Selling me Shure Beta 52 in absolutely mint condition…check out the ebay listing here.  Great sounding microphone for kick drum, bass guitar and even useful for that ‘phat’ overdriven electric guitar sound!   Get bidding people!!

Just got a lovely new Ahead brass snare through the post.  As soon as I can tie one of my drummer minions down I will post up some mp3 examples of how cracking this thing is!  To my ears it sounds a lot like a Ludwig Black Beauty albeit at half the price!

Work continues on the strings arrangement for ‘I’m Still Looking’.  I have also booked the awesome Jon Harrison to session on this track in a month’s time.  Big thanks to him for that.  Remember that name, for we all predict big things for this guy - simply amazing talent.  Jon is rooted in Jazz but plays with a tight groove and slap style more typically associated with serious soul/funk players like Me’Shell Ndegeocello and Victor Wootan.  I am extremely excited to have the privelege of working with this fantastic player again on more new material.

In other news, I bought the new Cubase 5 for the studio.  This has been loaded onto the PC specifically for mastering after mixdown.  The Oxford Sonnox plugin suite is fantastic for multi-band compression, limiting and post-production EQ I also purchased this in VST for use with Cubase.  This collection of high-end plugins are used across the world in mastering houses to give that professional ‘polish’ that only mastering can give to productions.

Had a fantastic recording session with the mighty Pete Cranham today.  Pete kindly recorded drums on two tracks of mine namely ‘Drowning in Dreams’ and my new ‘Sunny Days’.  You can check out Pete playing with Newton Faulkner back in the day on youtube here.  My heartfelt thanks goes out to this man who is not only a beast of a player, but a really nice guy to - what a rare gem in this industry!  Will keep the site updated with the progress of both of these tracks as they move forward.

T

Hi everyone!  Tom here.  I’m going to be updating the site myself from now on!  Just a quick post to let you know what I have been doing.  Breaking my foot has been a real blessing in many ways as it has given me the time to write material and perfect my production.  This week I have been mostly writing out the string parts for ‘I’m Still Looking’ which has been a real challenge to me both melodically and harmonically.  My good friend Mike Buck kindly agreed to lend a hand in this respect but, after purchasing Garritan Personal Orchestra soft synth for Logic, I was really inspired by the authentic string sounds and had a go myself.  Having a background in classical music (namely the violin) I totally underestimated what a task this was going to be!  After a long week of intensive arranging and many pints later, I finally feel as though the orchestration is starting to come together.  My sincere apologies to the length of time this song is taking but anyone who knows me, knows I am a bit of a perfectionist!!  Looking forward to finishing this song and hearing what people have to say aboot it!

T

Tom has enlisted the talent of fellow composer Mike Buck to help arrange the strings in the upcoming track “I’m Still Looking”.  Various production setbacks have delayed the uploading of this track but we are delighted to hear that it is now on track!  You can check out some of what Michael Buck has released here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Towards-Land-Michael-Buck/dp/B000OFP8R6.  Links to Michael’s website will be going up soon!

There has been minor content changes to most of the pages (specifically wording and news related) to better portray what Tom is currently working on.