This summer, ODEON Cinemas are offering adult tickets at kids prices.
Their ad ‘Say Hello to Summer’ features my track ‘That Happy Feeling‘.
Written by Frank Mizen, Barrie Gledden, Jason Pedder & me, it’s a feel-good power pop with vibrant brass, driving guitars & bouncing drums.
The track is from the album ‘Beats & Brass‘.
If you like it, you can listen, buy & download the track here.
Thanks for stopping by…
Released today… My latest album ‘Sports Chants‘; a collection of tracks for you to shout along to!
Written by myself & fellow collaborators Kes Loy & Barrie Gledden, the album features 6 new tracks & versions.
Here’s the track listing…
Heroes – Punk version of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ with football crowd vocal
Silver Boots – Glam rock stomp with crowd ”nahs” to the tune of ‘Glory Glory Hallelujah’
Kick It – Glam rock meets punk with crowd ”nahs” to the tune of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ (yes, you read that right!)
Stomp Clap – Folk rock stomp with ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’ crowd ”nahs”
Race Day – Galloping punky folk rock with ‘Camptown Races’ crowd ”nahs” melody
Winning – Fast pop punk with crowd ”nahs” to the tune of ”We Shall Not Be Moved”
Hope you enjoy the album. If you like them, please buy them and enjoy!
Thanks for stopping by…
My track ‘That Happy Feeling’ is featured on the new SCS avert celebrating the opening of 100 stores in the UK.
Written by Barrie Gledden, Frank Mizen, Jason Pedder & Richard Kimmings.
That Happy Feeling – Feel-good power pop with vibrant brass, driving guitars & bouncing drums.
Hope you like the tune!
Thanks for stopping by…
Today sees the release of my new album ‘Mediterranean Holiday & Lifestyle‘ for AudioNetwork.
This weekend might signal the end of British Summer Time (in the UK at least), but the sun’s never too far away.
Written by Lincoln Grounds, Dougie Brown & me, the album is filled with Summer Sun anthems to get you in the holiday mood.
La Vida Fiesta – Hot Spanish holiday dance fusion with driving gypsy guitars & Alegria flamenco clapping
Taverna Time – Spicy summer beats fusion with east Med flavours, guitars & mandolins
Spanish Nights – Scorching holiday house fusion with flamenco passion & guitar melody
Beach Beat – Tropical holiday hip hop with marimbas, guitars, trumpets & an island lilt
Summer Forever – Sexy mediterranean dance groove with Spanish guitars & world flavours
Riviera Life – Sun drenched luxury trip hop chill out with languid trumpet & accordion
Hope you enjoy the album.. you can listen, download & buy it here.
Thanks for stopping by…
Today saw the release of my brand new ‘Beats & Brass’ album for AudioNetwork.
All tracks were written by Barrie Gledden, Frank Mizen, Jason Pedder & me.
Get ready for summer with this uplifting collection of tunes featuring ‘The Haggis Horns’.
Track Listing…
Strut The Funk – Strutting pop funk with punchy brass, slap bass & slamming beats.
To The Beach – High-octane R&B pop with jazzy horns, funky bassline & driving beats.
High Heeled – Sexy, strutting funk rock with steamy soul brass & staccato guitar riffs.
Power People – Storming funk rock with staccato horns, warped guitar riff & stomping beats.
Horny – Sunshine blend of cheerful brass, bright guitar motifs & solid beats.
Our Street – Brash, cheerful Britpop with catchy brass riffs & stomping backbeat.
On The Money – Swaggering funk rock with sleazy riffs, sassy horns & solid backbeat.
That Happy Feeling – Feel-good power pop with vibrant brass, driving guitars & bouncing drums.
Hope you like the album. You can listen, buy & download all the tracks here.
Thanks for stopping by…
My track ‘Feeling Great‘ features on the new advert for the ‘Tomy Foam Cone Factory’.
It’s a fun track written by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy & me.
If you like the track you can listen & download here.
Thanks for stopping by…
NEW MUSIC: ‘Acoustic Scenery‘ album has just been release on AudioNetwork.
An instrumental collection of acoustic country & folk tracks with a transatlantic rural feel, written by Richard Lacy, David Bird, Terry Maskill & me.
The album features 10 brand new tracks.. here’s some of the highlights.
Numbers – Positive indie folk with bright guitars & piano over driving drums. Builds
Traffic Free – Intricately layered electric guitars over a gentle drum groove
Closing Time – Lazy blues featuring Dobro & acoustic guitars over a laid back groove
Family – Feel-good light indie rock with summery guitars & relaxed topline melody
Wayfarers – Reassuring semi-acoustic rock with a positive guitar melody
Before The Second Dawn – Relaxing, Celtic-style folk with nostalgic mandola melody & acoustic band
Shade and Light – Ambient, alternating major & minor patterns over a laid back groove
Strolling Home – Laid back 1980s classic rock electric guitar theme
You can listen to the whole album here and buy any tracks you like.
Thanks for stopping by…
Last year Disney Junior and Huggies chose my track ‘Must Be Dreaming‘ for their ‘Pull-Ups’ Ident. Written by Barrie Gledden, Jason Pedder & me, it features Lucy Kimmings on vocals.
Thanks for stopping by…
In 2013, David Tobin headed over to the good ol’ U.S. of A. to record a number of albums in New Orleans for AudioNetwork, with his Chicago based writing partner, Jeff Meegan.
