Hi there - welcome to my very quiet and generally ignored corner of the web!
My journey began in the UK during the '70s, playing lead guitar in original rock bands. Then life took me on quite the detour—serving as a Navy Navigating Officer, working as an electronics technician, then IT contractor, and eventually becoming an iOS developer.
Now retired, I spend my time running, gardening, and creating original music in my home studio.
My current project "Goldilocks" is something special. It is, above all, this old boy’s retirement hobby!
But to me it’s much, much more than that. It’s the first time in my life that I have been able to create music, unleashed!
No time constraints. No expectations. No rules. No one to judge you. No reliance on other people. No need for financial reward or global stardom! Just a great fun pastime.
In this crazy AI world, I wanted to do a project totally manually - my own originality. NO AI in music creation. Of course, there is AI all around us now - for example my album artwork. I love that aspect of AI. But just stay away from my music hobby!
I also wanted something that continues as long as I wanted it to. It may see me out!
So I decided to create an idea for a concept album. Although this is more accurately a concept project, as it is a serial release with no planned end.
People already training to fly one-way to Mars intrigued me. How mad can you be? So I formed a story about a female with a similar mind-boggling opportunity (but going way beyond Mars).
I write all words. I create the melody and harmony lines, painstakingly add every note and word for multiple voices, which I feed to my obedient digital session singers using an enhanced MIDI style input.
I program and record the drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitars in my home studio, and add all synth parts using my workstation (Logic Pro) and my many, many synths! (Although mainly Omnisphere)
Maybe the hardest part is mastering for the streaming sites (Spotify/Apple etc.) - which I am constantly studying and always improving upon. I could have gone external to do this, a mastering service or send my songs to a mastering engineer - but once again I wanted to “DIY”
The music style is based around my favourite genre - “Symphonic Metal” - which is pioneered by European bands such as Delain and Nightwish. Most of these bands have female-fronted singers and amazing back-line metal-hardened musicians. Unlike straight Metal it is very melodic, powerful, and uplifting. I particularly like the beautiful female voices balanced with the mid-range metal crunch of guitars, with a full symphony of sound from synthesizers. This has become my signature sound.
I try to keep the voice the same, synth and guitar variations to a minimum, to preserve “my sound.”
So far, each song is taking about two months from start to finish. I plan to keep going until writer’s block kicks in (or I check out!).
I also am toying with the idea of expanding the story into a small book, and trying my untested skills as a writer. But that’s a long ways off!
