Who is Ratchet?

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☆ Dark and mysterious, yet with the core of an outspoken heart. Ratchet is a 21 year old independent Alternative Indie artist based in the Netherlands. From trying to impress a girl by learning the guitar, he now makes music on a daily basis and isn't planning to stop anytime soon. His music is best described as a stroll in the middle of the night, through a lit up city. Every song has its own unique aesthetic and most of the time tells a story about Ratchet's personal problems in life. He tries to be mysterious, but clear enough for everyone to enjoy his music. While most of his songs are different in style or genre, they all share Ratchet’s story. “What started as a way to seek socialization, has grown into something much bigger”, he says. In the eyes of Ratchet, it's a way to display his own feelings and emotions. Sometimes quite obvious and other times encrypted deep in the music. Although still being in school, Ratchet dreams of devoting his future to his music. A future beyond his formal bedroom studio. ☆

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Why?

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I started making music during a lonely time in my life. I used music as a tool to socialize with others. Mainly towards friends and family, but it evolved into something much bigger over time. Over the few years of making music, I started to get reactions from people outside of my friend and family circle. I made online friends and heard new stories from others. Stories which deeply moved me and I could relate to. I saw that my music could help others in ways which I didn't before realise. Since then I knew that I wanted to use my music as a way for others to relate to. It's impossible to talk to everyone personally, and that's where music comes to play. Topics like mental health, depression and anxiety are some things I really do care about. If I can help others cope with stuff like this in any way shape or form, then I know that I'm doing the right thing. I know some people just need someone to talk to and if my music can achieve the same feeling, then I won't stop making it.

Repertoire

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Speciality: Music and sound

Qualities: Writing and producing Music | Filming and editing videos (Premier Pro, Adobe After effects, Blender) | Photo editing (Photoshop) | (drawn) animations | Building websites (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Max)

Main genres: Indie | Alternative | Grunge | Surf Rock | Bedroom Pop | Indie Rock | Post Punk | Hip Hop | Punk Jazz | Electronic | Darkwave | Soft Rock | Skate Punk |

How did I start making music?

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To answer this question, we have to take a look at a couple years in the past. It all started during the middle of secondary school. The friendships I had built up during my early secondary school years were slowly fading away, because everyone was being separated into different classes and schools. I didn't have many people to talk with and my social skills were slowly leaving me. During this time, I didn't really know how I could refill this gap in my life. I started to distract myself by fully focussing all my attention solely to school and playing games in my room. This worked for a long time, but over time everything I did started to remind me of the good times I had with my old friends. All these thoughts really started to stack up, until a point in my life where I decided to change it all up. I wanted to become social again, like I used to be. I wanted to prove everyone wrong, by showing that I'm not a nobody. I thought for a long time, until I came up with a plan. I had come up with a way to indirectly tell everyone I used to know how I currently felt. That's when music popped into my mind. With music you can express how you feel, without the direct fear of people's reactions. You can say whatever you want in the world, with your own made up context. It's like having a conversation with someone, but with the benefit of practicing the lines you typically say in your head, as many times as you want.

At the time I didn't really have any experience with music. The only pieces I ever made were a lo-fi song featuring my electric guitar, recorded with my phone, and a song about life featuring the voice of google translate. I didn't know where to start. I had no idea how to properly make music. That's when something popped into my head. When I was little, I was a very big fan of the genres "house" and "electronic music" (you know... typical radio stuff at the time). I remember watching a video of Martin Garix, explaining how he made one of his songs in a "DAW" called "FL Studio". For the first time in my life, I knew of a way to record and edit music. I remember running to my parents to tell them what I had found. My father became very excited as well. I'm lucky that both of my parents love music. My father used to play classical guitar and also saw a cool new way to make music. Eventually, after a lot of begging as a little kid, they bought it for the whole family. The first few days were very excited and I watched every tutorial video. But as days passed, I slowly started to neglect making music. The program was too overwhelming for me and I wasn't musical at all.

Years of not making music passed by, until I finally saw a reason to try it again. I started off by learning the guitar. The reason why I wanted to learn the guitar is because I had a crush on a girl during my second year of secondary school. Her favorite band was "Arctic Monkeys" and she also loved to play the guitar. I really wanted to impress her. My plan was to learn a song of "Arctic Monkeys" on guitar and play it for her during music class. The problem was that I had never touched a guitar in my life.. Luckily enough, my father knew how to help me. He learned me how to play "The House Of The Rising Sun", with different strumming patterns and finger picking styles. He told me that this song featured everything I had to know about the guitar, and that I would be able to play almost every song. To this day, I still think that's mostly true, and that's why he is the only guitar teacher I ever had.

After learning the song from top to bottom, I immediately switched to practicing songs of the "Arctic Monkeys" and more, until I was confident enough to play them in school. I'm not going into much detail here, but yes, the girl I had a crush on did notice me and we lived happily ever after ;). After I had some basic guitar skills I started experimenting with making my own music. I wanted to learn everything there is to know about music, to finally prove myself. I started off by making a few songs on soundcloud and YouTube under the name "Silent Ratchet". Soon after that I wanted to take it a little bit more seriously, by releasing music on every streaming service. I started off ambitious and wanted to make my own EP, under a different name. That's how "Ratchet" was born. I released the Ep ("Silent's Untold Story") in 2020, and from here everything started to roll into the person I am today.

Other interests and hobbies

Not only do I like to make music, I also love to play games, work on my website, skate, draw and hangout with friends and family. I love to play and record gameplay video's of myself. My current video's consist of underground games, since these usually have unique mechanics and game concepts. These games usually consist of a few hours of gameplay, which is a perfect bite size for a short video. In the future I would love to make video's about more familiar games with more hours of gameplay. I currently don't really do that because it would take to much time, and my main priority lies at making music. I would also love to make vlog styled video's, sketches, storytelling video's and offcourse more music video's! I'm lastly planning to update this website more frequently, to showcase every step I make and to be transparent with my audience.