Music has to be more than drums and bass

From prog rock to hypnotherapy

I started out as a free-flowing guitar player in the heyday of progressive and folk rock – fortunate to witness probably the best and most inspired lead guitarists of all time.

Watching the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Any Powell, Ted Turner, Peter Green and many, many more at an early age can’t harm your chances of becoming a good player if you have it in you… we 60s kids were so lucky! Our music is still at the centre of entertainment, some 60 years on.

From those beginnings, I then made my way through blues rock, once more tutored by watching maestros such as Roy Buchanan, Gary Moore, Walter Trout and latterly, the excellent Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

But Sandy Denny, Jonathan Kelly John Martyn and the great folk/rock artists were always on my radar, and the hundreds of songs I have written over the years probably draw mostly from that genre – allied to some very fast lead guitar!

I built my own 16-track studio in the 1980s, at a cost of some £20,000 (!) … and traded it all in for a 486 base unit a decade later, as computers strode into the audio world.

These days I am able to record my stuff in a tiny space, using a Windows PC, Ableton Live and an M-Audio project mix – the computer has given everyone the oportunity to explore whatever musical talent they have.

However, I am sorry to see this technology being abused in the making mainstream music whose focus is on sounds rather than melody – with drums, bass and shouted words replacing tunes. Maybe the Big Wheel will turn again…

These days, my musical offerings range from ballads and rock songs to classical and even hypnotherapy instrumentals; but always with the accent on musicality. I hope you enjoy this site.