🧠 2025 wrapped: harmony, babies, and broken teeth

Hey music makers!

As we wrap up 2025, I wanted to do something different this week.

Instead of breaking down progressions or teaching harmony concepts, I'm sharing the newsletters you loved most, a quick personal update, and what's coming in 2026.

Let's look back before we look forward.

Based on your opens, replies, and poll votes, here are the issues that hit hardest:

1. The 4-phase system I used under pressure
With a looming deadline, live musicians expecting payment and a day to record 3 songs. This is the framework that kept me from dropping the ball when everything mattered.

You loved it because it gave you a repeatable process for analyzing songs under real-world constraints. Not theory for theory's sake.

2. The missing piece in your music process
It's not more practice. It's the system around practice that makes progress compound instead of reset.

This one resonated because it named what you were already feeling: practice without structure is just hoping things stick.

3. Tired of forgetting progressions you just learned?
Letter names tell you what to play. Numbers tell you why it works.

You told me this finally gave you language for the patterns you'd been hearing but couldn't explain. That's exactly what it's for.

4. I cracked a tooth making music
While experiencing the worse around the clock pain I can remember, I asked myself what's the lesson here? The answer surprised me.

This got the most replies all year. Turns out vulnerability about stress, pressure, and losing your way hits deeper than another progression breakdown.

5. Where progressions land matters more than the chords
My student's question revealed the confusion tripping up many self-taught musicians for years. Cadences are a powerful emotional tool.

You appreciated this because it solved a specific confusion fast. It brought lots of clarity.

2025 was the year I launched Harmony GPS.

Private beta in July. Full launch during Black Friday in November.

But what most of you may not know is that I launched this while welcoming my third son, helping my wife with her hardest round of postpartum recovery, and surviving several weeks of extreme head pain from a cracked tooth and nerves going absolutely haywire.

62 lessons plus bonus resources.

Filming, editing, rewriting. Tech issues that made me want to throw my laptop.

And the daily work of helping people understand what I'd built. All while navigating sleep deprivation, household duties, health scares, and having a newborn at home for the first six months.

I'm not saying any of this to complain.

I'm saying it because it proves something I teach:

Busy adults can still find time to be creative, learn, and grow in music. The systems make it possible. They let us move toward our goals daily, even when life is chaotic.

And the reception from many of you made this launch the most rewarding part of my year (second to my son being born 😉).

It's this kind of feedback that keeps me going:

Brian E., one of my students, wrote:

He went on:

Roger P., another student, shared this:

That's the moment I built this for. When someone finally stops spinning their wheels and starts building momentum.

In other news:

YouTube grew by 10.8K subscribers and half a million views this year. The channel's becoming a real resource for self-taught musicians who want clarity and growth systems.

I also created the Harmony Retention Profile Assessment this year.

It's a free diagnostic tool that helps you figure out exactly where your musical memory is leaking. Whether it's retention, application, confidence, or practice design, the assessment shows you what to fix first.

Thank you for being here! For reading, replying, and trusting me with your creative journey.

2025 taught me that the best teaching doesn't come from having all the answers. It comes from being willing to share the messy, real process of figuring things out.

Here's to more clarity, more confidence, and more music in 2026.

P.S. If you missed these in 2025 and want to dive deeper: