Music

I play bass. I'm learning through Rocksmith 2014, with my kids learning alongside me, and where the tools didn't suit a beginner I built my own.

Tools I built so my kids could learn music

• Rocksmith Easy Mode

  Slows Rocksmith 2014's minigames down so an absolute beginner can play. Tuned over four rounds of playtesting with an eight-year-old.

• plluminati

  Turns a Yamaha EZ-150 light-up keyboard into a practice trainer that lights the next note and waits. No dependencies and 144 tests.

I make music in Reason too, for myself.

What’s on the stereo

Picked from my listening history, rather than a chart of it.

• The Smashing Pumpkins
• Nine Inch Nails
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• TOOL
• IDLES
• A Perfect Circle
• Fugazi
• Stiff Little Fingers
• Bill Evans
• Max Richter

The chart is there too: 2,637 hours of Spotify since 2018. What I listen to →

Gigs

24 gigs since my first, Iron Maiden at the King's Hall on 24 May 1993. Every one of them →

• Guns N' Roses at Slane, 2017: the night we heard the whole show twice
• The Lost Weekend, 2000: Nine Inch Nails cancelled and Ash faced the crowd
• Big Day Out, Milton Keynes, 1999: Metallica, Manson and the bottles