ABOUT ME (MY STORY)

I, Tyler James Ayres, was born on October 29th, 2000 in Margate, Kent, England.

I was brought up mostly by my Mum as my Dad wasn’t around much as they parted when I was really young. My Mum and my Nan were always the closest people to me throughout my childhood.

My Mum worked an office job and my Nan, various jobs, but no one in my family are musicians at all.

Fast forward a few years, when I was 10, a friend of mine had a YouTube channel that he would post Minecraft videos to. My cousin made me my own email address about a year prior so I used that to sign up to YouTube to start my own channel. The email she set me up had “Tjayres2000”, which is just my initials, last name, and my year of birth, but this would be the name of my first YouTube channel.

Our first videos were that day, at a sleep over. We were making videos of us 2 singing, messing around, being kids. We called them “Stupid Kids” videos.

In 2013, my mum became friends with someone at work who’s husband was a DJ, well, done it as a hobby. He DJ’d on vinyls and had a huge collection. It was him that introduced me to EDM and DJing and that’s when I properly became interested in it. He gave me a USB stick of a bunch of EDM artists and songs, Martin Garrix, Knife Party, etc. I listened to a bunch of songs on YouTube, and that’s when I found Monstercat and became a huge fan of all of those artists. I downloaded Audacity, and would create my own mashups, which as you could guess, was awful because I knew nothing about music.

All this while still posting those random Minecraft and gaming videos on the YouTube.

I spent 2014 doing just that, I made a lot of videos, I gained over 200 subscribers on the Tjayres2000 channel and every video was getting a few views and that meant a lot to me!

I was posting things I enjoyed and it seemed to slowly be paying of.

However, in 2014, I was getting bullied at school. A friend of mine had a clan, so I created a new channel, with a new name “N3RDF1RE”. I posted about 10 videos here, when the bullies found out that channel to. So my response? I permanently deleted them both. All the videos and progress, gone. Forever.

In July 2017, I saw Martin Garrix for the first time. Which was my first festival, first EDM show. MTV Crashes Plymouth. I was 16, and this really changed my life. I cried, I got goosebumps, I sang, I danced. I knew in that moment how much music meant to me, and how much I wanted that to be my life.

Earlier on in the year, in March, I put out my first ever “Kobrah” remix of Ed Sheeran – Shape of You. Not officially of course, just on Facebook. I was never a popular kid at school, but this got about 40 likes from people from school so it felt cool to me at the time, even though as you can imagine it was pretty awful.

Studying Music at college from 2017 really boosted my motivation and passion for music. I took Insko serious. I made some friends who were also musicians, we used music studios with equipment far greater than anything I’ve ever used. It was all new and very inspiring to me.

I went on to release my second song “Gone”. A future bass style instrumental with a vocal chop melody, all just me trying to learn EDM and figure it all out.

Then, on the 15th June 2018, I released my first EP, “Discovered”. 4 songs, all different styles, collabs with my friends. An EDM EP, my first.

Drum & Bass, Tropical House, Progressive House & Future Bass.

Was the first time I hired someone for the artwork too on Fiverr. Pretty sure I asked for a “Bright tunnel that was catchy” and this is what I got. Had them add the FL Studio logo too as an easter egg.

A few weeks after my 18th birthday, I got the tattoo I always wanted on my wrist, the Martin Garrix logo. Remember me saying how that concert changed my whole perspective on music and I had that burst of motivation towards it? This is why I got the tattoo. It’s not just a logo of an artist that got me into making music, it’s a reminder of that show and the way it made me feel in the moment. Still to this day (even though the tattoo itself isn’t perfect), it’s one of the most meaningful ones I have. Although most of the time people think it’s for Ed Sheeran albums lmao.

In May, I released my first proper Future Bass song, one with vocals, one that actually fit that genre of music, as I took the time to understand it. It was using a Splice sample, but it was a song that even now I see as being the first proper “Insko” song. The one that started the future bass/melodic bass trend that continues. Cover art was again, painted by my Grandad.

As you can tell by now, I’ve ALWAYS been a creating person. I love creativity. As I made the “Insko Clothing” brand, I also created one with my friend Jake, called “Inspire.” The motto was “Plan. Create. Inspire.” I never actually sold anything or set anything up to be sold, but I made a handful of designs myself and printed them just for me to wear. I fixated on this for a few months in 2019 as I enjoyed the idea of running a clothing line, but it fell through.

