About me and Music

Since I was a child I have had a fascination with sound. Likely due to hearing problems and surgery at a young age, I have an auditory processing disorder, which I think prevented me from latching on to song lyrics, so instead, I became fascinated with the overall timbres that work together to form what we might whimsically call ‘music’. This included singers, just not necessarily the lyrical content. To that end, I most enjoyed singers with an interesting tone rather than a technically perfect one, or even accurate pitch for that matter.  

As a child, a teacher introduced music listening as a thing starting with electronic music such as Isao Tomita’s Footprints in the Snow, classical stuff such as Holst’s Planet Suite, and the likes of Tubular Bells. I had been hooked on Vocoder sounds since Sparky’s Magic Piano, and now I heard timbre as an intentional thing, beyond traditional instruments. I started making my own ‘sounds’ around this time, and I do mean sounds, not songwriting or anything more grandiose. I used a short-wave radio on our Radiogram to make alien-type noises. I would record people on TV and edit them together on a cassette recorder to make them say funny things (a la Cassette Boy who didn’t come on the scene for decades to come). For reference, this was when I was around 8 or 9 years old (late 1970’s). From there I started playing keyboards and singing, eventually studying the piano and music theory for a few years.

Fast forward through years of gigging in all kinds of forms (band frontman, keyboards, bass, percussion, harmonica, synths, and even solo piano in restaurants), as well as an awful lot of music made and lost, with a track which reached 1 million downloads on MP3.com before it closed down (music is now lost), and many more successful in online charts like BT’s GetOutThere website, I returned to University in 2003 to study Creative Music Technology (Technical Route), achieving a 2:1. As an antidote from all the Stockhausen et al, outside of my studies, I focussed on my piano playing. During my degree I took Jazz Piano lessons, and after graduating, I took a break from musical production to any serious end, and gigged with singers, ran open mic nights, and played the piano anywhere who wanted me.

Due to Rheumatoid Arthritis, gigging (especially carrying a very heavy Korg piano) became difficult and in 2018 I started building up my studio setup again, selling off some collectable kit to raise funds and clear space, and using YouTube tutorials I set about building DIY eurorack modules and sound-toys. I even succeeded at SMD soldering, although I am not sure I am in a rush to do that again!

Music is a hobby, an outlet, and a therapy for me, but I don’t release that much at the moment. Instead of just dropping a tune on a SoundCloud occasionally, this page hopes to share info relating to my music-adjacent projects, including but hopefully not limited to, Arduino’s, Max/MSP, and Jitter. I will collate some old music soon and make that available.

In the meantime, stay creative, and keep safe, wherever you are.