The beach is my favourite place to think.  Living in Derby, the opportunity to see the sea doesn’t arise very often, but I’ve just come back from our annual holiday in Cornwall where I turned off all devices and spent as much time as possible letting my feet and my mind wander along the coast.

The combination of tranquility, nature, the sound of the sea and general happy vibe (anyone who’s there is there because they want to be) means that there is literally nothing I love better than walking along a beach.  

I day dream a lot.  My wife will testify that I live in my own head most of the time!  It’s a wonderful place – a place full of music and beauty and sunsets and things that are possible.

I honestly think that one of the most important things for anyone, creative or not, is to dream.  It’s therapeutic and inspirational.  Everything I am doing now, I’m doing because I dreamed it up and then simply did it.  It’s a simple way to life and suits me just fine.

The only problem for me is that I don’t often find inspiration in front of a computer.  I do love my studio, and I love that other people love it here, but occasionally you have to down tools and go for a walk somewhere where no one can disturb you.  When I’m away, I find I can get a better overview of what I’m doing and come up better plans.

For anyone creative – songwriters, musicians, producers, artists, whatever you are, I urge you to stop what you’re doing every once in a while, turn your phone notifications off and go and wander somewhere beautiful, preferably on your own.  Don’t be afraid to dream big.

After all, if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?

NB: There was no way of me writing this without sounding like either a motivational life coach or an old hippy.  I make no apologies for sounding like either!

A few weeks ago, I received a brief for a library music album, asking for truly awful music – bad instrumentalists, annoying vocalists, useless songs.

It’s actually a good concept – occasionally, a film or TV series will have the sound of a young band practising next door or an instrumentalist practising in their bedroom and they’d need actual crap music for that.

Sounded like a job for me.  I contributed two hopeless tracks to the album.

The first was called ‘School Rock Band’s First Rehearsal’.  I started with guitar, trying to ensure there were errors galore.  It was actually reasonably difficult to ensure that the mistakes didn’t sound contrived but I think I got there.  

Bass followed and then drums, ensuring that I did enough ropy fills and sloppy timing to make everything sound a bit worse.

So far, so bad.  But it needed something else to take it from merely a bit crap to truly awful.

Enter my vocals, hammed up for good measure. 

It’s fair to say that most school band songs are about either girls or politics – the latter in an attempt to look edgy and ultimately impress girls.  Why not put both themes into one song?  Genius.

So the first verse is a pang to love-making, the second verse is a scathing attack on our current government.  Perfect.  Here’s the final result.

That’s not all.  I did a second song by borrowing my daughter’s friend’s violin (thanks Jenna!) and doing the worst scales known to mankind.

It was possibly the most fun I’ve had in the studio in one day, and it was very liberating being as crap as I possibly can.  

I should be crap more often.

When I was in my late teens, I had a dream. In my dream, I was standing on the balcony of a huge nightclub watching people dance when a song came on with catchy riffs, powerful drums and a huge anthemic chorus.

The song seemed to unite the club – everyone went onto the dance floor, arms around each other, hands in the air, singing along. It was incredible.

I turned to the guy next to me, an old man I didn’t know with long hair and a beard. He said, “This is your song, and everyone loves it. And I mean, EVERYONE.”

I woke up fiercely inspired and wrote a couple of songs that attempted to match the transcendent feel of the song. I never quite got there, but within a couple of years, The Killers did.

Watching them at Glastonbury this weekend, the whole set seemed geared towards the emotional release of Mr Brightside at the end. And to this day, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like the song (and wouldn’t trust anyone that said they didn’t!).

So what is it about the song?

Well, firstly it has an easy melody – the verse is practically one note. The chorus carried this on until it blasts into the stratosphere with “but it’s just a price I pay”.

The lyrics are easy to learn (the verses just repeat themselves) and are relatable. The music uses anthem chords and the musicians play a blinder.

But that can’t be it – there are thousands of songs that you could say the same for, and songs simply can’t be analysed on the sum of their parts.

Ultimately, Mr Brightside seems to have been sprinkled with a magic fairy dust that makes it anthemic, forever enjoyable, endlessly popular and brilliant. It never gets old. I wish more songs were like it.

A few video/animation companies that I compose for with have specifically asked if I have library tracks to use.  With any luck, this will soon be the case!

Regular viewers of my blog will notice that I usually put January aside to do some “non bread and butter” work.  There are usually mumblings of approaching music libraries and this is something I’ve been meaning to do for literally years, but never felt ready.

But I successfully dedicated the whole of last month to preparing a number of themed albums to submit to libraries.

For those that don’t know, music libraries provide “off the shelf”, pre-composed music for documentaries, adverts, films, explainer videos, trailers and pretty much anything else. 

If someone wants some music for a project quickly, they can type in the keywords – for example, “emotional atmospheric strings” – and find tracks that will deliver what they need for a fee.  This fee is then split between the library and the composer. 

I’ve done a ton of research, reading music library websites to find out what they want, reading Dan Graham’s excellent book A Composer’s Guide To Library Music, and generally scraping around for every bit of information I can find.

I want to target the high quality libraries, but it’s tricky to know what to submit.  For example, I can do happy ukulele and clapping tracks or atmospheric ambient beds as well as the next person, but libraries tend to be flooded with those so it’s about providing something usable but a bit different.  And most importantly, sticking to genres I feel comfortable with.

After going through the 3,000 (!) unused pieces of unused music I have, I’ve narrowed it down to 60 pieces, spread over a few themed albums – one called Filthy Rock, one called Wedding and Proposal Builds, one called Documentary Piano, and a few others.

Now the hard work begins.  On the off chance that someone (a) listener to the tracks and (b) likes them enough to add them to their library, I need to keep up the quality and maintain enthusiasm, even though the money can take several years to come through.

Wish me luck.  I’ll let you know how I get on in a future blog!

2018 has been a busy, busy year.  I’ve worked with some great artists but not done as many blogs as usual so I thought I’d mention them all here…

Firstly, congratulations to Kezia Gill who recently won at the British Country Music Awards.  Her album is a masterpiece and we’ve just finished working on her next EP which will be released in the new year.  Watch this space…

Speaking of country pop, Billy Reynolds is an artist from Nottingham who came out with a very radio friendly track called Heartbeat.  Great songwriting from him, and he has plenty more up his sleeve!

I absolutely love the song Colours of my Life by Italian singer/songwriter Irene Conti.  I was nearly brought to tears when I heard this song as it has a beautiful chorus and lyrics that reflect what I (and hopefully lots of other people) think.

I worked with Nadia Rae on the title track of her EP Yolo during her brief time in the Midlands.  Nadia is a fiercely talented songwriter, a great singer, and Yolo is one of the most poppy things I’ve done.

It occurred to me recently that I hadn’t mentioned the work I did with David Lacey on three tracks for his album.  The three songs I worked on, Treading Water, Jrunk (real title) and Retro are expertly written and David’s voice was an absolute joy to record.  

Georgie Hanson is a new artist who quietly put out an acoustic pop EP called Roads and Paths this year. There’s more to come from her, and impending motherhood will give her plenty extra to write about!

And I’ve been working with my namesake Ben Haynes on tracks for his upcoming album/EP (he’s not sure which yet), the first fruits of which is a Paul Simon-ish song called Only You Make This World Right. We had a bit of fun putting that one together!

I’m still really flattered that people choose to work with me, and I never get bored to hearing new songs and working out the best ways of getting the artist to sound their best.  As long as I can carry on doing this, I’ll be a happy chap!