How I got into music.

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I was around 11 or 12 when I was first introduced to Hip-Hop properly. I was always around my older brother and he would play a lot of music that had me surrounded by new and old Hip-Hop. From then, I was influenced enough to dive into the world of music myself and I would listen to albums that my brother had downloaded to our computer – music from artists such as J.Cole, Nas, Tupac, Logic, and Drake.

I would sometimes even write to beats. I would search up Eminem instrumentals online and write my own verses to classic Slim Shady records and this process continued throughout my years during school. I would write them in this very old blue notebook that I had found lying around, and I still have it. Maybe one of my fans will have it one day in the future, or I might keep it for myself.

These are some of the projects that had a heavy influence on me during my introduction towards Hip-Hop.

Around the age of 13 or 14 I would spend a lot of time playing Xbox. Sooner or later I would apparently be spending ‘too much’ time on playing games, so I would go on the next best thing – the computer. Out of complete boredom one day. I decided to open a music software that was on my computer. My brother would use it to make remixes of hit records and mix them with well-known Bhangra tracks. 

I started by putting ready-made loops together on a track, thinking I had just made the best beats in the world. My brother then showed me that I could create my own sounds by using the sound library in the software, and left the rest for me to discover. But let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t say to myself "Wow, one day I would love to be a music producer". No. I was bored, but at the same time I was curious.

As I started consuming more music, I would try to replicate similar sounds that I heard from my idols into my beats. I started spending a lot of my time making music, to the point where I would go on it near enough every day. When you spend so much time on something, you’ll only get better at it, and so years went on for me to repeat the same process of listening to music, trying to imitate it, as well as continuing to write my own lyrics. 

At the age of 16 my brother bought me my first Keyboard. It was a mini MPC by Akai, as shown by the picture. It came with a new software called 'Ableton' and 3 other software’s that I didn’t care much about. But my brother had heard that Ableton was a very high-end software, so I started messing around with it. I did the same thing, the same process as before - I was on it every day, learning, try new things, pickup new strategies and techniques. Looking back, I remember was how fun it was and how much I enjoyed the learning process.

Whilst I was learning about music production I was still writing lyrics. For me, it was part of making music, but it wasn’t as dominant as music production. Also, remember that this was all during school and I was studying for my GCSE’s. When most people were thinking about going to College to then go on to University and study to achieve the highest of professions, I was dreaming of making music, performing, and creating a fan-base.

As I spent more time making music, day after day, night after night, homework after homework, I was getting better and strongly started believed that I was really getting somewhere with this all. I had wanted to be a musician for some time now, but it was towards the age of 16 that I had made a conscious decision that I wanted to be a Rapper (hopefully more than just a Rapper) and make music for my life. It was all I loved. The hype, the joy, the curiosity I had for it was so strong, and it's still growing stronger.

I hope this gave you some insight about me and my journey and how I got started. There’s a lot more to journal and much more to live & experience.

Thank you for reading.

- REVEAL

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