Recently and after many requests I felt drawn to producing and releasing my first solo CD, the content and repertoire for my ‘This Is The Moment’ CD came quite quickly as the twelve songs on the CD are most of my favourites with a special meaning to me with there lyric, or like an old friend they had been there at a crucial moment in my life.
It’s not until you decide to do something that you realise how much work is involved, in fact deciding on the songs was the easy part, I then had to have my tracks produced in the studio by London Arrangements and once produced and ready I needed to rehearse them to make sure the feel and key were right.
On to the ‘Meat In The Sandwich’ which is the actual vocal recording at Kenilworth Studios, London, The whole process takes a lot of time and in a single four hour session with the excellent sound engineer and musician Chris Traves we would get perhaps two tracks down on tape, after a few of these sessions over the weeks the tracks are ready to be mixed and mastered and when all of this was done it was such a wonderful feeling of achievement and expression on listening back to the finished songs.
All of the music used has to be licensed and credited to the creators and all of the contracts and paperwork needed to be filled in and submitted well in advance of any CD release.
There is then the design of a CD cover, I had a photo shoot to get some shots for the front cover and album booklet, this was done on location in London by the master photographer Casey Moore, what a talented guy with such a refined eye.
The CD cover then needed to be designed and Rob Petrie of The Pet Shop Boys CD design fame was my man for this job.
The rest of the CD booklet and even a website had to be designed and created and the very creative and patient Martin Roberts of Carrdale was very accommodating and visionary with some great ideas.
The master copy was then sent to the replication company with the CD sleeve and booklet design and a wait of two weeks before the finished product landed on the doormat. Seeing and hearing the finished CD is a beautiful feeling and I knew the work of performance and promotion could then begin in earnest.
My second CD ’And I Love You So’ based on the theme of love came about shortly after the first and to have the two CDs side by side in HMV on Oxford Street was a sight to behold for me and something of a dream come true.
All of the hard work was very well worth it and I look forward to repeating the process with a third album soon!