Music to My Ears

My mind, body, and soul, too.

There have been times when I've resented being able to play the violin. Like every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday during high school when I had to go to rehearsal or lessons even though I was already tired from being brutally abused doing drills during wrestling practice. Or on Saturdays when I had concerts, because tuxedos are not comfortable. Or pretty much any time when I had to go play violin somewhere and I had an online assignment due that night, because, let's face it, there was no way I was going to start homework early. That is not the way of the IB student.

Bad procrastination habits aside, violin – or, more generally, music – has been an integral part of my life that I couldn't imagine being without.

I thought that the start of college for me would be the end of my days as a violinist. This saddened me, because I really liked being able to whip my violin out and play Darude - "Sandstorm" on random occasions where I'm with a group of people in a non-musical context and have my violin on hand, which actually happens a lot more than you'd think. However, making the transition to college actually had the opposite effect: more often than before I've found myself cracking open my case and just fiddling around on my instrument (is that where the expression comes from?) while I'm reading something online, watching a video, debugging some code, hanging out with friends in the common room, have nothing to do, or have something to do but would rather procrastinate.

As a kid, I grew up with music that's become an essential contributor to the fondness of certain memories. I remember Saturday mornings when I'd wake up and hear my dad playing classical music from The Best Classical Album in the World... Ever! while cooking breakfast. Whenever we saw True Lies on T.V., we'd wait for and watch the scenes where they were doing the tango to a string quartet playing "Por una cabeza" just because we liked the song. And it wasn't just classical music: my dad also had a mixtape (before it was cool) of Burt Bacharach's greatest hits and some other songs, which he'd play in the car every time we'd make the drive over to L.A. to visit our cousins. My older brother, who usually sat shotgun as we dropped off our older siblings to school before my younger brother and I were in school, would play Smashing Pumpkins or Weezer over the radio in our green 1999 Chevy Astro.

When I started playing violin, it was because my older brother had played violin before college and I thought it was super cool when he played Canon in D at our cousin's wedding. During my first few years of playing, my end goal was to be able to play Canon in D. Now, if you've played violin before, you probably know that it's a pretty easy piece to play, but back then, I didn't get the concept of a song being melodic and sweet but not very technically challenging. So once I had learned it, I became bored with violin and only stuck with it as a means to an end, the end being – what else? – having another thing to put on my résumé, though back in middle school I didn't even know what a résumé really was; I pretty much just knew that a résumé was a thing you put things on.

My interest in playing the violin was initially revived when I became involved in theater performances, most significantly in joining the Temecula Valley Players' production of The Fiddler on the Roof as the Fiddler and playing as a pit musician for Fine Arts Network's production of Spamalot. As a soloist in a non-classical setting, I found that I had a lot more creative freedom with my playing style; there was no conductor to yell at me for not playing it according to their interpretation of centuries-old music, the music itself wasn't very technically demanding, and, most importantly, I wasn't stuck in a tux.

What made it more rewarding was the people I was playing for. Fellow actors and actresses certainly got a kick out of hearing music that wasn't prerecorded and played over some speakers. The audience was receptive too. These people were not the classically trained, snobbishly judgmental critics of the stereotypical stuffy concert hall; they were theater folk, who came to enjoy a good theatrical performance. For them, any live music was just a pleasant addition to the content they'd come to watch, which meant they were more conscious of the craft behind what they were listening to. Small things like people personally complimenting me on my playing after a showing of Fiddler or coming down to the pit to applaud all of us after Spamalot really made my day, and it reminded me that even if I didn't think I was particularly good at playing myself, it provided enjoyment for others, and that's what mattered the most.

After a dry spell without theater performances, I experienced a renewed interest in playing when I took a music class in high school. Because I still had the mindset that I wouldn't be playing violin anymore once I started college, I'd known for a while that if I wanted to actually get good at it, I only had until senior year, and on top of that, I had to submit solo recordings for the class, which meant people would be judging my playing. And those people definitely weren't going to be casual theatergoers.

