… In a bedroom, in Sharjah, the lesser known neighbor of Dubai, where I was sitting on my bed at the age of 16; the same bed in the same room that I still live in 8 years later; listening to wide variety of music from Metal and Rock to Rap music, anything from Metallica to Linkin Park and Avenged Sevenfold, and anywhere from Hollywood Undead to Eminem, lying there dreaming of becoming a musician, more specifically a drummer believe it or not.
A drum kit was way too expensive, so I settled for a guitar just to connect with my growing passion of being involved in. I hadn’t even bought my first guitar before people started telling me I can’t ever become good at it. They would say things like “it is too hard to learn” or “I took lessons for years and can’t play a full song yet”, “Your fingers weren’t made for playing guitar”, “it’s just a waste of time and it is never going to be more than a useless hobby, so don’t do it” (That last one came from my own mother, who was once a music teacher!).
Not knowing anything about woods, quality, sound or any of that, I set out to buy my first guitar after 2 months of savings and mustering up courage. All I knew was that I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. And I did… through Youtube. Not a single lesson, not an ounce of help or encouragement from anyone, and through all the comments aimed at making me quit it.
It was finally time to break through the noise, start performing live, and start recording the 30+ songs that I had written in my friend’s dorm, in the car, in my bed before sleeping, in the shower, and anywhere else lyrics would hit me. Songs that I had been writing since I bought that first guitar.
The first shows were horrible, I had no stage presence, no control over my voice, very bad and clearly unrehearsed songs, substandard guitar skills, no crowd interaction whatsoever, mediocre song selection, and overall, a really bland and unentertaining performance. But the only way to get better was to do more gigs, from open mic events to other free and unpaid events. 1 gig turned into 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 50 to 100 and so on.
Now things are different. Things are better and smoother. I do have room for improvement, everyone does, and I will never stop learning and trying to become better. But looking back, I am a whole new person on a whole other level.
I released my debut single “Beautiful Eyes”, then 2 more singles, then in March 2018 I released my debut EP “Humble Beginnings” but they did not reach anyone outside a small circle of friends and supporters. I spent that summer learning how to market my music. In September 2018, I released my latest single (at the time I am writing this) titled “Where We Belong”. This one got a good amount of traction and people seem to really enjoy it live.
But this is just the beginning, and that’s how it all began, and part of the reason behind the name of my first EP which I chose for the reason of always reminding me of where I came from no matter where I end up in life. Humble Beginnings.