They wanted to use players & musicians that really had the ‘spirit and feel’ for the music made in the city, and so what better way than to head on over and find the best cats in town…?
Here’s a video of their trip…
I’d already worked with Jeff & David on another recording from the same sessions; ‘Authentic Cajun‘, released in November 2013 – blog here
I was called upon to initially mix 5 of the 7 tracks on the ‘Spirit of New Orleans‘ album.
However, on hearing what I could bring to the table sonically, I eventually ended up mixing them all! Mixing was done here at ‘StudiOK‘.
I had a lot of fun with this album… The music is so uplifting and always has a great groove…
Creating ‘versions’ for other usage was a blast, as they’d recorded special arrangements with different orchestrations with this specifically in mind.
Hear the album here… ‘Spirit of New Orleans‘
Song by song…
Back to My Roots – Grooving bar room blues with vocal by New Orleans legend, Big Al Carson
Captain Crawfish – Funky New Orleans piano with hot brass, cool Hammond & blazing blues guitar
I Climbed – Brooding Delta blues song about adversity & hope with male vocal
Meterman – Freewheeling jazz piano with a New Orleans backbeat & tasty guitar solo
Loving You Undercover – Laid back 70s funk song with punchy horns & infatuated US male vocal
Mid City Midnight – Driving blues shuffle with distorted harmonica & guitar lick trade-offs
Know It All – Feel-good 1970s funky jazz/RnB fusion with horn section melody & piano
As always, these tracks are there for you to use in productions & to buy for your own personal listening pleasure… so please do…
Next blog – ‘Songs from The Rockface‘…
Back at the start of 2013, I began work on 8 tracks in a very definitive style.
My year prior had been very much full to the brim with music. It’s my job… it’s what I do; writing, playing, recording and mixing.
Projects are always ongoing and there are deadlines to meet, but in January 2013 I set aside the whole month to concentrate on writing this one project.
I sat down in my own cozy studio watching the snow fall outside, loaded up a cup of tea and a blank canvas, and set out to write a collection of tunes influenced by the kind of music that shaped me as I was growing up.
Having not come from a particularly musical background; my parents nor brother are musically inclined, I never had anyone at home opening me up to different styles of music. Exposure to what was out there at the time, & what had gone before, came more from my friends at school & the radio. There simply weren’t any bands in my school and no real musicians to speak of, certainly not that i was aware of… so my early influences were picked up not by someone saying ‘here… you MUST listen to this’ but more by my Saturday afternoons spent in record shops looking at what was out there & spending my hard earned paper money on what I thought might prick my ears musically.
So why am I telling you all this?
Writing music for a living enables me to travel in all sorts of different directions sonically… Heavy Rock, Classical, Vocal Pop, Quirky… You name it, I’ve done it.
Every project is special & has the utmost time & attention paid to it. The company I write for require nothing short of the best & that’s what you strive for every time.
This project was to be no different from any other in that respect, except for it was going to be in a musical style very close to my heart & centred around the music I listened to as an easily influenced budding musician – a style from yesteryear yet with all the modern pop elements you’d expect, but with that comes the fact that I knew with the style and direction I was taking these songs in… it was going to be a long, long road to travel to get this project to where it ultimately needed to be.
‘Art is never finished, only abandoned’ – Leonardo da Vinci
On watching the ‘Sound City‘ documentary recently, I heard Mick Fleetwood reflecting on why Fleetwood Mac chose that studio to record the album ‘Rumours’ rather than do it in their own studio – ‘I can have fun doing this on my own, or I can have fun doing it with others’.
He has a point… The studio can be a very lonely and solitary place… unless you’re there with others… then it becomes fun.
Barrie Gledden has been a very close friend and a work colleague of mine since 1991, when I first met him as part of a support act for his band at the time ‘Brazil’. We’ve worked together ever since through bands & other musical ventures, and like me, Barrie is a writer for AudioNetwork.
Before Christmas 2012, I mentioned to Barrie my plans for January and that I was going to start this mammoth project. In the cold February of 2013, I took the tracks to his studio and played them to him. We chatted about where we thought the songs needed to go musically and planned how best to get them sounding and feeling as good as possible.
I’d mocked up the whole project using virtual instruments; keyboards, drums, bass, strings, piano, synths, guitars, acoustics… all triggered digitally from within the computer… a band in your pocket & an easy way to get your ideas from your head and into a permanent, recorded form – you can work fast & efficiently before the moment and idea is gone forever.
Virtual Instruments can be ground breaking and breathtaking, they can produce sounds that are very hard or impossible to emulate in the ‘real world’.
However, everything I’d used to create these tracks was ‘mimicking’ real instruments… and, more than anything, what this album needed was real… real everything… real drums, real piano… and a real string section.
What I’d taken to play to Barrie felt very polished yet needed more input… the ideas were there but they needed arranging, additional vocal lines writing, string arrangements scoring and everything needed replacing with ‘feel’ and ‘interplay’ with instruments from the ‘real world’. Of the initial 8 tracks, there were 6 stand out songs we chose to focus on first.
Let the games commence…
First up… replacing the drums… here’s a video of what we did… (skins tuned so low they were close to wrinkle point & tension rods dropped out during recording takes)
Barrie wrote a more in-depth blog about re-recording the drums for this project here.
Next mini blog – The String Recording…..
RiCHARD KiMMiNGS 