Many musicians are pretty wary about puting their music in a pigeon hole and yet choosing a suitable label for your music is pretty much indispensible in terms of getting your music out there and helping it reach the ears of suitable listeners.

Personally Im something of a reluctant marketer – I certainly dont want to push my music down the throats of random people, but I do relish a chance to share my music with someone who I have a reason to believe might enjoy it.

And so Ive been on a continuing quest to pick a suitable genre. Many websites Ive uploaded music to only allow you to pick from a short list, but if you want an idea of the full gamut of options available, look no further than the perenially excellent resource that is wikipedia and their list of no less than 1650 different musical styles!

Interestingly, Wikipedia offers a short series of genres and movements – Art music (Classical music (European) · religious) · Traditional music · Electronic · Popular music (Blues · Country · Hip hop · Jazz · Reggae · Rock (Heavy metal, Punk rock)) · Folk.   Within that list I think for my music I would plump for Art Music for my solo piano music – given my classical influences and spiritual leanings and also that I cant see it fitting under any of the other headings.

Now to go through the 1650 listed styles and see if I can find the perfect fit.

I’ve rather grown to love my first foray into recorded piano improvisation, so I’ve gone one step further and produced a video for it. What Ive done is pretty straightforward, setting the piece to a series of my favourite photos from last year, but I think its come out quite effectively, the changes of images working with the changes in the music and the sequence as a whole offering a nice little audio/visual journey through themes of change, impermanence and beauty.

I hope you like it – if you do, please let me know what you think and please do share this with your friends using the various social networking buttons below this blog post, or liking or commenting on the youtube page, or simply emailing the link on to a friend. Thank you.

Also, dont forget there are some other videos of my piano music on the video page of this site.

As I often do on a Sunday afternoon, Ive just found myself improvising at the piano.  This particular occasion is an exciting one for me, not so much because its one of my best ever attempts (tho I reckon its quite pleasant), but because this is the first time Ive made use of my little home recording set up to record my meanderings.

So, Id love to share it with you – please let me know what you think and if you like it, do keep in touch because theres many more to come!

and do please share it around:   Improvisation 1

Thanks to the modern marvel which is the internet Im starting to make new friends and garner fans of my music right across the globe. Recently one such, the very charming Bob Baker, interviewed me for a magazine promoting live events in no less a place than Huntsville, Alabama.

With thanks to Bob for the opportunity and a nice little interview, please check it out:

Its good to share, so please accept this gift of a free MP3 download of one of my latest pieces of piano music, Stasis.

Just click the link below if you want to hear it right now in your web browser, or if you want to download the MP3 and take it with you, just right click and select “save link as ..”

Stasis

Im going to be giving away much more free music in the future, so if you want more, please keep in touch either via email or by liking my facebook page.

Id love to share this far and wide with other people, so please take a moment to spread the love:

Exciting news is that Ive been asked to perform a second slot at Birmingham’s ArtsFest – this one on the huge stage at Centenary Square.

My slot is going to be 4.35 – 5.05pm, in between the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Rep Theatre. Later on the CBSO no less will be performing on the same stage.

With luck this should easily be the biggest solo gig I have played so far, so thanks to the ArtsFest and to my ever loving partner Lyndall for being patient with our fluctuating travel plans. Rockin!

Ive been confirmed to perform at Arts Fest the UK’s biggest FREE arts festival on Friday September 10th at 8pm in the rather amazing venue of the Industrial Gallery at the Birmingham Musem and Art Gallery.

Hearing the rich tones of my digital piano reverberating through that kind of space should be pretty amazing – looking forward to this one.

If you like piano music then you could do a lot worse than firing up this French internet radio station which very much does what it says on the tin.

All Piano Radio is an enjoyable mix of classic and contemporary and if you listen long enough, you should find one or two of my tunes mixed up in there.

I came across Peter Cox’s music blog via a Yahoo egroup which I’m a member of which probably deserves a blog post in itself as its a valuable musicians resource – its a place where muso’s across the world hang out to exchange ideas and tips and music chat called Music Thoughts – and theyre a really friendly bunch of people.

Your Music Blog is a new enterprise and well worth checking out, particularly for rock music which is Peter’s own specialty (he’s in established rock group Chinawhite).

He’s given Valentine Court an interesting review too.  He starts with some kind words about the music and then goes on to do what many reviewers shy away from and gives some interesting critical feedback.  He suggests that I might consider experimenting with some pieces with fewer notes in the future, or putting it the other way around, with more silence and space.

This I found an interesting comment – composer/pianists I enjoy such as Satie (as Peter states) and also Ludovico Einaudi are able to produce much simpler and sparser arrangements than I and I wonder if this is partly me compensating for a lack of confidence by keeping things busy.  Or perhaps to put it another way, one’s music reflects one’s state of mind and to date I’ve had to work quite hard (in a way) to achieve space in my mind and I think thats reflected in my music – there are moments of relative stillness – particularly in the climax of Jewel and Namaste, but these tend to be hard won, coming as the result of a build up towards that moment.

Mind you, Satie was an absolute master of tonality and Einaudi has a remarkable ear for melody, so perhaps the relative simplicity they sometimes achieve is hung on those particular gifts.

One of the many musical ideas I have saved on my digital piano is a very still and simple piece with only two chords, so perhaps I will be exploring that territory more in the future.  Time will tell of course, but in the meantime, thought provoking comments from Peter.

If you like my piano music, or you have an interest in contemporary piano music, or just fancy something nice in the background when youre chilling or working, can I suggest giving my online radio station a try?

OK, to be fair, I should explain that I havent gone to a lot of painstaking effort to create my own station – this is a feature of the excellent LastFM.com.  If you dont know Last FM, I’d strongly recommend trying it out – its a superb music resource – bit like Myspace for grown ups if you dont mind me saying so!

Antway, one of Last FMs features if that you can listen to tons of music – streamed and for free – and one of the ways you can approach that is to click on the “play artist radio” button, clearly shown beneath the picture on each artists’ page.  The radio feature then launches, first playing one track from the particular artist you have selected and then, using Last FM’s clever software, continuing with selections from other similar artists.

Very clever and very effective – you can skip any track you dont like and theres no adverts – check out my station here if you fancy it – happy listening!