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 have been in many bands over the years, mostly playing electric guitar live and in the studio.
I found a rekindled love for bass when I bought what I thought was a Fender P bass copy. It turned out to be a 1981 but marked with an 'S' serial number due to Fender's decade decal transition period? It was a great bass and I played it in several bands including Ink, The Curragh Sons and Whiskey in the Jar. after many fret leveling sessions I realized that it was fataly flawed with the relief in the neck being way too far towards the nut of the bass. I did consider steam heat treatment but I eventually swapped it for a 5 string Music Man. I bought an Upright Bass and 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 in the band 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. 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 though at present mostly for audio post production work for Cinema.
I recently re-designed my mobile recording rig, .............
Electronics Engineer / Designer
Self taught electronics engineer (with a lot of early learning help from electronics guru and well loved friend Chris Gibson), though somewhat offset by his business partner Jason Scaratt, Procomm, Ashton, UK and his continual questioning of my ability.
At six years old I used my first ever spending money on a trip to ..... in Charlesworth with my Dad and bought a bulb holder (with bulb) some wire and a battery..
I have a particular interest in the physics side of electronics, rather than using the well trodden path of water and tap (faucet) analogies and the well established (and quite simply wrong) 'electron flow' model, I prefer to understand the physics of electrons and how they interact with the materials in the components. Specialising in communications and audio equipment and many '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, Cinematography equipment etc..
Computer 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 way too many abstractions away from the electronics. Python aficionado, iOS developer.
My current fave is good ol' C and it's 'skin of the teeth' precision! And from 2023 to 2026 I have been working on several ground up projects for the cinema industry using C exclusively.
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! No Computer Science courses required.. To me, it has always just come naturally..
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!