Lo-fi, cinematic, dark and light — somewhere between Radiohead, Portishead and Bonobo.
Selected work
Four finished records. Each one arrived as something small and left as a mastered track.
Full catalogue on Spotify ↗
Christina wrote the lyric and vocal melody over my demo. I arranged it into a verse/chorus structure, worked through the sticking points with her, recorded her percussion, produced and mixed. Mastered with an engineer.
Rosie and Poppy sent the poem unmetered. I wrote back with three musical directions; we chose one. I built the instrumentation around it, ran remote sessions with string players, and time-aligned the vocals to fit. Mixed in-house, mastered with an engineer.
Frankie sent the spoken-word piece as a voice note. I recorded three musical ideas; we picked one. A cellist and a violinist wrote their own parts; I comped and arranged them. Mixed and mastered with an engineer.
We built it verse by verse across different days, adding sections, cutting them, restructuring, until a condensed final version landed.
You don’t have to be in the room.
You send me what you’ve got. We talk it through, on a call or by message, whichever suits you: where it came from, what you can already hear in it, where you want it to end up.
At your end you need a Mac or PC, headphones and an internet connection that holds a video call. A microphone helps if you want to record from home; if you don’t have one, we work around it.
I build it, then we talk
I take what you’ve sent, produce the track, and send it back for you to live with. You tell me what’s working and what isn’t, by message, voice note or on a call, and it goes round again until it’s right. I’ve worked this way before, start to finish, with people I’ve never met.
We build it together
We stay on the call and work in real time. You hear the session at full quality as I work, you see what I’m doing on screen, and you can play or sing from your own room — a vocal, a guitar part, whatever it needs — while we’re both listening. You send me the files afterwards.
We can move between the two as the song needs it. If you’re in London, we can also work in the same room.
Bring your parts. I’ll bring mine.
Every project’s different, so we work out the terms together and put them in writing before we start.
When we work live, sessions run a couple of hours at a time. In between I build the track out on my own, try ideas, book session musicians, and send you what I’ve got. We go back and forth until it’s a finished, mastered record.
I’ve got hundreds of my own unfinished ideas here: guitar parts, half-built productions, sounds that haven’t found their song yet. If one of them fits what you’re making, we’ll build it into the track.
Whatever you have — a rough demo, a voice note, a chorus, a verse — we’ll shape it together. Or we can start from scratch.
Before you send anything.
- Do you work with artists remotely, or in person?
- Mostly remotely. The live sessions run on Muse, which is like Zoom but for musicians: you join from the Muse app on a Mac or PC, it's free for you, and you hear the session at full quality. In between we can talk by message or on a call. If you're in London, we can also work in the same room.
- What do you do?
- I compose, arrange, record and produce, from a rough idea through to a finished, mastered record. I book session musicians where the song needs them, and I've got hundreds of my own unfinished parts if one of them fits.
- What if I've only got a rough idea, not a finished song?
- That's the normal starting point. A voice note, a few chords, a verse with no chorus: send what you have and we'll build from there. Or we can start from scratch.
- Can I name you in a funding application?
- Yes. Applying to PRS Foundation, PPL Momentum or a similar fund? Send me the track and the deadline, and we'll work out together what goes in the application before you submit.
- My songs don't sound like Radiohead. Does that matter?
- Not at all. Those three names are a ballpark for a lot of what I make, not the whole picture. I've also made light, open, natural-sounding songs, and some that are more upbeat and vibey. Send it over, I'll listen, and I'll tell you what I can bring to it.
- How do I start?
- Send me your idea and where you want it to end up, with the form below or by email to hello@davidgoodenough.com. I read everything myself. If it's a project I'd want to be part of, I'll come back to you about how we'd work together.
Twenty-odd years of finding the part that fits.
I was 16 years old, writing a song with a friend.
He'd written a chord progression on guitar and I was playing those chords while he tried to figure out the lead guitar part that went over the top of it.
Each time we played it he got a little bit closer to the part locking in and being just exactly the part that fitted the chords and the vibe when, all of a sudden, the part just landed and it locked in.
He exclaimed “Did you feel that? Something just hit my heart!” I felt it too.
In that moment, I like to think that my heart was telling me “This is what I want to do”.
Since then I’ve always been searching for the moments when musical parts just fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle.
I love the moment that someone else writes a part that I could never have thought of, that locks in with something I made. I love it when parts that I write seem to go together perfectly, like they were always meant to and you’ve just discovered it.
And I want my life to be about creating that as much as possible.
That's still how I work. Someone brings in whatever they have — a voice note, a few chords, a solo they want to build around, sometimes just an idea — and we find the parts that lock in together and make a finished record out of it.
Send me what you’ve got.
A rough demo, a voice note, a chorus, a verse, or just the idea. Tell me where you want it to end up and, if there’s a deadline, when.
I read everything myself. If it’s a project I’d want to be part of, I’ll come back to you about how we’d work together, by email or on a call, whichever you’d rather.
Prefer email? hello@davidgoodenough.com