Musician
A totally self taught musician, having had a recording studio from being a teen and a massive faze on Mike Oldfield, I learnt to play quite a few instruments or at least, learnt them well enough to play in the studio! Instruments include: Electric, Acoustic, Lap Steel Guitar. Electric Bass, Double Bass, Drums, Piano / Keyboard, Violin, Tin Whistle, Harmonica!
I got my (own) first instrument (semi acoustic electric bass) when I was 8 years old although there was always a piano or electric organ knocking around the house.
Being the most uncomfortable live performer in the room, I am definitely a 'back-room boy', and only ever really at home playing in a recording studio.
I joined British band The Curragh Sons playing Irish trad touring the UK and Ireland extensively. And I must say that I enjoyed every minute. Even when the band was down to just the two of us.. Yes, I've pulled on the Curraghboy strip, even when there was just Woody and me stripped down to our Jockstraps!
In March 2012 I joined Irish band Whiskey in the Jar again playing upright bass. And I must say that I enjoy every minute. What a great bunch of guys..
Sound Engineer
Self taught sound engineer recording all types of music. Work for all the terrestrial TV channels and many radio stations during a brief partnership with Buzz Hawkins (Billy Henshaw). Specialising in Cubase and Pro Tools. Cowbrook Mill is now closed and in fact now converted into a private dwelling however, I now have a state of the art recording suit with an RME 96 channel realtime rig, though at present mostly for audio post production work for Cinema and TV.
Electronics Engineer / Designer
Self taught electronics engineer (with a lot of early learning help from electronics guru and well loved friend Chris Gibson).
At six years old I used my first ever spending money on a trip to the hardware store in Charlesworth with my Dad and bought a bulb holder (with bulb) some wire and a battery..
I have a particular fascination on the physics side of electronics. Specialising in communications and audio equipment and some 'own design' electronics including: binary re-addressing circuits, studio quality audio pre-amps, reference microphones, piezoelectric instrument pre-amps, audio grade power supplies, guitar effects, midi controllers etc..
Programming
Self taught, specialising in Full Stack web design, SEO, Unix / Linux, PHP Scripting, ASP scripting, SQL / NoSQL database management, embedded systems, deep dive into C++ eventually disregarded due to the inherent 'crutch' of indexing problems and too many abstractions away from the electronics bare metal. Python aficionado, iOS developer.
My current fave is good ol' C and it's 'skin of the teeth' precision! And from 2023 to 2025 I have been working on several ground up projects for the cinema industry using C exclusively, now moving on to several commercial projects using AMD FPGA soc devices writing my own IP's in the fabric due to the extortionate licensing fees!
"My first computer was a Sinclair ZX 81 followed swiftly by a ZX Spectrum. I used to program my own games as the ones available at the time were rubbish.. I once stayed indoors for 3 Months programming a new game! Even earlier than that, I had an Atari 2600 video computer system (one of the earliest games consoles) with the keyboard add-on. I then moved on to just about every home computer available at the time including: Acorn (BBC Micro), Apple Europlus Later, IBM 8086, Amiga. I also had one of the first Atari ST's available in the country running mostly, Steinberg Pro 24. At the time, my speciality was programming vector graphics on my Europlus". I even had a brief encounter with Cobol!
Web
Says Wal, system administrator and chief full stack web site designer at StrumIT, "The thing is, when you launch a web site, most 'good' designers would beta test the site extensively before launching it. Well here at Strumit, we beta test the s*** out of it on our own private testing servers, so that it actually works properly the first time (hosts and their servers permitting). This way we keep our customers happy".
Luthier
Self taught Luthier specialising in electric / acoustic guitar repair / modification. Violin repair / restoration and bow re-hair (without a jig!). Some examples here.
Hobbies / Interests
Hill Walking, Cycling, listening to live amateur music and going to the pub!