead guitar. He’s moved by lyrics and neon-against-black sonic color.

 

Music technology continues to evolve. For hundreds of years, composing meant learning music notation so you could write scores for musicians to play for an audience, then, in the 20th century, for microphones. With the onslaught of digital music, that chore has been reduced to writing the music into a computer and having it play back as you write more over the top of it. Then you hand it off to your guitarist buddy, who spends his hours at his own studio trying parts and practicing them until he’s satisfied. The collaborators meet to exchange flash drives and talk about what’s next, then go their separate ways. A singer or two stops over, and you have all the tracks. It’s becoming quite close to the ‘brainwave to audio’ translation device that Ready wishes he’d been born with.

 

The result of the out-of-the-blue ideas, his personal preferences, and the current state of music technology: this album. If he’d recorded these 10 years ago, they’d be quite different. If he recorded them next year, they’d be different. It’s like a bottle of wine; the flavor is only potential until the moment you consume the bottle. It would have tasted different if you’d opened it a year before, or a year later.

 

I love the flavor of Robbed!, it was opened on exactly the right day for my tastes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

 

—Robert Edwards (the producer)