When I was a kid, I was always doing stuff. Even when I was very little I played with legos and stuff like that. You always gotta be doing something to keep your mind occupied. It helps. It helps with staying sane. I was never much into sports or playing an instrument or anything like that. I didn’t like the idea of not having free time to not be able to do what I wanted.

Anyway, when I was in 7th grade I discovered something that changed my life forever. I started listening to Electronic Dance Music through a small independent label known as Monstercat. As soon as I heard it, I was in love. The sounds fascinated me. The basses and synths were dope. The kicks and snares hit so nicely. No other genre of music compared to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very open-minded when it comes to other genres of music like rap and pop but EDM is really where it’s at.

As I entered the 8th grade, I started becoming fascinated by the actual production and performance of the music. The songs would be made in these programs called DAWs and then they would be performed live with setups called CDJs. Watchin’ sets from artists like Skrillex and SNAILS really locked in my love for the genre. Towards the end of my 8th grade year I started making and mixing these songs myself. I bought myself a cheap DJ controller and a basic copy of Ableton Live. Sure, my earliest songs were complete jokes, like the first banger I ever made, “Sand In My Trousers”, but I still liked to do it. Eventually as I went into my freshman year of high school, I made a number of beats, all unsuccessful on Soundcloud. I stopped making anything for a while, but I still enjoyed listening to the genre. It was pretty stagnant till the summer going into sophomore year, that’s when it really got crazy.

It was a Saturday morning, early in October. I was sitting at my desk and fidgeting on my laptop, sitting next to my girlfriend, Jacquie. Whenever I did this i never really worked on anything. I was just fidgeting, waiting for an idea to hit. It was hard to use Ableton at first, but by this time I had the basics down. I knew what stuff like reverb and sidechaining was but i wasn’t droppin’ bangers left and right. After all, it wasn’t my time yet. But hey, practice makes perfect right?

I looked around my desk, and I could see the very first iPod that I had ever gotten. It was shiny and gray, and had my name scratched into the side. I didn’t use it anymore, because it would take 9 of them to fit all my music now, but it's nice to reminisce. It made me think about my love for music.

Looking up at my computer, I began to check my Soundcloud notifications to see if I got anything new. Nope. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nothing at all. I put out a few tracks recently at that point, one of them got maybe 500 plays.
“Anything new?” Jacquie asked.

“Nah, i think i got 42 plays this week though, nice.” I replied.

So I went back to work. I sat there, week after week, making songs I thought were bangers. It was fine, I liked to do it. I was pretty stagnant until I made this one remix.

It was a flip of the track Crown Vic by Skrillex. It had just recently dropped for an ad campaign for Alexander Wang’s designer clothes and I thought of the perfect shot to flip it. I got to work and ended up making a tune I was pretty satisfied with. I chopped up the vocals and added this nice sub bass under the main lead to make it sound so fresh. I also added some nice claps and a gritty growl in the drop that made the song sound sharper. It was fantastic.

I ended up posting it a few days later & something unbelievable happened. In a week, I had gotten 500 plays. That was definitely a record for me at the time. Even my friends said they digged it.

Following the week that went by, I was sitting at my desk trying to sync a tiny few 100 songs on my old iPod and checking my messages when I saw that I had a SoundCloud message from a familiar producer. It was an underground trap producer named WØLVEZ. At 2k followers, he wasn’t that big. But for small producers like me on SoundCloud, these guys are still admired. Anyway, I opened up the message and read:

“hey man, your flip of crown vic is nice as hell. I wanted to ask you for the .wav download so I could use it in my sets.”

I was shocked. It seems like a small thing, but it really meant something to me. I looked back at check the status of the iPod sync for a moment and took a second to take it in.

I started typing back.

“yo i’m glad you dig my track it means a lot. here, i’ll send you the file through soundcloud. thanks a lot for the support!”

It meant a lot to me that my music was gettin’ out there. It wasn’t success or anything, but it was an achievement, at least to me. I called my girlfriend, Jacquie, as soon as I was able to take it all in.

“Hello.” Jacquie answered.

“Yo, Jac, you’re never gonna believe what just happened. WØLVEZ just messaged me sayin’ he liked my track and is gonna use it when he plays live. A good amount of people are gonna hear my flip.” I said.

“That’s awesome, babe! I’m so happy for you.” She said. “So where do we go from here?”

“Only up.” I responded.

I kept making more music, trying and trying again. I was happy. I was doing what I was doing and knowing that at least a few people liked the music i was putting out, made me wanna continue doing it. Even if at times you have streaks of failure, don’t forget to keep pushing. WØLVEZ hitting me up was my first achievement, but it certainly wasn’t my last.