Playing & making music

I play guitar with Lord Algae, covering a mixture of rock, blues, funk and soul at venues including the Kilburn Bridge. Playing with a band gives me something very different from the work I do at a screen: you have to listen to the other musicians, respond to what is happening in the room and get on with playing. I like having that alongside the more analytical parts of my week.

If you would like to hear the band or come along to a gig, our Lemonrock page has recordings and listings, so you can get an idea of what we play and see where we are appearing next.

I’m also learning to mix music and am a member of Warren Huart’s Produce Like A Pro Academy. It gives me another way to spend time with music, listening to how the parts fit together and working out what a recording needs. Some of my mixes are on SoundCloud; they are part of that ongoing learning, alongside the time I spend playing and experimenting with sound.

The audio plugins I’m building through Jagger Audio sit alongside that learning. They give me another way to work through questions about stereo balance and the sense of depth in a mix, then hear the result in a session.

Synths have been there since the beginning: I grew up with a Juno-6 in the house, and I’m still a big synth enthusiast. Music for me has always included that curiosity about the instruments and the sounds they can make, whether I’m holding a guitar or sitting at a keyboard. Building Jagger Audio is another part of that interest, with the added satisfaction of making tools I can use in my own mixes.

There is quite a bit of tinkering on the guitar side too. I’ve built my own pedals, and I’m experimenting with Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) profiles as an alternative to using physical amps. I’m interested in how those sounds work when I’m actually playing, as well as how they sit in a recording. Between the pedals, the profiles and the playing, there is usually something to try before I get around to putting everything away.