Peter Jackson, Vice President of IT Global Sales and Marketing, shares his passion for music and creativity outside of life at McCormick

Employees know Peter Jackson in his professional capacity helping McCormick on our digital transformation journey, but in his spare time, Peter channels his unbridled enthusiasm for learning and creativity into guitar making. 

Peter’s passion for this musical endeavor was planted some years ago when playing the video game ‘Guitar Hero’ with his family, and he has been particularly encouraged by his 17-year-old son, who is himself a very talented musician and composer. When part of his son’s bass guitar broke around five years ago, Peter was convinced that with some research, and ingenuity, he could fix it himself. Following a successful repair, Peter was then inspired to build upon what he’d learned and set himself a new challenge - building a bass guitar from scratch. 

Starting worlds away from IT with the basics of woodwork and then learning the new set of technical skills required from a combination of books, YouTube and helpful online forums, Peter has now made a total of six electric guitars (and he’s not stopping there!). Having recently moved, he is converting the garden shed into a musical workshop, meaning Peter will be able to dedicate time at weekends to this fascinating hobby year-round. 

Before beginning work on guitar number seven, Peter is focused on enhancing the instruments in his collection, which are proudly on display on the wall at home. Peter’s eye for detail and passion for learning that serve him so well at work also mean he’s constantly looking for new inspiration about how to further improve both his instruments and his skills. Next on the hit list, Peter has challenged himself to build an acoustic guitar, a task that requires an entirely new array of skills.

Since building his first guitar just over four years ago, Peter has been continually inspired by a desire to be creative in an entirely different manner to the technological creativity and innovative thinking he employs at work. Throughout his musical journey, Peter has also been fascinated by the rapidly evolving way in which we all learn and has often been amazed by how generously people have shared their knowledge – a value we are consistently championing here at McCormick. 

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