Ole Pedersen – Singer, producer, musician, designer

The idea for following a full course at the Wisseloord Academy actually came from my mother. After high school I came from Bonaire to the Netherlands because my mother was ill and I decided to stay here. She wanted my education to go forward and I wasn’t really looking. She thought Wisseloord Academy was just the thing for me and she was right. For me Malik was the deciding factor. He emphasized that I should mainly be myself and not worry about anything else.

I decided to do the full course at the Wisseloord Academy and immediately went ‘On Campus’. I was nervous, because it was new and the first time that I went to live on my own. It has been a very educational year for me with a lot of music and new friends. I really learned a lot, for example from my new friend Joe, who is the facility manager of the studios.

I lived on a boat for 15 years and played a lot of music there with my brother. Our first song was about dinosaurs. It never really occurred to me then to make a living from my musical skills. So I can’t say that this was my dream. I’m not that kind of dreamer. I have learned here that creating things is a very fulfilling process and that I am really good at it. So now I want to make something beautiful every day. To be honest, I don’t like everything around the music industry – such as the business side. Maybe that is also because I’m not good at it.

Everything I like to do now has to do with creation. I sing, can produce well and work fast on DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), I can record samples and make beats, now learning to play many instruments like piano, drums and bass. What I wish I could do better is to finish things faster with people. For me, a big part of the energy disappears when something takes a very long time. I also really enjoy making ‘visuals’ – such as video clips or a canvas for Spotify. I used to love watching Winnie The Pooh. Image – just like music – is also a form of ‘storytelling’. For me, music is also about movement and movement can be enhanced with images.