Basically I would regard myself as the following..

An honest individual, a dreamer dedicated to execute my preprogrammed genetic code.

Very open-minded with my senses tuned into all things original and new, albeit music (art in all forms), relationships, food, technology. Not that I'm a gadget freak, but I do have a deep love/hate relationship with technology.

I'm easily distracted by anything more interesting than what I was previously engaged in. The Achilles heel of being creative.

During my thirtysomethings I tended to think too deeply about the smallest of things. I would question the question and always end up wondering "why?" Nowadays, I simply look at things for what they are and have a general acceptance deep within, that what will be, will be.

I see the World as a growing picture of emotions, feelings and what my sences explore, take in, analyse and perceive. It's impossible to relay these effectively and I think that's why I'm so attracted to the enigma of music. It allows me to interact 'virtually', through sound, with others and their World.

Music to me is much more than bands and the stuff that comes from speakers. I'm not wanting to be 'rich and famous' with my involvement with music, I simply enjoy making it!. I work best when I'm alone or interacting with people who inspire me mentally, spiritually and musically.

 

 

 

Thomas Alva Edison 1847 1931.

Hey! this guy is my mentor. He invented the carbon granule microphone, recorded sound, electricity generation & distribution systems. In total he patented 1069 inventions.

Click the pictures to find out more about what he has changed for us.

Andre-Marie Ampere, 1775 1836.

He developed a law of electromagnetism (1809), now known as Ampere s law, to describe mathematically the magnetic force between two electric currents.

I'm fascinated by electromagnetism. I once went to the museum in Edinburgh. I remember looking at a large cabinet which had some of his original equipment. It was huge and all handmade out of brass. I remember thinking "Christ! these people had a real passion, and boy, how they changed this world"

Pink Floyd, The Stranglers, Queen, Mike Oldfield, James Last, Brooke Benton, Primus, (Mr blobby) ,Yes, The Jam, James Brown, Cream, Bjork, Led Zeppelin, The Prodigy, Gary Newman

Just some of my musical influences. Not listed in any particular order.

To be honest, I don't often listen to much music any more. This stuff, you could say, set me off in my quest to discover more about making music.

I hate being pigeon-holed, If I had a choice into a genre, I would like to be regarded as 'all of the above'.

MY MUSICAL HISTORY

I was born on the kitchen table in 1964 at Alloa, Scotland. Music was not a feature of my family. I do have some early memories of pianos and guitars at my parents friends houses and how I was always compelled (but suppressed) to make a noise.

I have been involved with music since the age of ten (photo 1974).

It would be more accurate to say I was simply fascinated by sounds and the things that produced sounds. Usually I would build something by breaking up my two older brothers toys/gadgets : Due to my destructive nature I was not very popular at times.

I loved visiting my grandparents (as did my brothers), they had loads of old clocks, bits off car dashboards, motors etc. I would sit for hours building 'things' that would spin, whistle , rasp and generally make noises from the bits they gave me to take home. I expanded my interest in electronics in 1975 when my brother Barty bought me a breadboard (solderless circuits) allowing me to build little buzzers and tone generators.

I was severely bullied (1978-79). My memories of secondary school is a blur, as being a nerd seemed to attract the bullies! I met people with similar interests and shared circuits, programs and ideas in-between running and hiding.

I worked for a music shop (1980) and once worked overtime and received a synthesizer kit (Maplin) for payment. It wasn't very good sounding, but it did allow me to fully understand about sound synthesis.

I progressed through the ZX (1981) spectrum series of home computers and built myself a sampler with D/A and A/D chips. I even bought the drum machine thing for it (can't remember what it was called).

At about 1982 I bought my first acoustic guitar and was exploring multi-tracking with two tape recorders. This was really good fun!

I got a fender telecaster for Christmas 1985 and started to meet other musicians who were cordially invited to my house, for a jam or recording session on my Sony 2-track reel to reel.

Not being proficient at any instrument, we would generally just record what happened, then overdub something else along with it. I bought a Yamaha portasound 100 which at the time was a great little keyboard.

As you can imagine, with all the above, my music was getting strange.

Eventually the pull of the 'live band scene' was growing within me. My first gig was at some guys stag night and I was playing bass (since then I have been a bass-player when working in bands). More gigs were offered for charity events etc., but they were all very rough (so was I the following day) and I have conveniently forgot about them.

