Sherif Karama

Biography

He was born on May 19th 1985, in Cairo, Egypt. In June 1987, his parents decided to move to Canada. Sherif was very early on interested in and attracted by music. He received his first keyboard for Christmas when he was about 7 years old. As a child, he never took any proper courses, but would reproduce everything he would hear, from Walt Disney tunes to oriental/Egyptian music his parents would listen too. His real “awakening” happened shortly before Sherif turned 12; starting high school, meeting new friends, made him discover a whole new musical world. The whole Seattle scene of the early 90’s, mainly Nirvana and Kurt Cobain became his main inspiration. Soon after, he received his first guitar, for his 12th birthday. Again, without any course, the young musician taught himself a few chords, and managed to reproduce everything he could, from pop to rock. On another page, and since age 7 as well, role playing video games (Final Fantasy, Zelda, etc.) contributed to his need for imaginarion and creativity. The soundtracks to those games being amongst the first fully constructed scores in video games, it was Sherif's first contact with classical music proper, which would lead him, years later, to study classical music theory and interpretation. Around the end of 1999, he formed his first band with drummer Mike Sperlazza, and bassist Michael Carfanigni. During the next 4 years, the band, Eloes, recorded two demos, at Air MS studio in Montreal, yielding 15 of the almost 70 songs they had written, giving Sherif his first studio experience. They played a dozen concerts, the main ones being La Place a Cote, and Montmorency College. The band eventually dismembered, its members having different personal objectives, but Sherif continued to write and record music on his own. He started equipping for a small home studio; microphones and cables, amplifiers, a 12 string electro-acoustic guitar, a MIDI keyboard, and computer programs. For the next year, he would record an extra dozen of songs, taken from Eloes's repertoire using sampling machines for drums.

Being unable to sustain himself financially with music, Sherif decided to pursue some more schooling in order to have better chances at being recognized as a musician. He applied at Vincent d’Indy school of Music, with absolutely 0 knowledge of classical music theory, in classical guitar as his instrument of study. His love of video game music was even more developed by learning the exact rules of symphonic construction and orchestration, and he soon enough focused his attention to theory rather then practice, being amazed by the science inherent to any given musical genre, the math within the sound. He also discovered the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; having very interesting student prices on tickets, and for a while, Sherif considered being a conductor/composer-hoping to create soundtracks for video games, in inspiration of Nobuo Uematsu, composer for the Final Fantasy series. After completing my DEC(post secondary, pre universatary diploma in Quebec) in music, he studied with Luce Beaudet, at the University of Montreal, digging deeper in music theory, to really grasp the structures that guided musical construction in the pure tonal era (Bach to Wagner). For the following year, and to this day, he's tried to apply this knowledge to song writing, adding backing vocals and instrumental tracks to regular pop-rock tunes, shaping them into something new.

Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.