Let's Talk: Music

Good Morning (or night or afternoon, wherever you are, whenever you read this)! This post / email is for those who want something fun to read. Hope you stick until the end!

It almost shames me to admit that, when asked what I like to do, music is rarely the first thing that comes to mind. I suppose this is partly due to the fact that music has been so ingrained in my life, I don’t have a conscious opinion on it anymore.

A little background: I played the Piano as an extracurricular activity outside of school while in school, for most of my elementary and high school life. Meaning, I took Piano lessons every week. At first, when I was very young, I liked it. I don’t exactly know why I liked it, but I suppose it was fun, so I liked it. When I play the Piano now, it’s fun, and I like it but, somewhere between now and when I first started learning Piano, I came to say that I don’t like Piano. You see, a lot of people in my inner circle didn’t like Piano, including my siblings. Perhaps that was why, to ‘fit in’, I decided to start saying that I didn’t like Piano. Maybe I really did not like Piano because it took up so much of my time, and maybe I started to identify as someone who didn’t like Piano, which is probably why music is rarely the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks me what I like doing in my free time.

When I was really young—and I mean, around 5-8 years old—, the only music influences I had were classical music from Piano lessons, christian music from church—I won’t talk about religion in my newsletters—, songs learned in school, and the infrequent pop songs that I heard 10 times at school. So, as you may imagine, when I was really young, I lived under a rock in terms of music, more so than others my age. My parents weren’t into music that were part of pop culture, and so me and my siblings didn’t listen to pop culture music, growing up. I find this a shame, because of how much music there is out there, and how I wasn’t able to access them. The same thing happened with childhood TV shows, where people around me always had that TV show they watched as a child, while I didn’t. I don’t find that a shame though.

I’ve tried playing a number of instruments. Cello in middle school (it was mandatory to play an instrument), guitar throughout my life (spontaneously, and ineffectively), bass guitar in high school, recorder in primary school. They didn’t work out. I quit music at school when I got to high school, I couldn’t stick with the guitar, the bass guitar was confusing, and the recorder, well, is a recorder that I haven’t touched since I graduated from primary school. With all this being said, I do find instruments interesting. I find a lot of things interesting. However, I don’t think I’ll be picking up a wind instrument anytime soon because, well, limited lung capacity 🫠 .

When someone asks me what my favorite genre of music is, I have two different answers. One, I don’t know, and two, Classical music. Here’s the thing: I don’t know what I like to listen to, though classical music is probably not the thing. As mentioned before, when I was growing up, I didn’t have much musical influence to a wide variety of things, so my musical genre knowledge is very limited, therefore, I don’t know what I like listening to. My favorite genre of music to play, however, is classical music. It’s the easiest genre to play for me, because I can’t improvise, nor can I play chords. I mean, how do you even play chords? Please do educate me if you know 😑 . In terms of listening to music, I like a wide variety of music that I have explored over the years, but the thing is, I have no clue what genre those songs would fall into, though definitely not classical music (sorry classical music fans).

I like music, I really do. But this might be entirely because of my inability to hate anything I try doing. I have a hard time hating something, unless its food (I’m really picky 😅 ). I have a hard time hating people, and I have a hard time hating things I try. Even coding (which I haven’t been able to learn at all), I don’t hate, even though it frustrates me and I don’t understand a thing it tries doing. So I don’t hate music because, even though I might suffer from practicing Piano, and even though I might suck at playing instruments, I still love listening to music, and I still like how good it feels when I can play something on the instruments.

Music is one of the things in my life that remains constant in some shape or form. I listen to music a lot, and I play a bit. It’s been with me since I was a baby (which, for most people, is the case), and it’s still with me to this day. I find music awing, like many other forms of art, and it’s a pleasure to be able to appreciate music.

Thanks for sticking this long, and I hope you have a great week! 😁 

I want some feedback: Do you like these topics? Anything else you want to send me is much appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was worth your while 😄 Please tell me something you do as an extracurricular kind of thing (if you want), and remember, you’re awesome! If you want, sign up to my weekly newsletter (if you haven’t already). Link down below! Email: [email protected]