 

My first real gigging band (1989) was called 'The Connection', a 70's covers band. We were keen to play all the juke-box classics like The rolling stones, cream, the who, the doors etc.It was all good fun.

Alan McAndrew ( the singer pictured here ) went on to lead his own club band after a period of being a karaoke champion in the local area. He is now the MC for a local football stadium.

David Donachie on lead guitar. A great guitarist even although he did not think so. He was a fellow amiga user and also inspired me to buy a PC. David moved to London a few years later and now works for Ofcom. Musically he is now making trance dance tracks.

Wullie Lyons on drums, Wullie was always breaking things like.. his arms, nose, legs etc. Not the most reliable drummer, but when you got him to sit down behind the drums, he could play!

Colin Dixon, rhythm guitarist and my first true jamologist. Colin was my jamming partner for years. I regard Colin as my mentor to deep thinking. He would ask the most obscure questions like "what is the purpose of existence?". Unfortunately Colin now suffers from a chronic illness which restricts his physical ability to participate in making music.

Colin and I joined forces again in another band later.

In 1990 I moved house and bought an AMIGA 500 (whoo! a whole half meg of ram!) and began to write (4 track ) multi track music with Octalizer: This was my first venture into making music with samples and sequencing with a computer.

It also got me hooked on games. My brother (who also had one) would come to my house every thursday night. We would play multi player games like Stunt car racer, Falcon and populous via a serial cable link for hours and hours. It got really competitive and we still talk about 'track records' and 'in-game events' of that time today.

My Brother-in-law ran a disk based magazine called "General Amiga", I invited to write him a background tune for the load sequence: you can listen to it by clicking the image below. To be honest this was a fantastic multitasking multimedia machine in its time.

Then came 'blind' (1991) a power pop/indi band who played and wrote their own stuff (very few covers) and generated lot's of local hype and following.

I joined this band by replying to an advert in the local music shop. It was all arranged until I got appendicitis. I had my "audition" with them 2 days after getting out of hospital. I was off work for 7 weeks and sat in the house and rehearsed solidly to a few "practice tapes" they gave me. We had our first Gig on the 7th week and it went down really well.

Robbie Addie (Vocals / Guitarist) - A fantastic song writer who moved to Australia in 2002.

Andy McAvenie (Vocals / Keyboards) - A fantastic song writer, an an honest Christian, who moved to other bands and projects. We do still try to keep in touch.

David Mitchell (Percussion) - A fantastic drummer. He also was a good arranger. He was also an adventure scouts leader. A highly qualified environmentalist,

When working with this band I learned about applying the bass guitar melodically, structuring songs and making solid arrangements in general.

I still feel that if I were to send away some of our demo tapes today (which we never did!), we would generate some interest.

Then there was 'Elemental' (1993) a really good soul-funk-jazz band who, as a team, didn't try hard enough to take the last steps to the big time. A real shame, sigh!

With the help of the arts critic for "the Herald" (our 'pseudo' manager)we played at some great venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and in our local area. Our last public performance was at the McRobert Centre at Stirling University.

Being the bass player of the band, i'm particulary fond of this press clipping.

Kathleen was a fantastic singer who could get a job as a singer on a cruise liner at any time. Mike was a fantastic keyboard player who gave it all up to become a lighthouse keeper :)

During all this time I had been doing my 'own thing' with a Fostex 8-track, loaned to me by my friend Colin. I found this produced more inner-happiness than the live scene. Several other things made me decide that the live scene was all too much, so in 1995, left Elemental, sold all my equipment (not the bass) and bought some equipment to lead me along the path to my current studio today.

In 2003 - 2004 I did loads of stuff with the Little Brothers. This was a very important and special developmental relationship

With a no-holds-barred approach to recording music, even I don't know what I'm going to come up with next. I hold hundreds of hours of my musical ideas and experiments as recorded material: I regard it as 'brains on tape'. Now, thanks to technology, I own the musical playground only dreamt of in my youth. I was very conscious of spending, what I regarded as a lot of money, on musical equipment. Now as I reflect, it was really a small price to pay for playground with infinite boundaries on my personal approach to music.

 

This is where I currently compose and record my music. This was my garage converted. It is also my office and study area. The size is (4m 5.5m) and adequate for my purposes for one man project work or up to a 4 person live Jam. I spend a lot of time in here and the whole family enjoys the vibe that the room gives off.

I have artwork on one wall that has been done by my kids, nieces and nephews and myself - I call it my inspiration wall.

Its also a place where I can still play about with lights, buzzers and bells.

