Author's Note: This story is completely fictional and did not happen. All characters and names are fictional and were made up. I do not make money from these stories. Please do not copy and plagiarize my work.
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Miami, Florida
A deep sigh was heard through the room while the ceiling fan blades were spinning from the center of the ceiling. Across the room sat a man at a desk with rays of light seeping through the opened curtains of the hotel room. Fingers were heard moving across the keys attached to a silver laptop in front of the man's eyes. Over his lap sat a small keyboard, detached from the work station that it belonged to on the left side of the room. A USB cable was plugged in, powering it through the laptop with the use of a studio software opened up. With the door locked shut and a large pair of pink headphones over his ears, there was nothing to interfere with his determined concentration. He wore nothing but a pair of simple purple shorts and a yellow shirt over his skinny body. Over his face was something of short black stubble as he had yet to shave in the last twenty four hours. His hair was a shade of brown, overflowing beyond his shoulders when it wasn't curled up in a pony tail. With his right hand resting over the keyboard in his lap, he used his left to click the mouse to begin recording just before clicking again to play the track.
His line of sight was set directly over what was a line of frequency displayed on on the opened software. The line had low and high points to demonstrate the pitch and flow of the instrumental track as it progressed. Moving his hands down below to the small keyboard, he pushed down on time a few simple chords. The keyboard itself went with a synth work station. The keys were set for playing bass into what was a dance oriented track to make up for the lack of any bass guitar in the mix. This was nothing short of a small practice session with a song that was in the making. His hand shifted on time moving to a different set of keys that he pressed down to match the flow of the song. After running a few seconds after a three whole minutes, silence fell upon his ears as the song cut off. With a bass layer finished, it would need proper placement into the song mix itself. Letting out a sigh of relief, he grabbed the headphones and removed them from his ears, allowing them to slip down his neck. Through the room, his cellphone began to ring but he didn't pay it any mind. After a minute of ringing, the automated voice mail called out in the tone of a robotic female voice.
"I'm sorry, Prince Zeke isn't answering the phone right now. Please leave a message."
After a beep, a male voice was heard speaking as the speaker-phone feature was activated anytime the cellphone went to voice mail.
"Hey man, it's Johnny here! I've gotta talk to you about something. It would be nice if you actually answered your phone from time to time. Call me whenever you get the chance. I got that Mac book you wanted, you need to check it out before tonight's show, just to make sure I bought the right thing."
Regardless of what seemed like an urgent message, Ezekiel wasn't phased by the noise whatsoever. He was a man of concentration and did not like to stray away from whatever task he currently had in hand. To him, focus was a matter of deciding what you're not going to do. If distractions were allowed to hinder his thoughts, he wouldn't accomplish anything throughout the day. This was a mindset that had dominated his youth crossing over into his now adulthood as he worked as a musician. By this point he was twenty-five years old and had been working in music now for six years, starting around his twenty birthday back home in Chicago. His main job as a musician was that of a DJ and producer, performing at a local club in Downtown, Miami. The choice of music genre went by the name of 'Synth Wave' or 'Retro Wave' as he found his calling in the current new crop of musicians creating new songs inspired by an era of synth driven pop music from the eighties. Of his fellow companions and few friends in the Miami music scene, little was known of Ezekiel's past or how a Chicago DJ had ended up all the way down in southern Florida.
He was a man of few words, not willing to discuss his past or childhood. All that was known of Ezekiel was that his stage name of 'Prince Zeke' had been given to him by a local Chicago musician he played bass guitar for back home. The nickname of 'Prince' had to do with his young age at the time, playing alongside musicians who had ruled the Chicago dance scene for decades. He was now twenty-five years old, living off almost a whole decade of experience in music going back to his teen years. After spending one summer in Miami, he was discovered by Johnny Green. A local agent turned manager associated with a nightclub that went by the name Club Esmeralda. The club was prominent in the city for running a string of DJ's whom had become something of local celebrities in the Miami music scene. Club Esmeralda used a streaming service online as well as receiving local airplay from a radio station. For the past seven years, it was considered to be the hot spot club in Miami for up and coming musicians. Ezekiel found himself a spot as a one man DJ show after submitting a CD of 80's pop remixes to the club. Johnny Green listened to the disc and was impressed by the skill put forth by the man.
