Solo
I’ll Be Going Then
Originally recorded to analogue in a beautiful country house in Gloucestershire. This was my first album release on CD many years ago. Mainly using steel string acoustic guitar & Fender Telecaster through a great little old Traynor Valve Amp. All the tracks are originals except the traditional The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which features on rhythm Colin Harries, a wonderful young guitarist in the Irish tradition, who I was lucky enough to teach when we both lived in Manchester in the 1990’s.
It was great to use high quality mics & pre amps in sound proofed environments for this recording, something I am getting back to more and more as I get older. Funny how recordings get simpler with age, or perhaps I am getting simpler, who knows?
A Few Short Thoughts 2010
The music here is a mixture of up tempo tracks, like Fire Bon! which was written for our Son, who was around 3 at the time. He couldn’t say Bonfire and was such a cute little fella that he inspired this music. This was my first release in Download format.
All tracks are instrumental guitar originals and were recorded with a mixture of Microphone and Direct Input and using acoustic guitars, electric and guitar synth. The track Wind Horses uses the synth guitar and is written about the Prayer Flags that Tibetan’s use for their simple but pure & beautiful beliefs
Blanket Affections 2013
There are many styles & composers who have helped me develop an approach to playing and harmony. Some of my favourite tracks are on this covers album. A mixture of jazz, soul & popular music, mostly double tracked with rhythm & lead recorded separately and with a couple of solo arrangements
Dog 2013
All the tracks here are original compositions which include a full band of bass, drums, percussion & keyboards, as well as guitars. I was experimenting with electronic music and guitars mixed together. The guitars here are all electric and the music is ethereal as well as dance oriented.
Some of the inspirations for this approach are Jon Hassell and Hariprasad Chaurasia. To my ears they play music that is modern and yet timeless, acoustic but electronically aware of today’s options. Of & in the moment.
Bug 2014
Recording these tracks was a really fun mixture of time spent with originals and covers, using the same approach for all of the tracks. To me they sit in a style that is light but with strong jazz elements. I’ve always been a fan of Pat Metheny for example and the lyrical qualities in his playing, where he has now done covers albums of Beatles and popular music, have always been clear to me.
The mixture of beautiful melodies from people like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, as well as timeless 60’s hits, gives much space to jazz players and instrumentalists to have a lot of fun, while playing well arranged serious music.
L’Été indien • Indian Summer 2015
This is a 1975 single by French singer Joe Dassin & was his biggest hit. It’s a really emotive melody & chord sequence and is my first single release.
The arrangement here is purely instrumental with multi-tracked guitars. I’ve been looking forward to playing this piece for many years and finally had the time to work out an arrangement that I liked.
Collaborations
Projects with others. Session playing, producer & engineer etc.
Rocoto Blues Band
Further South Rocoto Blues Band’s 5 track E.P. with 1 cover and 4 original tracks. The music is available on CD directly from Rocoto and can be posted to anywhere in the world, by emailing us from this site. Cost is €15 including P&P to pretty much anywhere in the world. We’ll even sign a copy for you if you request us to.
3 of the tracks on the 2017 release are songs written by Diego Vargas the lead vocalist and guitarist and Andy Brotherton, the main guitarist on most of Rocoto’s work & music arranger for the project. Both Diego & Andy in collaboration with Julio Gallardo, were also the engineers & producers of the E.P. in it’s recording stages. That is apart from Hoochie Coochie Man which was beautifully recorded by Jose Carlos Ponce at Elias Ponce Studios in Lima in 2016.
The contributions of each individual in every stage of the musical processes should not be underestimated. Jose Meneses bought some great ideas to the track Cry, which was written by Diego but which Jose added many elements that made the track so haunting. The subject is the floods in Peru in the Summer of 2017, which affected & displaced so many of the indigenous population and most often those least equipped to cope with such an event. The bass lines that Jose chose to counter the simplicity of the chords and lead guitar, punctuating the vocal plea of the character portrayed in the song, were a crucial addition.
Sofia Buckingham
“The songs that Sofia writes come from deep inside and speak of emotions wide ranging, telling of experience and understanding of life, way beyond her young age. In 2016, after many years writing songs she spent several weeks in Lima-Peru, recording her first album “Mistakes at 2 am”. This is her first album, documenting her life to this point. The album is now available from iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, CD Baby and by emailing the contact page on this site for a CD copy.”