I'll let you in on a secret that you can't tell my private teacher or symphony conductor: before that music class, I didn't practice at home. I was just too lazy busy with school and extracurriculars like wrestling to pick up my violin. But I was determined to improve: my dad's favorite classical piece was (and still is) something from The Best Classical Album in the World... Ever! – "Winter" by Antonio Vivaldi – and I wanted to be able to play it. In the span of a few weeks, playing the violin became what I did in my spare time, not just because I liked the fact that I was getting better at it, but I was actually enjoying playing. Something about the combination of things involved – the finger placement, the vibrato, the bowing, the shifting – had a therapeutic effect that couldn't be compared to. I have no idea why I didn't enjoy these aspects of playing before. It might or might not have had to do with the fact that in the back of my mind I knew that playing was actually getting academic me credit for once, but hey. I still liked playing.

In my senior year of high school, I'd bring my violin every Thursday because I had lessons right after school. I'd pull it out while my math teacher was lecturing and silently place my fingers on the fingerboard, and between classes and on breaks I'd grab the bow and start playing random songs. And by random songs I mean selections from my meme repertoíre – "Sandstorm," "We Are Number One," the Nyan Cat song, "All Star," and many other songs that have ascended to legendary meme status – because I liked making people laugh. To this day, I have no idea why my math teacher tolerated all that.

Apart from meme songs on the violin, I do enjoy other kinds of music. I always play my older brother's CD of the Blue Album whenever I'm driving in the green van, because it reminds me of the times when he'd put Weezer on the radio in the and drive places using the green van. Like a lot of people, I also listen to music when I go to the gym, because it gives me something to focus on other than the fact that I've been totally out of shape since I stopped wrestling. And I absolutely love video game music, especially orchestral pieces; it really completes the immersion of the game. Most recently, I've been trying out Destiny 2, and the sad violin music that plays after the opening sequence, in which the characters' world is pretty much turned upside-down and destroyed, perfectly captures the mood of the game. Of course, sometimes the music turns intense when I get spotted by an enemy that I don't even notice until I get killed because the music causes me to panic and frantically look around, but other than that, it adds to the enjoyment and experience of the game.

I also developed a guilty pleasure in K-Pop during the summer session (and you can decide whether or not it's a coincidence that it was in Irvine). It's what I'd listen to when I didn't bring my scooter and I had to walk home without it, and it's probably a good thing that it was at night, since there were less people around to witness me ridiculously bobbing my head to lyrics I didn't understand but still would try to sing to myself. I still listen to K-Pop, which is something I don't really like to advertise to people. Then again, I just wrote that. And you just read that. And this is on the Internet for anyone to see. Oh well. Good thing nobody really reads this blog.

When I was starting to get involved on LinkedIn, I read an article by Jack Weast, Senior Principal Engineer & Chief Systems Architect of the Automated Driving Group at Intel, about how important it is to strengthen the link between the arts and sciences, detailing his own experience as a classical musician growing up and how it's shaped his career and him as a person. It was great article that I read all the way through, not just because I was thinking "Man, I really want to work at a company like Intel" in the back of my mind while reading it, but because his story and message resonated so well with me. I was reminded that violin and classical music were still what I enjoyed listening to the most, and as the fall quarter approached, I realized that I couldn't just stop playing violin, so I set up an audition for the university symphony and began practicing.

It was going well until I went on the website after a while and saw that the music I'd been practicing was the audition repertoíre for the year before, so that was cool. Thankfully, though, the new music was not only easier, but also a lot more fun to play. I did end up making it in (much to my surprise), and we recently had a weekend-long retreat at Alpine Meadows Retreat Center where we rehearsed the music for our next concert. There was extremely limited Internet access, which was why I posted late last week, and definitely not because I procrastinated too hard to write the post early and have it auto-post on Hootsuite. But the retreat itself was nice, and it provided a refreshing experience that reaffirmed my passion for playing the violin. The part that made it more than just a bunch of rehearsals was the fact that it was all I was doing; without Internet connection, I really could just focus on my music and unwind.

That kind of calming focus, I've found, is what makes music so important: it gives you a chance to relieve your stresses by giving you time to recompose yourself, unburdened by the worries of external stimuli, and achieve that work-life balance that is so essential to living your best life. Ironically enough, though, I had to take out my earbuds while writing this, because K-Pop is just too addicting. ∎

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Too Many Thoughts: Music to My Ears

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