Craig Yates: Chord to Board

The day started at 8.30am when fellow Only Men Aloud member Aled picked me up for our drive to Porthcawl, we had a tuneful journey as we learnt the music for the Saturday's performance on Last Choir Standing on our way over in the car. We arrived at the church hall about an hour later both looking forward to our promised bacon sandwiches, which we were denied due to health and safety reasons! We had to settle for tea and biscuits before discussing the schedule and meeting some of the kids involved. Jenny Walker arrived and we had an amusing conversation about the fact we'd all chosen to wear hoodies this morning in our attempt to be "down with the kids"!

Writer Alan Harris discussed what we'd be doing with our different groups but felt it might be difficult to get life stories from 14 year olds as they were so young. We were going to use surfing images and footage to inspire them and to add character to their words. Paul the composer arrived about 10 minutes late thanks to the sat nav taking him the wrong way to the beach!

Once he was here we all got down to the business of the first music session. The kids learnt a little bit about opera music and surf music and how they could be used to depict different moods. I sang to them and I think they enjoyed it, most of them had never heard opera before so I was their first experience of it. We worked with percussion instruments and created a good groove which we recorded for the composition later.

At lunchtime I made tea and coffee for 12 wet surfers and ate too many biscuits while doing this – not very good for the "I'm on TV diet"!

In the afternoon I sang a solo and a duet with Jenny for the group before we started working on the music. I worked with three musicians, a bassist an acoustic guitarist and someone playing a tambourine. The kids wrote a poem in 20 minutes called "Setting Him Free" and we wrote a good song with a reggae surfing feel which we performed to the group and recorded it.

The day wraps up about 4.30pm and I head home for 20 minutes before leaving the house again to get to Last Choir Standing rehearsals at WMC. We're working on our routine for Saturday night which involves some difficult choreography. We all worked very hard until about 10.10pm but are rewarded with an after rehearsal drink at Bar Cwtch! I get home about 11.30pm feeling pretty exhausted.