Nestled at the edge of the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland, Aedan Sherry doesn’t have to look far for inspiration. Through his music, he shares with us this inspiration. With his enrapturing, moving, evolving melodies and creative beats and rhythms, you can get lost in Aedans playful compositions. With over 14 years experience in writing music, his tracks convey happiness, optimism and more! Aedan works in several styles and genres, including Electronica, Dance, Chill Out, Alternative, and Electro.

View and listen to Aedan Sherry’s catalogue on the Lisnmusic website.

What is your musical background?
Apart from being sent to accordion lessons when I was younger, I would say I’m mostly a self taught musician. I think my love for music probably began unconsciously throughout all those years of growing up at home to the background score of my Dad’s record collection. I would be playing with colourful toy bricks and building little wooden train tracks to the score of Vivaldi or the Beatles or even Kraftwerk. So I’m sure I’ve been influenced right from the beginning to have an ear for music. Also there was the Playstation era where I did nothing but play games for hours on end providing me with a soundtrack of mixed musical genres and styles from right across the globe. I could be playing Final Fantasy for an hour or two with its wonderfully melodic Japanese instrumentals, then later I could switch to Tony Hawks Skateboarding and be listening to the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. So I definitely wasn’t left short for inspiration.

Things really started to evolve for me when I received a music sequencing game for the Playstation (Music/Music 2000). At last I could sit and create a whole song from scratch using my own melodies, beats and rhythms. I got lost in a world of composition which continues right to this present day. The love never dies.

Aeden Sherry – Lisnmusic Sampler by LisnMusic

How would you describe the style(s) of music you make? Do you focus on any specific instruments or equipment in your work?
My style varies a lot. I could be working on an orchestral piece for a week or 2 and when I’m done I could move straight into a trance or electronic tune for my next project. It all depends on how I’m feeling when I start writing. If I had to categorise my style or styles I would say I mostly work in electronica and in its many forms (electronica, ambient, dance, trance, break-beat, IDM), then in orchestral and then in world music. A lot of the time when submitting music for synchronisation I am asked what bands or existing acts my musical style sounds similar to. I find that the most difficult question to answer as I feel my music usually doesn’t sound very similar to any of them!

Most of the time I won’t have a specific idea of what I want to create. Just a very strong urge to start creating. Sometimes I’ll start with a beat, sometimes a melody, and then build from there.

At the moment my computer is my studio. I always use the same software which consists of three or four electronic synths, one software drum machine and one sampler. I have all the sounds in there that I could ever possibly need. Real instruments, flowing strings, woodwinds, brass etc. right down to hard and heavy electronic leads, fat basses and thousands of individual drum hits which I use to compile my beats and rhythms.

What successes have you had in the music/synchronisation industry so far?
I’ve been writing music for about 14 – 15 years now but only decided about a year and a half ago to go full steam ahead into writing music for synchronisation . It took a little while before things got started for me. You need patience in this business! A wait of about six months ensued before I’d made my first sale. After that it became more of a weekly or fortnightly occurrence. I am now at the point where I’ve made nearly forty sales in total since I started. My biggest success in the industry so far has actually come from right here at Lisn Music where I’ve had a song synced into an American TV series, VP Challenge . So thanks for that Lisn! I’ve also had music placed in a couple of live theatre performances for the Open Learning Initiative and for the Colorado Children’s Hospital and just recently I’ve been asked to provide music for an up and coming free running online video project which I’m quite excited about. Also there were a few television sync opportunities I had to turn down due to conflicting contracts between libraries which was unfortunate, but it was still a boost to hear that my music had been successfully selected for use in sync for television here in the UK.

Have you been involved in any exciting projects?
I had a single released on iTunes about 3 years ago with a small label in the US. It was a one off project but it was still a cool experience. The label heard my track on Myspace and got in touch with me asking if they could put some lyrics down on it. I said yes and then 2-3 months later the track was released on iTunes. Even the local paper called round to my house, did an interview and had me on the front page of their music section. It was great!

What are your goals for the future?
My main goal for the future is to be able to continue writing and hopefully reach the point where I can write on a full time basis and support my family from my musical income. At the moment I’m only writing on a part-time basis which is enough to get some good music together but with a little more time I think I could produce something that little bit extra special. One personal goal of mine is to be the guy who writes the theme music for the coverage of the next world cup on the BBC or on ITV. Its in Brazil, and there’s plenty of musical culture to source inspiration from there! You never know, it might happen! But even just to be able to tell people that I write music for a living would be a nice feeling.

To license music from the Aedan Sherry Publishing catalogue for TV, film, advertisement, game, corporate or other media project please visit the Aedan Sherry page on Lisnmusic. If you are interested in Aedan Sherry creating a bespoke composition please drop us a line.

If you’re an artist interested in licensing your music for media projects please get in touch to see how Lisnmusic can help you.