A bit about my life

I started my music life around age 3-4 by learning the Pianica from my sisters. I learned the kid’s songs taught by my sisters and continued playing more songs by myself as I heard the songs. Looking at my playing, my parents sent me to take Eastern music classes, where I learned the basics for a few months. My parents gifted me my first electronic keyboard, a small Yamaha PSS-290 keyboard when I was 10, and with it, I mastered fingering and playing with beats and chords. When I was 11, I started learning Western music theories at school and learned to use chords, harmonies, ornaments, and apply accents to lyrics, which are essentials for songwriting.

In 1998, I met Sandun Nagahawaththa – a senior student at my college who later became the lyric writer of most of my early songs – who gave me some lyrics for which I composed my own music for the first time when I was 15. In 1999, I received a programmable keyboard from my parents – a Yamaha PSR-630 from the early keyboard models that provided 16 tracks, MIDI songs programming to floppy disks. Using the keyboard’s user manual, I self-learned programming songs, and with the theoretical music knowledge I’d gained from college and the experience of playing the keyboard since childhood, I continued composing songs using this keyboard and lyrics I received from different writers, most from Sandun. I used to sing these new songs to my family and friends, and some even performed at college events, where I trained a choir to sing the song and provided music using my keyboard. I compiled the songs I composed during 1999 – 2002 into an album named Nishanthaye, after the name of the third song I wrote. All the songs in this album were experimental songs of fusion of Sri Lankan traditional music, Sri Lankan pop music, Western orchestral music, and Western pop music.

In 2003, my parents bought me my first computer (actually for my higher studies in software engineering), and I started my computer-based music life with it. I self-learned from resources on the web how to compose, record, mix, and master using Digital Audio Workstation software and, while learning, converted the Nishanthaye album’s songs projects from keyboard format to computer formats. Also, I started composing new songs utilizing the computer-based resources. I set up a small studio at home, formed a group named FusionCrew, including the lyric writers and singers, and continued working with them. During 2005 - 2007, I compiled my second album named “Bolanda Huratha Aadare”; during 2007-2008, I completed an EDM concept album named “Cycle of Affection”. The demo tracks were published on my website under the group name FusionCrew; some of them were even played on some radio stations.

After that, I was busy with my studies and personal life, had to move away from home, didn’t have a proper place to set up the studio again, and my music life was paused for over a decade. By the end of 2021, I purchased some gear and started setting up a home studio again. I created accounts on social media under the name EnDee, and since then, I’ve been remastering the old songs, producing new tracks, and publishing them on the web, hoping there will be someone to listen to and like them.