Not that I’m complaining, really. I grew up on music, and it’s hard to imagine that there might be people out there who don’t like music. It’s also hard to imagine that there’s anyone who has never been involved in music in some way.
Just like joining soccer, baseball, or basketball when you’re little, it feels like people start music young as well, or at least in my experience it’s been that way. My whole life I have been surrounded by music, and for most of it I’ve been involved in it in some way. By the time I was in high school, just about all of the friends I had played an instrument or were in choir.
When I was four years old, I started taking ballet and tap at Cindy’s School of Dance in Allen, TX. Up until that point, besides going to church every Sunday and singing hymns with the congregation, I don’t think I had really been involved in music. Looking back at old videos from those two years in dance, I appeared to be one of the ones who had really caught on to all of the steps and knew exactly what to do. In a way, I was one with the music, but mostly I think I just really enjoyed the dancing and was excited to show off my skills for an audience full of people.
At the start of first grade, I quit dance and took up piano lessons. It wasn’t too hard for me to figure out the notes and the music theory; I was a smart kid. I think I may have been excited to start piano lessons because my mom played the piano at church (she still does!), and so I wanted to be able to do what she did. By about fourth or fifth grade, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to take piano lessons anymore. I never practiced anyways, and my teacher even knew it. Halfway through 5th grade I stopped taking piano lessons, and I was sad about it, but wasn’t too terribly bothered by the fact I wouldn’t be in lessons anymore because I knew I would be in band the next year.
In sixth grade I entered into band as a percussionist. Out of the ten sixth grade percussion students, about half of us were girls, which I was pretty proud about since percussion was stereotypically seen as an instrument for boys. At the beginning, we went over a lot of things I already knew, such as note names, as well as a lot of things I didn’t know. There’s no telling if I was one of the better students in percussion or not, but I remember my band teachers loved me and at the end of the year they were sad that I was moving to a different school district for middle school.
Middle school was definitely a little bit different, but I was apparently still one of the better students. Again, we went over some of the easy stuff at the beginning of seventh grade, such as note names and scales, and all year we seemed to play really simple songs that bored all of us practically to tears. In eighth grade I surprisingly ended up in Honors Band as the only girl percussionist and was pretty proud of myself.
When high school came around, not only was I in band, but I had also joined choir. Band was my life, forever and always, especially freshman year. At the end of freshman year, I originally was going to quit choir. I ended up missing my last choir concert for that year because I had a band concert the same night at a completely different place, and I was much more important as a percussionist in band than I was amongst 10 other soprano 1’s in choir. Luckily, I don’t think he meant to, but my choir director practically guilted me in to staying in choir, and the rest is just about history. By my senior year I was in the varsity choir and couldn’t be prouder.
Now as a junior music education major, I am the soprano section leader for the Centenary College Choir this year, and I’m also involved with Camerata, which is Centenary’s chamber choir, as well as orchestra and percussion ensemble, which last year it was joked that I should be percussion ensemble’s president.
My whole life has been centered around music, and it’s almost weird to think that there are people whose lives don’t revolve around music. Sure, everyone listens to music and enjoys their own favorite genres, but do they really enjoy it? To me, music is a way to express myself and it’s a way to connect with others. My choir family at college and I may not all share the same opinions, but at the end of the day the music we make is what brings as together. For a good while my freshman year of college, music was literally the reason why I got up in the morning. It brought me joy, not only to be able to see my wonderful friends, but also because I loved the music we were singing.
As the years have gone by, I’ve learned to appreciate music more and more, and have even started to realize what kind of preparation there really is to make performances so amazing. I have been to so many more symphony and opera performances these past two and a half years then I’ve been to in my entire life, excluding any band or choir concerts I had been a part of. I have listened to movie soundtracks and have enjoyed them, which is something I never would have done when I was younger. Even when listening to musical soundtracks, I find myself occasionally focusing on what the orchestra is playing in the background, rather than what the vocalists are singing.
Music has taken over my life, especially lately. If I weren’t involved in music as much as I am at the moment, I’m not sure what I would even be doing with myself.
