A GLASGOW-based Fermanagh woman and her partner have created a website to help musicians record music easily in their own homes during the lockdown.

Kayla-Megan Burns is a multi-instrumentalist from Enniskillen who is currently studying at university in Scotland.

With a big passion for music from a young age, Kayla has been playing every instrument she could get her hands on, from the cornet in St. Michael’s Scout Band, to the drums in the bands when she was in school.

Music also runs in Kayla’s family, with her uncle being the well-respected Fermanagh Country musician, Anthony McBrien.

She said: “I think the first instrument I picked up was the guitar with Gaely Quinn whenever I was really small. I then went into brass and drums.

“I’m currently a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where I joined the band society in my uni.

“Here, I was lucky enough to get to meet loads of really talented, like-minded people, including my partner, Ross [Sloan], who was completing a Masters in music at the time.”

Even at the lowest lows of the lockdown – where she was illegally evicted from her home – music kept Kayla’s spirits high.

‘Get some of that energy back’

“We sorely missed the gigs and the community of the music scenes, but rather than dwelling on it, we set to work on how we could create this from home and get some of that energy back, and that is how we came up with [the website] Songplistic,” she said.

Together, Kayla and her partner, Ross devised Songplistic (www.songplistic.com); a system where musicians playing in their own homes could get their music produced so that it was ready to be shared with the world.

“Through the lockdown we experimented with different methods of recording your own music at home and then producing it to still get that professional studio sound, but it doesn’t take half as much time and not anywhere near the same amount of money.

“[So there’s] no more waiting for studios to reopen, and no more lockdown slumps in the music scene!

“But we still didn’t think that that was enough, as not all musicians have the skills to write and play every instrument for their songs.

“We set to work again to make [the site service] as accessible as possible, utilising our own experience of playing music for 10-plus years each to also act as in-house musicians to complete any song, and, hopefully, to help empower any aspiring musician to be the next Ed Sheeran, Ozzy Osborne, or even Anthony McBrien, for that matter!” added Kayla, who hopes this will bring a lot of light into people’s lives during the lockdown, musician or not.

“We’re hoping to be able to bring as much new music onto the scene as possible with this ‘do it at home’ method.

“As students, we could never afford to get into a proper studio to get our own music out there, and Covid has made it nearly impossible to get any sort of band together, so we’re really excited to have found a way to overcome all of that,” she told this newspaper.