Location: Liverpool, England
Member since: August 31, 2013
Tracks in portfolio on MusicRevolution.com: 42 (click here to hear all tracks) http://www.musicrevolution.com/search?artist=75838
Background—
Graham Trust is an independent musician from Liverpool, England. Graham’s music can best be described as bright, catchy vocal pop / rock songs with profound lyrical content.
Musical education–
My Dad was a church organist and choirmaster, so I was born into a musical household. I joined his choir as an 8 year old, and he taught me how to sing with a pleasing tone, how to breathe properly, how to phrase and how to enunciate – all vital tools in a singer’s arsenal. I know that my love of vocal harmonies came from that choir. I could hear how all the parts sung by the sopranos, altos, tenors and basses interacted. Of course, when I started to compose and sing my own music, I disregarded a great deal of what I’d learned at church. You can’t sing like a boy soprano in a rock band and get away with it…….….well, maybe you can if you’re Brian Wilson.
Despite my dad’s best efforts, I never did learn to read or write music. I am very glad of that because I don’t have a set of rules telling me “You can’t do that”. As my songs develop, they just go anywhere they want to go. I suppose I’ve learned everything I know just by listening to how others do it. I was fortunate to have a rock music loving big sister who introduced me to all the greats – The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, T.Rex, Jethro Tull….the list is endless. If you can’t learn from that lot, there’s no hope for you as a songwriter.
I taught myself to play on a dusty old Spanish guitar my dad bought for himself, but didn’t take up. I found I could play passable imitations of my boyhood heroes – The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and other early punk bands. I bought chord books and then the sheet music of The Beatles and Bowie and many others. You learn an awful lot about how pop songs are constructed that way, and you learn a whole catalogue of new tricks and chords to incorporate in your own work.
The important thing is to keep listening, keep learning, keep playing and keep writing. Once you take your foot off the gas, it’s hard to get back up to speed.
Advice you’d give a younger person interested in a music career–
I could condense my advice down to one word “PRACTICE”. So many people pick up a musical instrument for the first time and put it down again a few minutes later, dismayed that they can’t play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix or the piano like Rick Wakeman. It takes dedication. You’ve got to put in the hours because it’s not easy. The Beatles were a highly accomplished band, but even they felt the need to practice each song ad nauseam in the studio before they committed anything to tape. Even after all that practice, they would often record 30 or more takes of a track before they were satisfied. If even the most talented of people have to practice hard to get things right, then you will have to practice even harder. Usain Bolt didn’t just turn up at the Olympics and win the 100 metres. That took years of accumulated hard work and constant PRACTICE. It’s the same in every field of human activity; you only get out what you put in.
3 albums you would take with you to a desert island–
The Beatles – Revolver– For me this is a far better album of songs than their Sergeant Pepper’s. Revolver just about beats Abbey Road into second place. The Beatles had begun experimenting with new recording techniques on Rubber Soul, but Revolver was the album where they really let themselves go for the first time. You won’t find too many better opening album tracks than George Harrison’s ‘Taxman’. McCartney provided two of his sweetest sad songs – ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘For No one’ as well as the outstanding and upbeat ‘Got to get you into my life’; while Lennon threw off the shackles of conventional song writing for the first time. Listen to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘She Said She Said’ for proof of that. This was 1966. People wouldn’t have known what had hit them. However, it’s the high quality of all the songs from start to finish which makes Revolver the best of the best.
David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust– This is another album straight out of left field. It’s extraordinary to find that this is the follow up album to the brilliantly sophisticated Hunk Dory. You might have expected Bowie to have gone further down the road of grand orchestration, but he went right back (almost) to basics with a classic guitar, bass and drums rock band line up. Basic is not a word you can apply to any song that Bowie writes. The darkly existential lyrical themes suggest the life knowledge of a man twice his age. ‘Rock n Roll Suicide’ and ‘Five Years’ provided the album’s outstanding upliftingly bleak moments; while ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Starman’ introduce some poppy light relief. However, everything song, from start to finish is a masterpiece within itself.
Producer, Ken Scott, captured the energy and virtuosity of a band at the top of its game. Here you had a genius singer / songwriter accompanied by the great all round musician Mick Ronson, who could play the keys just as well as Rick Wakeman, but also played guitar as well as any man who ever lived, but it’s his guitar work which really drives this album. Ronson, the bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey had played with each other for many years and were as tight a rhythm section as you can ever hope to come across.
The Very Best of The Vow– I’m hoping not to get marooned too soon on that desert island. I need a couple more years before I can get this one finished. The Vow has produced 2 albums so far – 2012’s ‘For a Dreamer’ and 2013’s ‘Bluer than you’. I’m hoping to complete another album in 2014 and, from the total of 36 songs, produce a compilation album of 14 or 15 of the best tracks. I only hope that other people will enjoy it as much as I will. If any of my songs gets compared favourably against the likes of Bowie or The Beatles, then all my work will have been worthwhile, and I will die on my island a happy man!
Some of your favorite tracks that you would want us to feature–
‘Spacedust’ http://www.musicrevolution.com/search/?trackid=42904
“Bluer Than You” http://www.musicrevolution.com/search/?trackid=42978
“Wintertime” http://www.musicrevolution.com/search/?trackid=42989
We thank Graham for sharing some of his musical background with us and for contributing his tracks to MusicRevolution.com, the Royalty-Free Music Marketplace. Graham Trust and The Vow’s music is anything but stock music. This is unique indie music. If you need catchy pop or rock tracks with vocals, give Graham’s music a listen.
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Chris Cardell is the co-founder of MusicRevolution.com http://www.musicrevolution.com, a royalty-free music marketplace with over 26,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, advertisers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of professional musicians. MusicRevolution.com also provides custom music production and custom music streams. The entire MusicRevolution.com production music library is available for third-party distribution and bulk licensing for background music for retail, restaurants and businesses, and for other commercial applications. Cardell has been involved with digital content and E-Commerce since the mid-1990’s.
