People keep asking me how I make the music.

It comes up a lot.

How does one person actually play and record everything - the drums, the bass, all the guitars, the keyboards, the vocals? How does that work in practice?

The honest answer is that I've been doing it this way for so long that it feels completely natural to me. 

But it starts with how I write most of the songs. And to some people, that’s a little odd too!

Sometimes I have a lyric and a melody, but most of the time - I don’t. I have just a little idea, and I’ll mess around with it. On a guitar or a piano, I’ll fiddle and wrestle that into a melody and end up with the music for a song. Often with no lyrics. And then the words come after, and I don’t really know how or where from! Invariably, they turn up and fit with the music I’ve teased out of that first nugget.

Once I’ve written the song (and often still with no lyrics) I sit down, I work out what the track needs, and I record each part one at a time. Then I listen back, fix what doesn't work, and build it up until it sounds the way I had it in my head.

But I've never been able to explain that in a way that quite lands. The words don't really do it justice.

So, when a friend offered me time in his studio in Belgium, I thought, let's just film the final stage. The bit where it all fits together, and I’m recording the final parts.

The video above is me doing exactly that with ‘Time Machine’ - the opening track from my debut album ‘This Is Your Life’ - completely live.

Every part, on camera, in one session. Nothing overdubbed afterwards. What you're watching is exactly how the track gets made. It’s effectively a recreation of how it was done many years ago, when I recorded the definitive version that’s on the album.

It's a strange thing to watch yourself back doing something you've done alone for years. From the inside, it's just work - the same process I've gone through a hundred times. Seeing it from the outside, I can understand why people find it hard to picture.

Time Machine has always been one of the tracks I'm most proud of. It was the first thing people heard from ‘This Is Your Life’ and it set the tone for everything that followed, the TV placements, the sync in a Hollywood trailer, the reaction from the critics – the three things that made me believe that if I could find ways for people to just hear my music then some would love it. Thankfully, that’s proven to be true on a very DIY level, and I’m very lucky that it means I get to make more music.

Many early reviews of that album found it hard to fathom that one person had made the whole thing – written, performed and produced. It’s more common these days than it was back then (Steve Wilson, amongst many others, being a case in point), and I’m far from being the only one who does it this way. Still, I hope this gives some sense of how I do it.

There are three more of these videos coming over the next few months – ‘Supercool’, ‘Feel Your Eyes’ and ‘Rowboat Song’ - each filmed the same way. I'll post them here and let everyone on the mailing list know when each one goes up.

I hope you like them (editing them was a painful nightmare for all involved…)

I’ve always felt that I don’t really promote ‘This Is Your Life’ enough. So many people find me with a free download of ‘Teaser Trailer’ and then go on to buy that on CD or vinyl (which is great), but many never pick up that original debut album.

And, just in case you’ve never heard that, ‘This Is Your Life’ is my debut album. ‘Teaser Trailer’ is actually other songs from around that time (and some alternate versions). As the real starting point for my career, it’s this album that set the stage.

So, now that I’ve made these videos, it’s as good a time as any to encourage anyone who hasn’t ever bought ‘This Is Your Life’ to get a copy – at a special discount.

Click through the link below and check it out.