Eureka - Part 1.

So, where did my pursuit of a music career begin? There were a couple of defining moments when I was growing up which led me down this path, all of which I'll explain over a series of short blog posts. Let's start from the beginning...

When I think back to my childhood, the earliest memory I have of being attracted to anything musical was this little computer I had when I was three or four-years-old. It was designed for children, as a way for them to learn various skills. It was green and white, had a small screen and a pretty unresponsive keyboard built-in. It came with lots of different programs, each on a separate plastic disk that you had to plug into the computer to use (obviously). I almost always gravitated towards the disk that allowed you to play pre-recorded melodies by pressing the keys on the keyboard. I even remember the melody that I used to play the most; come to think of it, I could recreate it if I wanted to. The name of this computer eludes me, but if I find out what it was, I'll add it to this post at a later date! Anyway, that's my earliest memory of being attracted to anything that makes sound.

Edit: I sat down with my parents and together we managed to track down the exact computer. From what I gather, it was called the 'Grandstand IQ Builders Talking Laptop Computer'. The image below is a mint example of one for sale on eBay, these were built in the 1990s!

My first computer!

My parents used to take my two older sisters and me over to their friend's farm, where we would play with their children; I have fond memories of going there, it was a really cool place for a kid to explore, seeing all the animals and machinery. The mother of the other kids, Bernie, noticed that whilst my sisters and her children would be outside playing, I would occasionally stay indoors, playing on the keyboard that they owned, engrossed in this machine that made sound.

I also remember us having two small Casio keyboards (designed for children) at home, but I can't remember if my parents bought them before or after it had been pointed out that I liked to play on Bernie's keyboard at the farm. Either way, I have memories of playing on those Casio keyboards at home, not really knowing what I was doing, just randomly bashing keys and making noise. So I guess I discovered that I liked machines that made sound at quite a young age.

EDIT: Since initially writing this post, I went on an online hunt to try and find out which models of Casio keyboard we had. I believe it was the SA-1 and SA-21. I remember the tiny size, single speaker and rectangular shape of the SA-1, the demo song was 'Wake Me Up' by Wham. I also remember the blue graphics and loops/demo songs of the SA-21. Nostalgia kicked in when I heard the demo songs of each keyboard on YouTube.

The Casio SA-1.

As I got older, I lost interest in keyboards, mostly due to getting a Playstation and spending endless hours on that. I think our Casio keyboards were discarded or given away when we moved to a different part of the country when I was six-years-old, so I kind of forgot about keyboards as a result. It wasn't until I was about nine-years-old when my dad brought home another keyboard for my older sister, Alix, that I began to show an interest in them again. Alix supposedly wanted to learn to play keyboard/piano, but, got bored of it pretty quickly, once she'd nailed how to play 'Chopsticks' and 'The Rugrats' theme. She barely touched it once the novelty of it had worn off. I stuck at it though and continued randomly bashing out melodies... when I wasn't playing on my Playstation.

I started paying attention and developing preferences to music at about the age of 10 and 11 in 2001. When I heard 'In The End' by Linkin Park on the radio, I was instantly hooked by that catchy and ever so simple piano riff. 'Hybrid Theory' became the first album I'd ever requested, and, to my excitement, Santa delivered! A copy of the Linkin Park album and a brand new Hi-Fi stereo CD player to play it on, result! It's probably not an exaggeration to say that my family knew the lyrics to almost every song on that album within a couple of months. If I was at home, the CD was playing, non-stop.

A few months later, in early 2002, my eldest sister, Ashley, brought home a CD that a friend had copied for her. She didn't like it, so, she walked into my room whilst I was playing on my Playstation and asked if I wanted it. I said "yes", because I didn't really have anything else to play other than Linkin Park and needed to bolster my CD collection. I had no idea what was on this disc, but, the CD cover revealed that it was called 'Trance Nation'. I didn't know what trance was, though I doubt many 11-year-olds know what trance is, so I was curious to find out. Into the CD player it went, I went back to playing on my Playstation, intending to have the CD play as background noise, not really expecting anything decent to come out of the stereo...

Within minutes, it had blown my mind. It drew my attention away from my Playstation long enough so that I could examine the CD artwork and tracklist. All these crazy and otherworldly sounds were blaring out the speakers. Awesome melodies, uplifting chords, banging basslines, pounding drums! I loved it! Some of my favourites from the album were:

Dirt Devils - The Drill (Evacuation Remix)

Ralphie B - Massive

iio - Rapture (Armin van Buuren Remix)

PPK - Resurrection

Paffendorf - Be Cool

Ian Van Dahl - Will I?