On this album I was lucky enough to play almost all guitars, act as co-writer on some tracks, do all the arrangements and be co-producer. Then came the single Stars, where we also programmed some of the basic track as well as working together on writing and all parts were recorded in my home studio, apart from the vocals, which were recorded in Madrid.
Ruth Royall
Ruth Royall has many years’ experience working both in Studio and as a live singer. Ruth has worked and performed with artists such as Fred V & Grafix, Mo Pleasure (Earth, Wind and Fire), Kevin Mark Trail (The Streets), Adrian Crutchfield (Prince), Imaani (Incognito) and more. Ruth has written for commercial brands including Universal, YouTube Kids and Dove UK.
She is also a solo recording artist and has released a number of her own singles. Ruth’s voice features on the Forza Horizon 4 video game, the XFactor video game and a number of adverts broadcast worldwide.
Ruth asked us to work on 4U her first single, Mastering & some Mixing, which we did between our Munire Studios in Lima and my home studio in the UK.
Guitar Playing Theory into Practice
Knowing what we’re playing is fun. Not knowing isn’t. Perhaps since the Be-bop era in jazz and certainly since the dawn of some of the great singer-songwriters of the 1960’s & 70’s & right up to the present day, musicians in popular styles of all instruments have been looking in much greater detail at how music is structured.
This book is an attempt to write as concise a course as possible that musicians of any level can read from cover to cover, or use as a reference when needed or desired.
Blues Guitar Styles ~ 1. Beginnings
Aimed at ambitious beginners or players who want to switch to understanding about blues guitar playing. This is No.1 in a series that covers various aspects of different styles of blues guitar playing.
In this book you will learn basics of lead & rhythm, following detailed notes that are illustrated with MP3’s, notation & tablature. You’ll learn the blues scale and some intro & ending riffs and will apply those to some pre-written examples for both lead and rhythm. In addition you’ll start to look at how to improvise.
Once you’ve finished you’ll be able to play solo or with a duo or band, contributing backing or leads roles.
Improvisation Using The Modes Of The Harmonic Minor Scale
This short course of ideas for learning to improvise using the Harmonic Minor Scale follows on from the course on Improvising on the Modes of the Major Scale, although it can be tackled completely separately as well. The course has transcribed ideas for riffs that fit to the different Modes of the Harmonic Minor Scale. The music is in Notation and Tablature with short descriptions showing which chords fit which riffs. Audio files that illustrate the music with one for lead and one for backing, are available from the author. The audio files use a full band of rhythm, bass & drums.
Improvisation Using The II V I Chord Sequence – For Guitarists
The II V I Chord sequence is the most commonly used sequence in both jazz and many other styles of music. Mostly used from the Major Key it is the 2nd 5th & 1st chords in sequence. It is used so much simply because we like the sound it makes and it occurs at the beginning of sections of music, at the end and in the middle. So we need to know as many ways to use it as possible and this course will help you start.
Music Reading – For Guitarists
The ability to read music is often seen as a mystery and it does not have to be that way.
With knowledge of a few simple tools you can read music onto the guitar, or any instrument and get better & quicker just by doing it. This short book gives you the tools to do this and empowers you to have a solid foundation in basic music reading skills. We can get better at reading music for as long as we use it but a few basics is a solid and practical foundation.
Technical Exercises – For Guitarists
A short cut to building & maintaining the techniques needed to tackle new music and keep up the fitness to play what you already know, is a great way of maximizing time
Being prepared for new techniques by having exercises that develop new finger movements quickly, is what this set of technical exercises is for. Here we have a set of exercises that help you to evolve what you need to play the music you want to learn.
Improvisation Using the Modes of The Major Scale – For Guitarists
Improvisation as we know it in modern music is largely piecing together some of our favorite ideas to make something up on the spot. This course shows some riffs, along with backing tracks to play to and full versions of the tracks, so you can hear how the riffs sound. The backing tracks use rhythm guitar, bass & drums, with lead guitar added for the full tracks. Each Mode is tackled in a different style so we don’t get tied down to one way of playing. The audio files are available from the author direct by emailing after purchase.