What had truly impressed Johnny was the level of determination and commitment presented to him by Ezekiel's work ethic. He was the type of musician who liked to do it all by himself and had the talent to succeed on his own. His main piece of hardware was a synth work station that involved three keyboards and a sampler. The work station went along with a laptop or a Mac book as he preferred. Ezekiel often recorded live bass and guitar tracks to be mixed in with his instrumental backing tracks. In his hotel room, a cheap blonde painted standard Telecaster guitar sat in the corner next to a red Stratocaster. They were rarely used on stage, as he always brought out his work station instead and had only played live guitar a handful of times. There was something about having live keys on stage that was of most importance to Ezekiel. He found this to be important going back to his days in Chicago where he played keyboards or bass guitar and sometimes rhythm guitar live on stage. While the other DJ's at Club Esmeralda worked exclusively with laptops and mix tables, he was the one exception to have a large work station of a rig when he was sitting or standing behind the table in control. It was a key detail that made him stand out from the local competition.
Over his first year of gigging in the club, Ezekiel had earned enough money to rent a local apartment but decided not to. Johnny watched him move into a cheap hotel where the man would go on to isolate himself with something of a mini-studio where he produced his tracks digitally. According to Ezekiel, he did this so he could focus without anyway of the outside world bothering him. Most of his money was spent solely on equipment for recording and performing live, sacrificing what would make for stable living in favor of his artistic abilities. Though he came across as antisocial at times, this was only the side-effect of how determined he was through focusing on his music. His demeanor completely changed on stage as he took up the mantle of his stage name 'Prince Zeke'. Behind the DJ table overlooking the dance floor, he felt in control of his domain. It was his duty to put on the beats, the synths and give off the music that would make the audience jump and feel the energy that only his music could produce.
After three years within the Miami dance scene, Prince Zeke was quickly becoming one of the hottest DJ's within the underground music scene. Ezekiel felt that he had reached something of a peak when a few of his remixes had made local radio stations. Club Esmeralda would stream music online, where his DJ sessions would bring in thousands of stream listeners through the weekends. With growing popularity, he began to slowly distance himself from remixes of pop songs and moved more into his direction of writing his own music. The style under the artist name of Prince Zeke was something of Hi-NRG based Italo Disco. Stories ran in local Miami media about the intense energy of the dance floors when Prince Zeke put on his encore numbers. This was the product of his musical upbringing in Chicago with the House scene.
In the early days, producers like Marshall Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles had drawn Ezekiel to the House style. It was the discovery of a band called Aleph and Dave Rodgers along with Fred Ventura that would influence his sound into that of Italo-Disco and Hi-NRG style. This high tempo synth sound made Zeke stand out significantly from the competition he faced from the other DJ's performing at Club Esmeralda. It all began one night when he decided to mix in Aleph's song 'Big Brother' into a set. When the beat dropped and the bridge and chorus sections of the song began to play, the dance floor erupted into people wildly jumping up in down and clapping their hands in sync to the fast tempo beat. The next time he used the same song in a set one night later, the crowd was chanting 'Big Brother!', singing along with the chorus while Zeke pushed his fingers over the keyboard to play the main lead riffs to the song. This was the start of him setting fire to the dance floor of Club Esmeralda with his high energy performances.
By spring of 2018, he had moved his way up the ladder to become the top featured DJ of the club. Envy grew among his competition, but it was certain that very few of them could compete with Zeke lighting the dance floor in flames, forcing the audience to jump and burst into energy. He didn't have to rely on modern dance songs or radio hits like his competition did. From time to time, he would break out an old House anthem to cherish his roots back home to the Chicago scene. Usually his set lists worked with his own instrumental songs that he wrote and would perform live keyboards along to and then mix in a cover song. Zeke had began distancing himself from using pop songs and more into obscure Italo-Disco tunes to try and draw attention towards the artists whom influenced him the most. By this point, the only time he used a popular radio song was in his own Hi-NRG dance style remixes.
