Composer First. Technology Second.
I cannot read music, but I play by ear - And I have heard fully formed songs in my head for as long as I can remember. The whole craft, for me, is getting what is in there out into the world without losing what made it special.
The Song Comes First.
I write melodies constantly. They turn up unannounced and play themselves through, often more or less complete - The tune, the feel, sometimes a whole arrangement at once. I cannot read music, but I play by ear, and I have never needed to read a note. The piano is how I talk to the music.
Sat at the keys, I work out the chord progression by ear until the thing in my head is under my hands. That instinct - melody and harmony, felt rather than read - is the engine of everything I make. The tools change; the ear does not.
How a Song Gets Made.
The route from a tune in my head to a finished track is always the same shape - Five moves, in order, with me steering every one.
The Melody
It almost always starts with a tune that arrives on its own - In the shower, on a walk, mid-conversation. I catch it before it fades and take it to the piano.
The Chords
At the keys I find the harmony that holds the melody up - The chord progression that gives it its colour and its ache. This is where a fragment becomes a song.
The Words
Then the lyrics: what the song is really about, and who it is for. The story underneath the tune, written to land.
The Arrangement
Now the vision: the style, the instruments, the tempo, the dynamics, the hooks. Exactly how it should feel from the first bar to the last, and where the catch lives.
The Build
Finally I realise it, using AI as a studio tool to render the arrangement I have in my head - Me directing every call, shaping take after take until it matches the song I heard at the start.
Real Life Writes the Brief.
The ideas come from everywhere. A game that builds a whole world in your chest. A sky that looks like the end or the start of something. The people I love and the daft adventures we get into. A summer day at a theme park that makes you feel ten years old again.
I notice the feeling first, and the music is how I keep hold of it. Each record begins as something I felt and could not put down - So I wrote it into a place you can step inside.
Imagined worlds
The people I love
Real adventures
A feeling I caught
Where AI Fits In.
I used to produce music the long way round - Years of building tracks from scratch, most of which never left the room. That ear and that instinct were always there; what I lacked was a fast way to get a finished sound out of my head.
AI is that way. I treat it as a studio tool - A remarkably quick session band and engineer that never tires. The melodies and chord progressions are mine, written at the piano. The lyrics are mine. The arrangement - the style, the instruments, the tempo, the hooks, the way it all hangs together - is mine. I am the one orchestrating every decision; the technology simply helps me realise it.
Think of me as the conductor and the writer. The orchestra just happens to be brand new.