Martin Lloyd Howard’s "Surrey Bells": Capturing the Sound of Bells Through Guitar
Surrey Bells by Martin Lloyd Howard: An Instrumental Ode to the English Countryside.
“Surrey Bells” by Martin Lloyd Howard is a short instrumental piece built around a simple but very clear idea: the sound of church bells carrying across the English countryside. Rather than trying to recreate actual bells, Howard uses two guitars to create the feeling of hearing them from different points across a valley.
The whole piece was recorded at home using a Tanglewood steel-string guitar, with the second guitar part added afterwards. Both parts were played in DADGAD tuning, which gives the guitars a fuller and more open sound. One of the guitars is treated to sound more distant, while the other feels closer. The back-and-forth between the two creates the main movement of the composition. Surrey Bells by Martin Lloyd Howard: Music Inspired by a Winter Morning.
What makes “Surrey Bells” work is how much of a picture it manages to create without using vocals or a long arrangement. You can almost imagine standing somewhere in the Surrey countryside on a cold, bright morning and hearing bells coming from far away. The piece is peaceful, but it isn't completely still. The two guitar parts keep answering each other, giving it a gentle sense of movement.
Howard's background also comes through in the playing. Originally trained as a classical guitarist, he has moved across folk, blues, and rock, and that range is useful here. His use of altered tuning gives the piece more room and depth than a straightforward acoustic guitar arrangement might have.
“Surrey Bells” is the kind of instrumental track that doesn't demand too much from the listener. It can sit quietly in the background, but there are enough details in the guitar parts to reward closer listening. More than anything, it shows how a simple idea, played with the right sound and arrangement, can create a surprisingly strong sense of place.
We got a chance to interact with Martin; here is how it went:
Could you tell us a little about your journey with music and how you first got into playing the guitar?
As a teenager, I was a massive fan (and still am) of bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and wanted to play the guitar like Jimmy Page. My parents bought me a nylon-string guitar, and I went to folk guitar lessons at school to learn some basic chords and strumming. At one of the lessons, a fellow pupil (an excellent classical guitarist, it turns out) played “Romanza,” a famous piece from the classical canon, and I was blown away. So I took classical lessons for a couple of years, which embedded my technique and influences me to this day. Over the decades since, I have explored other genres (including Jimmy Page-style rock to complete the circle), mostly teaching myself, but with some courses and training sessions, mainly on electric guitar. I’ve ended up still focused mainly on solo classical guitar stuff, but have been able to pick up from my other explorations to improve my composition skills and also play other types of music. Sorry, a long answer, but it’s a complicated story.
You’ve explored different styles of music over the years. How has your sound changed as you’ve grown as a musician?
I think at one level, it’s become more varied as I have explored new genres and instrumentation. But I think it’s also true that I have focused much more on the nature and quality of the individual sounds I am making, and I think that’s reflected in what I am playing and recording now, compared with, say, five years ago. It’s a continuous learning process.
What usually inspires you when you sit down to write or create a new piece of music?
Usually it comes from a particular phrase or chord sequence that emerges when I am improvising (or maybe doodling!) on a guitar - mostly, but not always, on my fifty-year-old classical guitar. Having fastened onto that, I try to develop it into something more complete. It is during that process that I usually settle on an image or mood that the music conjures up.
“Surrey Bells” has a very strong sense of place. What does this piece personally mean to you, and is there a particular memory or feeling you connect with it?
Not really. I live in Surrey in the Mole Valley, but the idea of representing church bells ringing out across the English countryside is a generic one. It could just as easily be linked to the neighbouring county of Kent, which is equally beautiful and is where I was born.
You’ve been making instrumental music for quite some time. What do you enjoy most about telling a story through music without using words?
First and foremost, I set out to make music that I like to listen to and that hopefully others do as well. I do seem to have carved out a niche around telling stories without words, but that wasn’t a planned thing. It’s just that in composing stuff, it often creates a mood or sense of place in my mind, and that becomes self-reinforcing. But I must stress these are my own feelings. The music may conjure up entirely different images for a different listener. And that is absolutely fine with me so long as they enjoy the sounds.
Looking back at your musical journey so far, is there a particular moment, song or experience that you’re especially grateful for?
That’s quite a tricky question. I have lots of favourites in my catalogue of songs - not necessarily the ones that are most popular - and it would be hard to pick one out. But thinking back, maybe the most important thing for me was really getting to understand the electric guitar as a distinct instrument in its own right with a whole different set of skills from those which I developed on the classical guitar. A couple of electric guitar seminars in the mid 2000s under the expert guidance of Jason Sidwell (a very fine professional guitarist) really brought that home to me.
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