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Musical start
Life started with my father teaching me how
to play classical piano. Soon, and much to
his disappointment, I developed the
inevitable love for rock music, favouring
the more intelligent stuff like Genesis,
Yes, Pink Floyd etc. This in turn took me
into rock bands, playing around the country
in the 1970s.
Recording Studio and
Commissions
When music technology started to become
affordable, I gave up all the live stuff
and started to build my in-house studio as
I had always loved composing. As this grew,
I picked up commissions for a few BBC
Radio 5, and World Service
signature tunes and backgrounds etc. I even
wrote and recorded music for most of the
in-flight travelogues used by
AIR2000 when they were around.
Intentions during the
1980s
Back in the 1980s, I had a great love for
writing warm and mellow musical pieces that
could maybe just draw the listener away
from the stresses of life and warm their
hearts a little. However in those days
complementary therapies were in their
infancy in Scotland and there was less
demand for this kind of music.
Linking with a close friend
and writing for the therapy
market
In the mid-2000s, a close friend of mine
had trained and qualified in the key
disciplines of Holistic Therapy and had
established an enviable client base working
from her purpose-built facility in
Ayrshire.
A chance meeting one evening prompted
discussion about Lyn's success and my
previously unwanted musical ideas and
sparked a notion that led me back to my
recording studio to try some ideas to suit
the now growing demand for music in the
therapy world.
The
Aqueous project
In the Spring of 2008, 7 months of work in
the studio drew to a close and a dozen or
so tracks had been honed down to the best 7
and a preview 62-minute (so as to cover
a typical one hour treatment
uninterrupted) CD was circulated
to a handful of local therapists for
assessment.
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The feedback from my chosen therapists
was quite flattering!
Of course I've since gone on to
produce a second album, Adrift (which you can
find out more about in these pages)
having similar 'helping' intentions as Aqueous -
and the feedback on this is also very encouraging.
Future
plans
I still find myself quite bemused by the
consistently positive feedback I have
received up and down the country from Aqueous and now Adrift.
The plan for my next project is something more of a gentle, new age style
collection with more in the way of
ethnic/celtic melody, stepping away from
the apparent restrictions of therapeutic
treatment music.
Footnote on Live
Performances
On the performance front, I occasionally do
a few ad-hoc sessions in quiet pubs, and
parties, etc with another acoustic
guitarist and a few friends... just nice,
quiet and effective music for listening
to.
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