Yet ANOTHER thing I tried doing in 2019 was “Insko Radio” a bi-weekly radio show with a mix by me. All my favorite songs, songs by my Twitch viewers, all mixed in FL Studio and thrown up on SoundCloud every other week. This also fell through, this time after only 4 episodes.

Think I just couldn’t keep up with all the stuff I wanted to do lmao

2020, I started the year signed to a label. I know, sounds like a crazy jump. At the end of 2019, I signed a year contract with a small German record label that I’m not gonna name… Cause It didn’t really end well. But they did however, get me my first 10,000 views on my first release of the year “We’re Just People”, which was a melodic bass song using a vocal sample, and a song I was really proud of at the time. It felt like a fresh new wave, and it was. It was the first single from an upcoming EP I’d release with the label.

On April 3rd I released my second EP “The Drawing Board”. 5 Songs, 4 Future Bass songs and one chill one. Also my first proper collaboration with Jet Streak called “Over Oceans”, which was also my first Dubstep song (he did most of the heavy stuff).

There was a lot about this EP that I was proud of. It felt like the first solid project I worked on, a coherent theme and something I spent a long time working on.

I did however, post a handful of unofficial remixes on YouTube, along with the other silly music related videos, like Omegle, music challenges, etc.

This took my YouTube to the most subscribers I ever had which was over 300. I never saw over 210 on Velocity Gaming or 200 on Tjayres2000. So this was huge for me. YouTube kept my spirits high for sure.

2021, I was ready to hit it full throttle. No label, no restrictions. My motivation was back and I quickly started releasing. I started a song called “Big World” with someone I found on TikTok, a vocalist named Oli Assor. Me and Oli became friends and spend a few months working on the song, I turned his demo into a Future Bass, pop song that we was both super proud of. It felt nostalgic. It was also the first independent song I released that hit over 1,000 streams, just from us promoting the song and getting playlists.

But then, on July 16th 2021, I posted one video that changed It all. My favorite artist at the time and someone that grew to be a huge inspiration for me as an artist, ILLENIUM, released his new album Fallen Embers. Me being a huge fan, thought why you just hit record and do a first listen of the album. This video got over 24,000 views between now and then, and shaped the course for my YouTube channel for the future.

On my 21st birthday that year I released a song called “Not Ok”. This was again a Future Bass/Melodic Bass style song, but this time I got a custom artwork made AND my first vocal feature that wasn’t a sample! It was really fun to work with Reya Lun on this one, I sent her my vision and she done an amazing job at bringing the song to life in the way I wanted.

I started of 2022 with the best mindset. The music side of things took a bit of a back seat for a while. But YouTube, I was recording videos every Thursday using a New Zealand Spotify account, recording up to 10 videos, then scheduling them all to be posted every 30 minutes throughout Friday. All new EDM songs by big and small artists. By March, I hit 2,000 subscribers. Absolutely insane.

The channel just continued to grow and grow throughout the year, I kept having the same people watch the videos, and one of the best things was the artists themselves watching too! Some of the artists followed me socials, some left comments. It was surreal for me, being a fan of their music. And as an artist myself too, it was cool to see artists that inspire me, know of me.

July 23rd 2022, I saw ILLENIUM play for the first time at Ministry of Sound in London. After doing reaction videos for so long and ILLENIUM being the one that started it all, it was AMAZING to see him live for the first time, and being in the UK, I didn’t think I’d see him for a while.

But that’s not the crazy bit…

2022 was mad. Seeing the channel grow and grow was surreal to me. I only released 3 songs this year, as I focused on the YouTube more. I ended the year on over 5,200 subscribers and 38,000 Spotify streams for the year, despite not releasing much. 2022 was a crazy year for me.

In February, I started something new. I went on YouTube and searched “Indie pop instrumental” and sung over it. This was the start to a new project, Tyler Jayy. Indie music, me singing, writing lyrics. Something I’ve never done. I gave it a go, and I loved it. After a few months, my friend Luke re-produced the whole instrumental making it a whole new song. On May 25th 2023, Tyler Jayy was now my new Alias.