Violin

Favourite artist: J.S. Bach 1685-1750
Favourite album: Rumours (Fleetwood Mac, 1977)

I began writing music at age 9. We were given time to draw at school and I remember drawing my own staves and putting notes on them. Steadily I’ve improved slightly and achieved a BA Hons Music from University of York and have continued to compose since then. I started playing violin aged 7 but until joining The Paul Mirfin Band, it wasn’t ever a major focus for me. Now I love playing and am learning new styles and techniques that I deploy in my composing and arrangements for the band. Paul’s lyrics, riffs and chords often provide the inspiration and sometimes when he plays alone you can hear the other music coming through. It’s a privilege to work with this band as well as the talented vocalists, dancers, artists the production team at Homefire, photographers, videographers and many more people we’ve been helped by creatively. It’s also been an amazing experience meeting fans and getting to know people at our gigs.

I tend to have a limited number of four or five songs at a time that I will listen to over and over. Usually I’ll find live videos to watch so that I can see the band actually play. Over the last few days I have been watching the Glastonbury version of ‘Just’ by Radiohead a lot. They have been one of my favourite bands ever since I was reintroduced (everyone has heard ‘No Surprises’ but I’d never dug further down) to them by a classmate I took A-Level biology with. As someone who gets bored and jaded easily by lack of ingenuity in music I find Radiohead’s individual use of melody, rhythm and harmony a blessing and a great palette-cleanser.

John