A Childhood Dream at 17

I wrote the following for the participation section of a new online course I am taking. I just started today. The course is called Music for Wellness and I'm taking it on edX.  This is the third course I'm taking with this platform. The first one was another musical course and the second one was about suicide prevention in young adults - I felt that could be necessary in my life as a teacher. I have expanded parts of the story to suit my blog.  

The Sky is the Limit

 When I was 17, I was visiting my family back home in Turkey for the summer. One day, my uncle and his wife took me to the beach in a nearby coastal town. On the way there, we listened to the radio and I heard a piece of music that activated a great desire within me. It was a desire to create music. Up until then, I had never really had a strong desire to create music. I didn't enjoy music class in school. I didn't care for the drum set my parents had bought me years ago either. I didn't have a desire to create music before but I would listen to a lot of music, a lot of hip-hop especially. And I suspect that the genre of music played a big role in why I felt such an overwhelming desire to create music like the one I heard that sunny day.

I wasn't used to hearing dance music on the radio, especially in North America. Hip-Hop dominated the airwaves and I didn't even know about the awesome techno music coming from across the river. Detroit techno was a thriving scene and I didn't know about it as a kid. In the years to come, house and techno would take up much more of my attention than hip-hop would. And that's why I think the genre played a role in sparking my desire to want to create music. I could rock to rap music but I didn't want to make it. I heard house music for the first time and my first reaction was to create more like it. Dance music has played a much more pivotal role in my life than hip-hop has. It's the music that speaks to me.

The music lessons that we had to take in school seemed boring. Our teacher, Mr. Hetzel, was a kind teacher but the content of his classes didn't seem to interest me at all. At that age, I can't say that there were many subjects that truly interested me. I just knew that I liked some over others and did better in the ones I liked. Also, a hilarious memory comes to mind of a good friend and I in the band. I think Mr. Hetzel had convinced us to join the band even though neither of us could really play. We were sitting in the front row as all the other kids played their instruments and laughing our pants off as we realized we couldn't play. The teacher was very close to us but he didn't stop us from laughing. We laughed uncontrollably, partially because we were so embarrassed to be there and not be able to play. Neither of us returned to band practice ever again.

As for the drum set my parents had bought, I had taken a month or two of drum lessons at a music school around the corner from my house.  I felt forced to do so and eventually told my parents I didn't want the courses. My parents had seen that I tapped along to the rhythm anytime I heard music I liked and thought I might have a talent for rhythm. That was nice of them to buy me drums but it just didn't connect with me. I remember when they unveiled the gift, I just looked at it wondering what it was doing there and where my gift was. Many years later, I would discover African drums and the power of drumming in a drum circle - no lessons required. Perhaps a conga or djembe would have been enough for the young EG. A drum set looked like a busy city.

The track that had played on the radio that sunny day in Izmir, Turkey, as I later discovered, was house music. Chris Lawyer & Thomy - We Gonna Feel It was the name of the track. This melodic summertime track was a perfect reflection of the kind of beautiful day we were having. Also on the same journey, I heard one more piece of house music that resonated deeply within me as well. And that was Bob Sinclar's World Hold On. I spent the rest of the summer with my ears to the speakers and the radio playing all the time. 

I just want to add that, as I was writing this text for the participation aspect of the online course, I found the Youtube video for We Gonna Feel It. I wasn't even aware that one existed. I was very disappointed to see the official music video on DJ Chris Lawyer's Youtube channel. It is exactly the kind of music video that I don't enjoy seeing because it has absolutely no dancing in it. This is dance music, and not a single image of dance was shown. Instead, the music video was full of models in bathing suits sucking on pieces of fruit with closeups of their breasts and butts. I will be doing my best to not allow the music video to change my personal story that arose from that track. Oppositely though, the music video for World Hold On has been a video I've known about for years and is well-worth watching again and again. It has a cool story of, what could be interpreted as a child following his dream.

When I returned home to Canada at the end of the summer, I immediately started asking questions. What is house music? How can it be created? I found online that synthesizers were used to create house music. And when I searched for what synthesizers looked like, I saw that they looked just like pianos. So I began learning the piano and got an electric keyboard as well. I eventually got my first synthesizer as well, the Korg R3. That's how my dream to create house music was born.

This photo was taken at our previous house, shortly after I hooked up my Korg R3 to my laptop for the first time.

I didn't even know what a synthesizer was before this and I thought that learning the piano would be a fitting entry into the world of synthesizers. Well, my interest in the piano went further than my interest in the drums had gone. I learned for about half a year or more until I stopped learning that as well. Looking back, it's nice to see that I was driven towards my dreams to some degree. However, today, after having made hundreds of original tracks, I don't feel that too much knowledge of the piano is necessary. Of course some knowledge helps and more knowledge could be of great use if it doesn't limit creativity. I put creativity first and technical knowledge second. 

Now, over a decade has passed since that day I felt a strong desire to create house music. These days, I spend a couple hours producing dance music everyday. Although it has significant influences from house music, I just call it dance music to be general and keep my horizons wider. I have uploaded several independent albums on my bandcamp. And last year, I had my first album released on major platforms such as Apple Music and Beatport. Other platforms my album has made it on include Amazon and Spotify.

House music has changed my life. I went from being the kid listening to hip-hop, not knowing much about other forms of dance music; the kid that resisted learning the clarinet in music class in school to becoming a dance music producer. Now I constantly look for ways to educate myself on music and this course is one great way that I'm doing so.