About SMG Creatives

I’m SMG, short for Shona Mary Gillies, and music has been the thread running through my life for as long as I can remember. I was three years old when I first tried to copy my mum singing and playing piano with our neighbours. I failed spectacularly, of course, but something in me lit up. I was stubborn enough to keep going and soon I was begging for proper lessons.

Those lessons took me through the grades and into music college in Dundee. I loved it there — the practice rooms, the wild student nights, the sense that I was finally an adult living the life I’d always wanted. I started training to be a music teacher, but if I’m honest, all I really wanted to do was play. The teaching side came later; at that point, it was the thrill of performing that had me hooked.

After two and a half years of studying music teaching, I walked away from college without the faintest idea what I was going to do next. What I did know was that I wanted to keep playing. During my time there, I was performing with Ricky Ross — now of Deacon Blue fame, though they weren’t Deacon Blue back then. Even then, he was clearly a remarkable talent, as the rest of the world has since discovered. Playing with him was exciting and rewarding, but I reached a point where I realised there simply wasn’t enough of me to go around. Richard, as we called him then, wanted me to stay on, but I knew I couldn’t commit fully, so I made the painful decision to step away.

My journey took me to Edinburgh, where I continued my music studies, got married, and spent my weekends playing in bands. Life was full on, noisy, and wonderfully musical. I went on to study piano teaching at Napier College under Margaret Murray McLeod, an extraordinary teacher I often wished I’d had from the age of three. Her influence shaped not only how I play, but how I think about music and how I teach it.

When I left college, I began teaching piano, flute and violin, while also working as a professional musician. I played in bands anywhere between Thurso and RAF Boulmer, and spent time in piano bars, indulging my lifelong love of jazz. Over the years I’ve sat at many a grand piano in many a hotel, at home and abroad — places like The Old Course, Gleneagles, Crieff Hydro and the Petwood Hotel, the famous Dam Busters hotel. Eventually I had my own family, but I kept performing and teaching, weaving music into every season of my life.

Alongside all of that, I’ve been writing poetry since secondary school and never really stopped. Words have always been another instrument for me — a different way of shaping rhythm, emotion and story.

Then, in April 2026, everything changed in an instant. While on holiday in Tenerife, I broke my shoulder very badly — snapped my humerus in half, shattered the outside into pieces (some are still floating around), and broke my arm in three places. Suddenly, I couldn’t write with a pen, paint, draw or play the piano. All the ways I usually expressed myself were taken away overnight.

Out of sheer frustration, I went searching for something — anything — I could still do with one-hand typing that might keep me close to music. That’s when I discovered Suno, an AI songwriting platform, and decided to give it a try. I fell in love with the process. Since then, I’ve written over 50 songs using Suno as a creative partner.

For each song, I write all the lyrics and then spend a long time shaping the production. I’m very particular: I specify the instruments, key, tempo, where I want key changes, the overall mood, where I want harmonies, whether they’re male, female or mixed, when the music should slow down or build up, and much more. I also work with the stems Suno provides in the studio to refine each track. Suno absolutely deserves a mention, but the songs themselves are mine, and I hold full rights over each one.

Some songs take days to sculpt once the lyrics are on the page. Around the same time, I also started writing a pantomime. Being an Aries, I’m the first to admit I start a lot of things with great enthusiasm, and not all of them get finished — but now that I’ve told you publicly that it exists, I might just have to see it through.

Not everything I create is powered by AI, though. I also compose and record my own piano music — I promise, that part is 100% human. I’ve printed out the sheet music and I’m exploring ways to publish my piano pieces in book form. If you’d like to hear some of those compositions, you can listen on SoundCloud here: SMG Piano Compositions on SoundCloud.

SMG Creatives exists because I don’t want this journey to be a solo one forever. The name comes from my initials, but the dream is that, over time, more voices, instruments and imaginations will join in. There is so much still to do, and so little time, but I’m excited to see where the music goes next.