This site is used to host music that I write, perform and record purely for my own enjoyment. The music is free to listen and download, and I am always interested in collaborations with other performers, the products of which are also shared here. This is in no way meant to be professional music, it is my hobby, something I do for fun and to relax, and I enjoy sharing it and if other people enjoy it as well so much the better. Comments are welcome on posts, abuse and mockery as much as appreciation and flattery.
This page was last Updated on the the 16th December 2024 – it’s important you know that, because sometimes this page goes for years without an update, and some of the information is embarrassingly out of date!
I am a late 40 early 50’s something middle aged guitarist, who’s been playing since I was pretty young and who can dabble mostly competently with a keyboard and bass guitar as well. My career in IT is unavoidably one of the skills that’s most helped in being able to record my music reasonably competently. I live in East London in the UK with my wife Sandra, and I have three grownup children. I work in the IT Services industry, so music is my way of kicking back and being creative to get away from all that. I love to travel, enjoy live music, a beer and good food (too much of it).
The style of music I always think is best described as “Progressive Rock”, but it has influences from Metal, Pop, Jazz and Blues bands in it. I love complex, melodic music played with instruments of many modern types really, and my favourite artists are very rock/metal orientated and include the likes of Dream Theater, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Iron Maiden, The Quireboys, The Foo Fighters, The Struts etc – so yeah, in 2024, we are talking Dad Rock. Without exception all my music is instrumental, I have no singing voice. I try to make the compositions interesting with multiple melody lines from the Guitars rather than a vocal. That said, a few folks have picked up my compositions and done some collaborations over the years, and you’ll find both instrumental and then vocal-on-top versions of a couple of pieces.
My main instruments are a 2006 Gibson Les Paul Standard, an ESP Volcano Mk 2 ) and my most recent addition a Gretsch G5420. Amongst far too many other guitars which I also own, there is a Fender semi-accoustic, an Epiphone Les Paul Copy, a Vintage PRS Copy, a Fender Strat (American), and the Gretsch G5420 and a Yamaha Bass.
Today, I record songs using Logic Studio Pro on a 2024 Mac Mini M2 Pro, though up until 2011, GarageBand was my DSW of choice. Many of the songs here pre 2018 were recorded using a Digitech Digital Effects Floor unit, DI’d directly into Logic, though I’d commonly also have a Marshall JCM800/4×12 mike’d up for a more authentic tone when I felt like it up until 2018 when it left for Amp Simulation Technology. Until late 2024 I nearly direct injected everything from the amp and used Komplete’s Guitar Rig 5/6/7 on the Mac to manage the tone. I have a beautiful Hughes and Kettner Grand Master Deluxe 40 which is just about the best amp I have ever heard. But as of my latest collection of songs, I’ve invested into Neural DSP’s Plugins and boy, do they rock – specifically I have John Petrucci’s Archetype and more recently, and most relevant to my desired sound I think, Archetype Nolly X.
Nearly all my songs are multi-tracked and exclusively performed by myself – only instrumental exception is percussion, where the drums are either programmed or constructed using Sound Loops which I’ve collected from all over the place through the years I have a Beringer sound mixing board and mix and master all the recordings within Logic Pro itself.
I’ve recorded almost twenty complete ‘albums’ (collections of circa 10 instrumental pieces usually with some kind of guiding theme) in the last 10 years, which are complete productions, save vocals and regardless of their shortcomings, I am really quite proud of some of them. I usually include one “cover” version of favourite song by popular bands in every collection, and they are all also available to listen and download here (see Cover This…). I’ve sold a few songs via music publishing sites for various uses including a Community TV Station in the US, a Games publisher in France, and a young British Rock Band who wanted to use one as the basis for a complete song (and never heard what happened to it since…).
Feel free to have a listen, leave any comments you like, share or just ignore my music, all welcome.
For the technically minded, this website is hosted on AWS/Lightsail using the bitnami WordPress containers. It was cheap, easy and reliable and as my entire job is selling Cloud….felt I should use it.
I hope it’s easy enough to navigate, all the “Albums” listed above should lead you to a page with a collection of songs which you can play directly from the site and/or download if you so wish.