Thank You!
For preordering Music Is the Answer — and for trusting a bit of your time to a book about something I care about deeply: how music can genuinely change how we feel.
Below you'll find everything that comes with your preorder — the bonus chapter, free listening sessions, your Music Reset Map, and a first look at the ideas inside the book. I hope it helps you feel a little calmer, a little more focused, and a little more you.
With thanks,
Rob
Bonus Chapter
Read the Bonus Chapter
How to Build a Personal Wellbeing Soundtrack
Free for preorder readers
Get early access to this bonus chapter — practical, actionable ways to build a soundtrack that supports how you want to feel, before the book lands in shops.
MITA Live
Join Rob for MITA Live
A live guided listening session over Zoom
Friday 4 September, 11:00am (UK time)
As a thank-you for preordering, join Rob for a live guided listening session — an experience you can drop into wherever you are.
Music Reset Map
Get Your Music Reset Map
A one-page guide to matching music to your mood
Free for preorder readers
Download your Music Reset Map — a simple visual guide to choosing the right music for exactly how you're feeling right now.
Guided Listening Sessions
Before you choose a session, start here.
This is an introduction to Guided Listening — not a destination state, but a doorway into how these sessions work and why they're built the way they are. You'll learn the sonic language that runs through every session: the cues that signal landing, transition, and arrival. You'll hear how music can meet you exactly where you are — even somewhere uncomfortable — before it begins to shift you toward something else.
It's not a quick instruction manual. It's a short listening journey in its own right, and a fitting place to begin.
You don't need to be calm. You just need to arrive.
Present is the first Shift in the MITA Guided Listening library — and the right place to start if you've never done this before. It meets you wherever you are: scattered, surface-level, mid-thought. No preparation required.
Over five to seven minutes, the music and Rob's voice guide you from the noise of wherever you've just been to a quieter, more grounded place. Not forced stillness — just presence. A reliable reset before whatever comes next.
This is the method in its simplest form. Try it once to understand how Guided Listening works. Try it again to feel what a consistent practice starts to build.
Your mind is full. This clears it.
This Shift was designed for the moments before deep work or creative thinking — when there's too much going on and not enough of you available to concentrate. It doesn't ask you to ignore the busyness. It starts there.
Over eight minutes, the music mirrors the feeling of a scattered mind before gradually simplifying, submerging, and arriving somewhere clear and still. By the end, the shift has happened. What you do with that state — and what you listen to while you work — is yours.
Focus for Deep Work is a threshold experience, not a background track. It moves you to the door. You walk through it.
More…
Spread the Word
Download the card, share it to your feed or story, and tell us why in your own words.
Need a starting point? Try:
"Music is the answer for me because it's the first thing I reach for when..."
"Music is the answer for me because it got me through..."
"Music is the answer for me because it's the only thing that..."
Please tag @robstephenson (LinkedIn) or @robstephenson.music (IG) so we can find your post.
Bonus Playlist
Listen to the Playlist
Overstimulated to Grounded
Free for preorder readers
This playlist follows the arc of the bonus chapter — from noise and overstimulation into something calmer, track by track. Play it start to finish, or dip in wherever you need it.
Personally, we’re big fans of the sequence from The XX, Radiohead, Olafur Arnalds and Brian Eno.