Neil brand’s new series (16 January), looks at the changing relationship between technology and popular music. He is an excellent musician. Nobody is better at sitting at a piano and explaining how music works, but he didn’t do much of that. He told us that the blues tend to have three chords, but he didn’t explain how they were related; he told us that Irving Berlin mainly played the black notes, but didn’t mention the pentatonic scale; and he told us that “Cheek to Cheek” has a syncopated section, but he didn’t say what syncopated meant. This was a pity, but it was probably deliberate. There have been lots of programmes where trained musicians explain – or explain away – pop music. Brand, who can certainly do that, is doing something