The first time I played "The Machine" in public was at my brother William's exhibition in Manhattan. The gallery was full of art-world people. Collectors. Critics. Curators, Artists. People who know what they like and aren't afraid to tell you.

I had spent weeks preparing. I knew the sequences inside out. I had rehearsed the transitions. I had a mental map of every knob, every button, every possible branch the machine could take.

And none of it mattered.

The moment I sat down, my hands felt foreign. The knobs seemed smaller. The LEDs seemed brighter. The silence in the room before I played the first note was deafening.

I remember thinking: *What if it doesn't work? What if it glitches? What if it does something embarrassing? What if I've spent a lot of time building something that sounds terrible to anyone but me? What if it Crashes!*

Here's the thing about building a machine yourself. You know every flaw. Every compromise. Every line of code that you're not quite proud of. Every solder joint that might fail. Every algorithm that you think could be *just a little bit better*.

You carry the weight of all those imperfections with you.

And when you're in public, you project that weight onto the audience. You assume they can see the flaws. You assume they're judging the machine, and you along with it.

But here's what I've learned.

"The audience doesn't know what you know"

They don't see the messy code. They don't see the hours of debugging. They don't see the many prototypes or the moments when you wanted to throw the whole thing out the window.

They just hear the music.

There's a phrase I've come to use for this phenomenon: "the sonic divorce".

It's the moment when your perception of the music separates from the audience's perception.

You hear:

• "That transition was too abrupt"
• "That note was a bit off"
• "I should have tweaked that parameter before we started"

The audience hears:

• *Wow, that's beautiful"
• *How is it doing that"
• "I've never heard anything like it"

This sonic divorce is both a curse and a blessing. It's a curse because it means you can never fully experience your own creation the way an audience does. You're always too close to it, too aware of its mechanics.

But it's also a blessing. Because it means that something you thought was imperfect can actually be perfect to someone else.

The London Synth and Pedal Expo 2026 was a turning point for me.

I had set up two prototype TMA Devices on a small table in a busy room. Even though this was a strictly headphone only event, It was still loud with the buzz of the many visitors. People were everywhere. I was a little tired from the travel, worried about the power supply, and convinced that the machine wasn't sounding its best.

Then people started arriving at my stand.

They listened. They smiled. They asked questions. Some of them stayed for twenty minutes, just watching the LEDs blink and listening to the patterns unfold. For those that took the time to try the TMA device using the connected keyboards, their moments of realisation were visible.

One person said, "This is the most musical thing I've heard here today."

Another said, "I've been looking for something like this for years."

One of the standout moments for me was when a fellow producer, having spent a few short minutes playing with the TMA Device while standing and talking with me, pulled out his phone and excitedly called one of his collaborators in Berlin and declared "Marvin! It's me - your cousin! You know that new sound you have been searching for?"

And I realised something:

They weren't hearing what I was hearing. They weren't hearing the compromises or the imperfections. They were just hearing The TMA Device play, and in turn playing with it and guiding it in their own way. People got it!

The most encouraging interactions were seeing children with their parents discover The TMA Device. The kids would immediately start following the lights, they got it. Their smiles in turn made their parents smile. What a wonderful thing!

Here's my conclusion.

Playing a prototype live is terrifying because it exposes you. It reveals your doubts, your insecurities, and your fears. It forces you to stand behind your work in a way that no YouTube video or soundcloud clip ever can.

But that exposure is also the most important thing you can do for your work.

Because that's where the connection happens.

The audience doesn't just hear the machine. They see you interacting with it. They see the moment when you smile because the machine did something unexpected. They see you lean in, turn a knob, and change the direction of the music.

It's a collaboration. And it's visible.

If I could ask the TMA-1 itself about this, and have it reply in the way an AI chatbot does, I suspect it might say something like this:

"I don't know about fear. I just know about patterns. You feed me a rule, I generate a sequence. You turn a knob, I change my response. It's simple, really.

But I do know this: when you sit down and play me, you're never alone. You're bringing your whole history with you. Your teenage rave days. Your alpine escapes. Your years of code. Your joy, your frustration, your hope.

And when you share that with an audience, they feel it."

I still get nervous before every public demonstration.

But I've learned to reframe that nervousness. It's not fear of failure. It's excitement about connection. It's anticipation of the moment when someone hears the TMA-1 for the first time and their face lights up. And as it has matured, it no longer crashes. It's easier to use.

The Machine Sings.

And the audience listens.

That's enough.

— Onwards.

A Note for Other Creators

If you're building something—anything—and you're terrified to share it, here's my advice:

Do it anyway.

Play it live. Show it to strangers. Let it fail spectacularly, if that's what happens.

Because the alternative—keeping it hidden, waiting until it's "perfect"—is a slower death. Perfect doesn't exist. But connection does.

And that's what makes all the fear worth it.