Where do I even begin writing?

Perhaps I can start at the beginning.

 

It was early in the year, somewhere in 2012 or 2011. It was a really long time ago.

I parked my little car on a steep street surrounded by these statured high rise buildings.

I was nervous.

I walked through these metal gates, looked up at an old dilapidated building, it almost seemed like it was standing there for over 50 years. Probably was. First day of college. Audio college.

 

I sat down in orientation, expecting next to nothing, not really interested in making friends.

So I thought.

This tall fella pushes by and sits down on the chair next me.

He had round spectacles, clean shaven, seemed to be excited to be there. Was even wearing a black blazer suit. Fucking strange dude. This looked like the type of guy that would wake up 2 hours earlier, just to do blow dry his hair and make sure everything was perfect before leaving the house.

 

He landed up becoming my best friend.

 

Skip forward 1 or 2 years, and I landed up dropping out. There was so much going on at home, and I just could not mentally handle the stress and couldn’t find myself to sit and focus on the work.

 

I get a call from my mate, “Hey bro, I’ve got a meeting with this Game Designer for some shitty ass paperplanes game, wanna hop on and give it a try?”

 

Now... I’ve been making music, audio, sounds etc for quite some time. I had no intentions of starting a business, or even following that path directly as a career.
 

Fuck it, why not “I’ll be right over”.

 

Him and I had the exact same brain, we would work well together, coming up with solutions for any sort of problem, whether it was for audio, relationships, hell, we even did audio talks together at universities. There wasn’t a day where we spent it apart.

 

We decided to kick-start Bitcrunchaudio, the idea was to create small sfx sample packs and target a specific niche of old school 8-bit developers and mobile game developers. Maybe outsource some phenomenal voice actors, maybe build an entire website?

Done. This was it, this is what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives, we were set out to build this into a lucrative business and break into different markets.

 

We had some odd jobs here and there, business was slow... it was only the first year, and we were like, maybe 24 at the time?

 

One day my phone rings, “Hey bro, got some news for ya”

What is it?

He decided he’s leaving, he’s going to teach in China for a little bit.

What about our business?

It’s up to me to keep it going.

 

A year. 2 years go by.

 

I’m struggling with this business, I’m young, naive and don’t know any better.

My phone rings again.

“Hey dude, we can’t keep the website live any longer.”

Sigh.
 

I decided to put a pause on our work, all those years. It was mentally and emotionally draining.

 

Another year just flashes by.

 

It’s been a while since I heard from the now English Teacher guy that was my best friend.

 

My phone rings again.

 

“Hey. I’m coming back to South Africa”

I was ecstatic! I missed this dude, and finally I can get my brain to work at 100% again! We can clean out the cobwebs and get these old gears running!

 

A month goes by, no Bitcrunchaudio, no brilliant new idea. We’ve landed up selling old equipment and selling our Yahama H7s.

More bad news, he has decided he’s no longer staying in the city, it’s okay we can work on things via Discord right?

He moves to the ocean. I was pretty damn envious. But he grew up there, went back to his old town to see his parents again.

 

It is now 2020. We’ve all been there, we all know what happened. I decided to disappear for a bit too. I move to the bush to pursue a frantically lost feeling, to impress somebody else and feel like I’ve found a career path. I decide to become a Game Ranger. I complete the course, still feeling lost. Still feeling like I don’t know what I am doing. I’m almost 30 years old for fuck sake.

 

I open up my laptop.

 

And start making music again.
 

It was an early morning during March in 2021

 

My phone rings.

 

“Hey bro. How you doing?”

Where the fuck has this guy been? We get to chatting, nothing has changed. We talk shit, we make jokes, we laugh.

“So you’re kickstarting Bitcrunchaudio again? I feel like a burden.”

This guy. Just settle down and let’s make something of it, together.

Motivated as ever, I persuade him to move back to the city, he can stay with me. We’re going to put our all into this business. But something felt off.

We starting speaking about relationships, life, the meaning of it all, I spoke about my failures, what built me up to be the person I am.

He listened in silence, “I feel like a burden man”.

Alright, tell you what, get here tomorrow, and we can just talk it over a couple of beers.

We did a skype call, we booked some flights and I set up all the stuff needed for the next day.

 

The next day.

 

My phone doesn’t ring.

 

Text messages aren’t going through.

 

Hey bro, you on your way?

 

Nothing.
 

My phone rings.

 

Not who I expected?

 

His mom is calling.

 

He is in hospital, “What!? What happened?”

He has overdosed.

 

Life wouldn’t be the same after that. I lost my business partner, the right side of my brain, my best friend.

 

I struggled to come to terms over what happened, for years. Years.

And still to this day, I question myself about the phone call we had the night before.

 

This tore me apart, I was so angry. Angry at myself, angry at him and angry at music and audio, because we would have never been in this situation if it wasn’t for Bitcrunchaudio.

 

Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda.

 

Life goes on, I met the love of my life, I have a little family... well. A cat and a girlfriend. We all live together, that checks family in my book.

 

And here I am. Bitcrunchaudio. Where it all started.

 

My destiny.