Dee Dee - Forever

E'voke - Arms of Loren 2001 (Ferry Corsten Remix)

Tukan - Light a Rainbow (Wippenberg Mix)

Kosheen - Catch (Ferry Corsten Vocal Remix)

That Trance Nation CD was really the start of everything for me. At the age of 11, I became hooked on something other than my Playstation. It also led to me rediscovering other trance songs that I'd heard on the radio in the years before, songs such as Ferry Corsten's remix of 'Adagio For Strings','Children' by Robert Miles, Zombie Nation's 'Kernkraft 400', and Storm's 'Time To Burn'. All of these were songs that I loved when they played on the radio in the years leading up to my discovery of the genre, but I was just too young at that time to understand what kind of music it was. Before the age of 10, the only music I really knew of was the music that my parents would play in their cars and at home... mostly George Michael, Celine Dion, Seal, Michael Jackson etc.

Later that summer, the 'Godskitchen Summer Trance' compilation album was released. I saw the advert on TV and instantly heard more trance tunes being featured on the album. It was the first album I'd ever bought with my own (birthday) money, at age 12. The Godskitchen and Trance Nation albums firmly established Ferry Corsten and Tiesto as my favourite artists. I wanted to know how they made their music.

Around about the same time in 2002, I went on a school trip. It was an activity weekend where we were able to try things such as archery, quad biking, and other, mostly, outdoor activities. We couldn't pick and choose our activities, they were planned by our school teachers and mandatory, though it was still a lot of fun for an 11-12-year-old.

There was one activity planned for us that filled me with dread. It was a music workshop. I had harrowing visions that we'd be spending the entire afternoon singing. I hate singing. It's embarrassing and there's no amount of AutoTune that can fix my monotonous drone. I almost considered not turning up and going to hide in my dormitory all afternoon!

To my pleasant surprise, after mustering up the courage to go and spend all afternoon singing, I discovered that there would, in fact, be no singing at all. Instead, we would be learning about electronic dance music on software known as 'Dance Ejay'. Our task for the afternoon was to make a song using this software. It was sample-based, so you were provided with a built-in library containing short riffs of melodies, chords, basslines, drums and FX that had been recorded/created by the software developer. You dragged these samples/riffs around the screen and dropped them into place along a timeline to create a song. It was extremely simple, but, it served its purpose of getting people interested in creating dance music.

Anyway, at the end of the workshop, some of the other kids hadn't achieved a thing. Too busy messing around with their mates and nattering away. Some of the others who actually gave it a go came up with all sorts of jumbled and unstructured songs. One or two of my classmates who had musical training in the form of instrument lessons came up with some good results too, but you could tell none of them were really into the type of music that Ejay was designed for.

Me? I came up with something that closely resembled some of the music that was on the Trance Nation album. The tutor of the workshop complimented me on my result and genuinely showed interest in my finished song more than he did for any of the other kids in the group. I was amazed! It was the one thing I had excelled at that the other kids hadn't had a fucking clue about! I'd found something that I was good at, and the passion for making music was burnt into my soul from that moment on.

I was never a good student at school. As my school reports always said, "smart boy, but doesn't apply himself in class." or "Too busy being a class clown and messing around!". I only enjoyed going to school to socialise with my friends and play football during our lunch break. I was crap at maths, mildly interested in science (mostly physics), and, enjoyed playing for the school hockey and rugby teams. I was about bang average at everything else. So discovering music production was a big life-changer for me. Other than my Playstation, playing sports and socialising with my friends, I'd never been so interested or passionate about anything else in my relatively short life. Motorbikes are another big passion of mine, I've been obsessed with them since being a kid, though UK law meant that motorbikes were off the table until I was 16 years old. So, yeah, music production ended up being the interest that consumed me.

Anyway, I digress. I made sure to remember the name of the software and instantly bugged my dad to buy it for me the moment I got home at the end of the school activity weekend. A few days later, a copy of 'Dance Ejay 2' was delivered. From that moment on, I was glued to the family computer. I was banging out songs left, right and centre. The next year or so saw me acquire more of the Ejay series (Rave Ejay, HipHop Ejay and newer versions of Dance Ejay) and, eventually, via the powers of the internet and music magazines, I'd discovered that dance music was made with instruments called synthesisers, samplers and drum machines. It was beginning to make more sense. Ejay taught me about song structure and the kinds of sounds used in electronic dance music. The next step was to learn how to make these sounds myself.

That was it. The start of everything.

To be continued...