A MUSICIAN has had two of his tunes reach the semi-finals of one the UK's most prestigious songwriting competitions.

Scott Jones, who has recently moved to Penarth from the US and is the grandson of Welsh grandparents, has been writing songs for about 15 years and decided to submit two pieces of music in July to the UK Songwriting Competition.

The 49-year-old lawyer was previously a 2014 finalist at the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and, in 2015, was a multiple-nominee at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

This week, the father-of-two received news that his two songs - Wheels of my Mind and Instant of Time - had both earned semi-finalist places.

"Wheels of My Mind was the first song that I'd actually completed with production," said Mr Jones.

"These songs are in the country category of the competition.

"I was delighted with the news when I found out that two of the songs, which I co-wrote, had reached semi-finalist level.

"For the songs to reach semi-finalist, they have been judged to be in the top 15 to 20 per cent of applications.

"When I think I have been constantly writing material for many years and try very hard I do feel proud.

"It should be any time now that I'll find out whether my songs have made it to the next stage - I do hope that they have."

The UK Songwriting Contest is a long-running and international song writing competition, which seeks to promote song writing talent.

Mr Jones added: "You don't know what's round the corner, so I could be in for a surprise with the competition result, but let's wait and see."

For more information on the competition, visit the website www.songwritingcontest.co.uk