Latest news

Hi folks. Latest news on Rushbymusic..

'This is Me' is due to appear on Born Crain's latest album - or so we hear. Waiting for confirmation on that. 'Waiting for you to come home' is on hold for an artist in China/Taiwan. 'You Shine' could have some exciting news attached to it, but I'm having to keep that close to my chest at the moment. I've also just finished some really nice co-writes, including one with Dutch singer-songwriter Eline Chiara. Hopefully I'll be able to post that, and others, very soon.

Bought a house today :-)

C'mon, follow the blog! New tunes up, news about old tunes etc

Hi everyone! Latest news about songs and so on...

I've been busy working on new tunes and remixing or revamping older ones. 'You Shine' - which was a favourite from a few years ago - is now complete in its new form and we are hoping to release it as a downloadable single. Dave and Jessie Foz have done the cover art and it is ready to go..........but now the release has to be on hold as it is being considered for some interesting and very exciting projects coming up this year. I can't say anything at the moment (!) but news (if any is forthcoming) will be posted here very soon.

Meanwhile I have a new mix of Shizzle up on my own site, and also on Facebook and YouTube, and a new song called 'One Horse Town' which I wrote for my leaving students last year and which has become a kind of Coldplay-esque anthem for anyone thinking of making a change in their life. I'd be interested to know what you think - stop by at www.simonrushby.com for this and all my other tunes.

Oh, and how about some interaction? I'm touched to have nearly 300 'fans' on Facebook, loads of followers on Twitter, stacks more 'fans' on MySpace and hundreds of hits a day on my own site. It's really lovely. So please follow this blog and add comments, about anything I say, or anything at all to do with music. It'd be great. Thank you. Big love :-)

It's amazing...

...how long it can take for a song to 'take' with an artist! My song 'This Is Me' was written for a fundraiser for Mencap something like three years ago now, and has floated around (mainly in cyberspace and on my publisher's hard drive) ever since. Then suddenly I hear that Belgian ex-Idol artist Born Crain has recorded it and may even release it as a single. Great news, and I'm really pleased it's Born as he's already included my song 'I Won't Be There' on his last album, which charted in Belgium and Japan. We met up a couple of months ago when he was in the UK and wrote some new songs - he's a really nice, grounded guy. Let's hope it works out.

Here's wishing a very Happy Christmas and immensely successful 2010 to one and all

Simon x

Some new music

I must blog more regularly!

I've spent the last week writing like mad and am really pleased with the results. I'm going to do a new video of one of the new songs soon, but for the moment, there's a new song called 'Waiting For You To Come Home' posted on my website. It's a country-style tear jerker, sort of in the Rascal Flatts style I guess.

Towards the end of last term at my school my Year 10 GCSE set and I were really inspired by a famous video doing the YouTube rounds at the moment. A filmmaker, under the banner 'Playing For Change', has traversed the globe recording street musicians from Johannesburg to Toulouse, San Diego to Moscow and has compiled an entire album of songs carefully put together from his recordings, so that they are playing together, without actually knowing their fellow musicians.

Anyway, we thought we could do this too, and the resulting version of 'Stand By Me', as performed by 16 Year 10 students, is fun! You can download it at my website.

By the way, I'd really welcome comments on these blogs. Is there anyone out there?

Can you teach someone to write music?

How do you teach someone to be creative? I've been working on a project with some 13 year olds at my school, using logic pro to write a short piece based on three or four chords and some basic rhythms. 

Having given them the important info about chords and how they relate to each other, we then got on to talking about how you develop your piece once you've worked out your chord progression, and then how to arrange different instrumental sounds to make it effective, and then how to spice it up with some funky rhythms and maybe a catchy melody.

It struck me sometime during all this that there has to be a point where the person teaching needs to just let the student 'be creative'. So where is that point? If a student's piece is all out of time, or the melody clashes with the chords, why is that not OK? There's plenty of music out there which has little sense of rhythmic or harmonic 'order'.

I guess it could be like a politics teacher trying to impose certain political views on a student. All we should be doing in composition is showing the students what successful composers of the past did, but then letting them get on with it. After all, neither Mozart or John Lennon made their name by doing exactly what someone told them to!

Musical stars of the future

Brits always talk about the weather, and boy it was hot today! There you go...

We had a fantastic evening yesterday with all the senior musicians who I have been working with at RGS (my school). We got together at lunchtime and spent the afternoon putting together a performance of all our favourite songs, which ranged from songs from shows such as Avenue Q, Rent and West Side Story, and a great selection of classics by Dylan, Stevie Wonder, The Carpenters, my main man Billy Joel and even some Jason Mraz. We then performed them all to a warm and slightly moist audience of about 180 yesterday evening.

I don't think any of these students follow my blog (yet!?) but it was such a lot of fun and such a great opportunity for me to work on a concert with guys who undoubtedly have got such bright musical futures ahead of them. Despite their only being 18 or thereabouts they performed with so much confidence and talent, and whether singers or drummers we had no weak links and no worries about anything not going smoothly. It was a long day, but it was really satisfying.  

Miley and Kylie

Late on a Saturday night after a warm UK day! MJ really has died, and with my band we played three of his songs in our set last night, ending with 'One Day In Your Life' which I don't think I've properly listened to since it was in the charts when I was a kid.

I'm working on some new material at the moment - two songs with fellow writer Matt B. One, 'Fly With Me', is a dancey euro-pop tune in the vein of Kylie's "Spinning Around" or maybe an Empire of the Sun song (have you heard them? They are really good).

The other, which Matt wrote the bulk of, I'm quite excited about as it's our first foray into the huge market of 'tween' pop/rock along the lines of Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers etc. It's called 'With You' and Matt's daughter Jas is proving herself a very useful and worthy guide vocal singer.

People are signing up for the free downloads I'm offering but there's plenty of space for more names on my mailing list - so if you're reading about me for the first time why not click here to go to my website and sign up - no catches, nothing to lose, but four free new songs to gain. Go on.....!

Tomorrow I'm performing with some really talented students at the school I teach at, and I'm really looking forward to it. Happy days :-)

Enjoy your Sundays folks.

x