I started playing the piano, dancing and taking speech and drama lessons around the age of 6. Both of my parents and extended family being musical, and me being involved on many levels with music, stitched music into the very fabric of my life. I was always keen on writing poems as a child, and often had poems published in the local newspaper.
I started teaching music at the age of 19 (piano, keyboard, organ and Theory of Music) and continue to this day.
I wrote many songs around the year 2000 – just because. I felt inspired by my own experiences, those of others, and, at times, a song would come to me for no reason at all! I had the opportunity to record 11 songs around that time, and these are the ones that I released in 2018 as the album, ‘Tracks from the Noughties’.
Life got somewhat complicated, and I didn’t record again until 2018, following my new year resolution to simplify and overhaul my life and work, and to rethink everything I was doing. I needed to stop and refocus on what is important – one of these things being to get back to writing and recording music. An awful lot had changed in the two decades since I had started writing music, and I found that the multiple IT skills I use as ‘Twinkle Tec’ are extraordinarily useful in today’s almost unrecognisable music publishing industry when it comes to self-publishing. I am able to deal with all of the artwork, videos, producing and processing of audio files myself, which I feel very fortunate to be able to do.
I published the 11 songs that I had previously recorded and started to write new material, my first recording after my long break being ‘The Difference is You’, which I specially wrote as the theme tune to the UK Rotary District 1220 District Conference, which took place on 4th-6th October 2019. Please click here to learn more about this song. I have since written song commissions to accompany my video editing projects (as Twinkle Tec) for Aquabox and Global ECM.
I always maintained that the initial 11 tracks, especially those on which I have sung myself are intended purely as demos. My greatest wish is that artists will take on the songs that suit them and do a much more accomplished job than I! I have never been interested in being the performing artist in public – I feel that other people can and should do that job much better than I can! My pleasure comes from the creative process of seeing the song or piece go from a mere idea or inspiration, right through to a finished piece. A greater pleasure comes from seeing that music being used, and I sincerely hope that artists will cover my work and bring their own touches and interpretations to it, and, of course, their great voices and performances!
You will find here on this page, links to stories of how some of my songs came about. I hope that knowing how and why these pieces came into being will enhance your enjoyment of them.