I have six guitars in the room, 2 of them are my sons a Yamaha electric and the Samec acoustic (seen here)

I have a Bass Collection, 4 string Bass, A Tanglewood 4 string acoustic Bass a Tanglewood 6 string acoustic with fishman pickups and a 20 year old Kimbara 6 string acoustic.

My Main Studio rack.

AKAI S2000 Sampler

Korg 05R/W

Midiman 4x4 usb midi port

Alesis D4 Drum Module

EMU Proteus 2000

Digitech Studio Quad FX unit

Behringer Ultragain Pro Preamp

Behrringer Composer Pro Compressor

Patch Bay

Spirit Folio SX (used as 4Buss Line Mixer)

A great keyboard, has a burst keyboard but when I get it fixed, it will be my controller once again.

A great little V-drumkit - Fully integrated with my midi set-up. It's a good investment if you like jamming from 7pm - 7am - Drums with a volume control! Primarily bought for my son who was taking drums at school.

I could not play drums at all until this year (2005) , I always wanted to. Now I can turn out a few beats thanks to practicing on this kit. (my son's playing still blows me away)

A Great alrounder. The Proteus 2000 is a light, compact module designed for use with sequencers. It can be your main sound module, or one of many. Either way there's an immense amount of great sounds at your fingertips for any music application!

Everything, usually drum loops and pads

By far the most creative piece of equipment used. They provide me with a huge (if not limitless) spectrum of sounds. It, in essence is a basic MIDI sound module without any sounds pre-loaded into it. Basically you take a sound (a sample) and feed it through the various internals like filters, envelope generators, LFOs etc. From one simple sound source 'programs' can be created to allow that sound to be played/allocated anywhere on the keyboard using key groups and layers. Other controlling parameters can be applied to change many elements of the sound. A matching software utility called MESA is used to assist in the modeling of these programs.

Since all the basic aspects of sound synthesis is covered by the S2000, the choice of the source sample is very important. It's not always obvious what sample to use, to get the sound that's in your head'. Remember a sample can in itself be a complete piece of music, however, my preference is to make new sounds to make new music.

The method of grabbing the sample can vary. A simple microphone can be used to record anything. Any sound which can be loaded onto a PC (like a wav file) can be electronically loaded/transferred to the S2000. A lot of pre-production/modeling work can be performed on the PC using the plethora of sound editing tools available

A basic midi module that conforms to General Midi. It has a lot of nice pad and drum sounds but does lack in any kind of real time filter control.

A basic drum module that contains 20 kits made up of variations of 100 different pre-loaded samples. It contains some excellent percussion samples and it is used primarily for this function. Each member of the kit can be tuned, panned etc.

It also has 8 trigger inputs which can be triggered with say a microphone. I once build a drum pad for it using earpieces from telephones which worked quite well.

Leads and GM sounds.

A basic midi module that conforms to General Midi. This is an underrated synth module that you can pick up second hand for around £60. Its sounds are very 'normal' for a GM module but it does have really excellent filter control (via midi).

As such, I use it almost exclusively for 'whaka whaka' sounds and lead voices. By routing it through the effects above etc., it can easily become quite a beast of a sound module. I never see or need to touch it, Its tucked away under one of my shelves and totally midi controlled.

A sound effects unit used primarily as a outboard effects device on the VS2480. Again it is used to give more beef to the overall sound. This ,in effect, (if you pardon the pun) is four effects units in one. Nice for room sound synthesis.

 

The heart of the studio.

Recording anything from a microphone and mixing it with the midi equipment.

This is the recording device used to capture anything that is not produced by the midi devices. All midi generated sounds are synchronized with the recorded tracks and produce the final mix.

This device offers very high quality editing and signal processing, with a huge amount of control features via midi. By synchronizing with a midi sequencer such as cubase, the recorded audio events become one with the sequenced midi sounds.

 

Used mostly as a diagnostic tool when I'm performing electronic repairs but I do use it for studying sounds and signals from the studio : this adds to the geek factor - See the sound

UPDATE 07/10/2002 As my mind becomes more open my body complains of the draft Am I just getting that little bit older?

UPDATE 21/7/2004 Relocated to a new house. Been busy doing lots of other stuff other than updating my web site.

UPDATE 2/8/2004 Renovation of the Web Site.

New material being uploaded. Now that mp3.com is defunct I will use my own web space to provide the samples of our music.

Created the "little brothers" section to present the talents.