It is the spaces between us that make us.

Chatting to an artist friend, who also happens to be a skilled psychologist, I asked her how she managed to capture her landscapes so realistically. "Well," she said, "One of the most useful things anyone has ever taught me is that, when painting, you should always look at the spaces between things, as well as trying to paint the subject itself."

A similar rule applies in music. In music, timing is all important. It is often the pauses, the beats between the notes, that give a piece its own particular atmosphere. Without the pauses, the notes would jangle horribly together, and the result would just be noise. You need the spaces to enable the notes to reverberate together properly.

Sitting in communal silence this morning, it struck me how there are parallels to be found between music, art and life. We need these pauses for, without them, life is just noise. For me, silence is an important part of my music.