My Journey

The story behind SMG Creatives and my life in music

1. SMG Creative…..

SMG Creatives is the place where all the threads of my life meet – music, words, storytelling, and the urge to keep creating no matter what gets in the way. The ‘Creatives’ part is important to me. This isn’t meant to be a solo project; it’s a home for collaboration, conversation, and ideas that need more than one mind.

2. Love Affair With Music….

My love affair with music started when I was very young, I wanted to be able to play like my mum. I tried to copy her and then had piano lessons, working steadily through the grades. On leaving school I studied music Class teaching at college Dundee College of Education. All those wild student nights, endless rehearsals, and concerts felt like freedom. I was finally an adult, and music was where I truly belonged.

3. More Music?…

Whilst I was at college, I had the chance to play with Ricky Ross who formed Deacon Blue before Deacon Blue existed. We played church halls and the teens loved us, I really felt that Ricky had something special, and soon the music scene in Scotland would find out…. I decided to change direction…..class music teaching was not for me, so I went to Napier to study music. I had no choice but to pull out of the band. I often look back happily, at this part of my life.

4. Life as a Working Musician….

In Edinburgh I studied piano teaching at Napier College under the remarkable Margaret Murray McLeod – she was not only an amazing teacher, but a fantastic pianist. . I began teaching piano, flute, and violin, whilst also working as a professional musician.

Over the years, I’ve had the joy of sitting at some beautiful grand pianos in hotels across the UK and abroad – The Old Course Hotel, Gleneagles, Crieff Hydro, and the famous Petwood Hotel, better known as the Dam Busters hotel in Woodall Spa.

I became very involved in drama and music over the years, in creative projects, and I also founded a threatre company for adults with learning difficulties, who performed to thousands of people during the time I was with them

5. The Accident

In April 2026, whilst on holiday in Tenerife I fell and smashed my shoulder. I broke the head of the humerus in half, and the outside was shattered, there are still pieces of bone floating around my shoulder, and I broke my arm in three places. The need to create was still so strong, that out of the sheer frustration, I searched for anything and everything that I could do creatively, with music. That search led me to ‘Suno’ an AI songwriting platform – and something in me lit up. Here was a way to stay close to music, even when my body wouldn’t cooperate in the ways it used to. Since discovering Suno I’ve written over 50 songs.

I write the lyrics and spend a long time shaping the production of each track – choosing instruments, key, tempo, key changes (or not), mood, harmonies (male, female, or mixed), and the places where the music should breathe, speed up, or slow right down. I then work with the stems Suno provides, refining each song in the studio until it sounds the way I hear it in my head. Some songs take days to shape once the lyrics are written. ‘It keeps me off the streets.’

I own the copyright of all the songs that I write with Suno and I always credit the fact that I’ve used this platform.

6. Beyond AI: My Piano Music…

Alongside my work with Suno, I still compose and record original piano music – not using AI!. There’s nothing quite like the feel of real keys under your fingers, even when those fingers are still recovering. I’ve printed out the sheet music that I’ve written for piano for myself, and I’m exploring the idea of publishing my piano compositions in book form. Like so many creative processes, it’s a work in progress.

If you’d like to hear where all of this has led, you can listen to some of my piano compositions on this website on the LINKS page.

Playing still isn’t nearly as effortless or joyful as it once was – I’ve been told recovery may take a year or more – but creatively I’ve never felt more awake. In a strange way, that painful moment in Tenerife opened the door to a whole new chapter I might never have otherwise discovered!

8. My Hopes For The Future

SMG Creatives is my creative hub, but it’s also an open door, a space to work with others, and a space to showcase what we do. Songs, scripts, stories and music all brought together under one roof. At the moment I’m writing a pantomime, a brand new story, but there’s still a long way to go to finish it but the full story is locked in, and if anyone would like to work alongside me on this, then please get in touch….you can pm me on facebook, or instagram when I get that up and running, and there is a phone number on the contact page.