VIRTUAL POP ORCHESTRA

Latest album Mortality available from Last FM, 18/2/2011.

Semi-finalist for the second year running, plus two Commended Entry Awards, in the 2009 UK Songwriting Contest. Two Commended Entry Awards in 2010. This followed being a semi-finalist and two other Commended Entry Awards in 2008 and a Highly Commended Entry award in 2007. This makes nine awards for songwriting in four years.

The purpose of this website is to make the songs available to listen to. This is highly unusual music, and you're unlikely to find anything quite like it anywhere else. Think Basil Fawlty singing about anything and everything to tunes written by Beethoven reincarnated as a computer twiddling pop tune writer, influenced by The Stone Roses, Fleetwood Mac, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Monty Python, Handel, Gilbert & Sullivan, etc., with an occasional instrumental thrown in. As I said this is very odd and really has to be heard.

The website also contains information about the songs and how they were recorded, although you won't normally find lyrics to the songs (which are included with any CD distributed by me).

Note - Beach Sounds was the last CD recorded using Music Creator and the Advent; I have switched to using a MacBook Pro and Logic Express 9.

Please use the buttons to navigate the site. Free downloads available - click the Songs button.

I'm interested in you - if you have a minute, can I ask a question or two? (You can also leave a message for me there with your email address; but please, no adverts.)

- New material is likely to be uploaded to MySpace first, though bear in mind that these are likely to be working versions - the finished ones will be significantly better.

- Completed CDs will be uploaded to LastFM.

- I also have a broadjam listing which I can put a few songs on. These play using a flash player plugin.

For anyone who feels like having a go themselves, a word about software.

UK SONG CONTEST: The end of Creation scored 6 and reached the semi-finals in the Instrumental Category of the 2009 UK Songwriting Competition. Tragic and Think of something else each scored 5 and received commended entry awards. Let's all have a party scored 6 and got to the semi-finals of the Open category in 2008, in addition to two other commended entry awards. Rocking chair blues and A day at the seaside scored 5 and received Commended Entry awards in 2010.

Results of this annual contest don't have any official date although they are likely to come out in August or September, sometimes earlier, depending on the volume of entries and on whether it has been held early, as it was in 2010.

Some of these pages may not display correctly on AOL. I suggest you use Internet Explorer or Firefox and check your internet settings to make sure your browser checks for newer versions of pages every visit. You may also wish to reset your browser settings to the defaults and disable AOL Topspeed.

Some people are apparently getting error code 404 file not found while navigating this site. I've checked it thoroughly for broken links, and so has Oona, and we haven't found any. If you get this problem please contact me and tell me what you were doing.

Some search engines find this site and some don't. I do get regular hits from web crawlers. The site has been running since March 2007.