Bio – Simon Herring

Hi, I’m Simon Herring, a Composer, Musician and Sound Designer based in St Ives, Cornwall.

I like to think I have always been a creative individual, finding that Music and SoundDesign felt the most comfortable and natural. I am mostly self taught, in part influenced by an early music teacher’s method of “pick it up and play/make noises until something happens” and my guitar teacher, Roger Kelly’s method of improvisation and “no need to learn the piece note for note, learn the progression, the scale(s) and express yourself”. I have found that having had no real formal music education has its advantages and disadvantages. Yet my love of studying music and musical ideas has mean’t that my musical journey has been personal, varied and always interesting.

I started out on the guitar, joining a number of bands in which I have played across the country in a variety of venues, the odd festival and a couple of live broadcast slots on the radio. My love of trying out different instruments has given me the opportunity of seeing a band from a guitarists, drummers and bassists perspective. This proved to be more insightful than I would have imagined. I feel it has certainly helped me as a musician. At the moment I’m in the bands (SCi-Fi Circus and The Echo Cult).

A friend asked me to write some music for a film he was making and through this experience I developed a love for writing music for film, where you are called on to help tell the story or message the film maker wants to make. From this I have gone on to score for a variety of films in a number of different genres. Some of which have gone on to win a number of awards and shown at various prestigious festivals. This has also lead me into writing music for other forms of multimedia such as promotional advertising and video games.

My interest in sound design and foley started when I was asked if I could do some foley for a film. This involved creating all of the sounds (there was literally no audio on the film). Despite being quite a job to undertake I found the task very interesting and rewarding. Since then I have carried out foley work on a number of short films, animations, advertising, podcasts and in assisting the artist Silvio Palladino in a workshop at the Tate Britain were the idea was to assist members of the public in making painting come alive with foley.

My goal is to keep writing and performing in a wide variety of music, film, art and any other field that might prove interesting.

If you are looking for original Music and/or Sound Design/Foley for a film, multimedia or any other project or idea please Get in Touch.

Thanks