I was born in a house of music. My mom wasn’t musical, but my dad’s knowledge and skill in music could make up for a dozen unmusical people. He majored in playing woodwind instruments, but could play various stringed instruments (bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, etc), could sing, lay down a rhythm on drums, and he knew enough music theory that i was a surprise that his brain hadn’t exploded from the knowledge packed in it.
I grew up in a house that had at least one instrument in almost every room – including the closets and bedrooms. It was almost predestined that I would be musical, but surprisingly, I had no interest at all. My dad liked to sit me down in front of the piano when I was really young and rave on about music theory. I would just smile and nod and wait until I could escape. The most I had ever done with a piano was thrust my fist on the keys to hear the awful sound that came out.
Then I hit the age of fourteen, and I discovered a song on my sister’s iPod after having borrowed it without permission. The name of the artist, being just two words that had no relation to each other, struck my interest. I played the one song under the artist’s name, and my ears were filled with glorious music that flipped a switch in my brain, lighting a fire in every corner of my mind. I instantly bought the artist’s whole discography. With each song I gained more and more inspiration.
I approached my mom, asking to get piano lessons until I figured out what I wanted to play. She was happy to oblige, as a friend of hers was a piano teacher. My dad was the most excited of all of us. He took this as a chance to reteach me every single thing he ever tried to tell me about music theory, and I soaked it all up this time.
After a summer of playing piano, and while I was still deciding what I wanted to play, my dad brought his bass guitar to me and had me put it on. I was so excited that I impulsively chose that bass guitar was the instrument for me. And it was. I have thrived on the rhythm and strong foundations in music that bass can produce.
However, my inspiration was not satisfied by just playing music. I felt a creative need to make my own music and write songs! I started on a tiny app on my iPod, creating little melodies that have been lost to time, until I finally downloaded a free version of Ableton Live, which is a professional music program for writing, editing, and producing music. Every little thing my dad had taught me about music theory were like gears in my brain that set my creative processes moving.
I wrote songs, and prolifically. Over the course of the past two and a half years (including a nine-month period in the middle when I gave up), I have written forty songs and forty-five instrumental pieces. It is a medium where I can express any emotion and it will come out beautiful to me. Anger, sadness, stress, and happiness all produce something I like, and I think it takes a complex and glorious form of art to turn stress into beauty.
My songwriting has been one thing of which I have been consistently proud. Writing music, playing bass, and singing have all been hobbies that have carried me through my teen years, and I can’t imagine my life without those things in it. I went through my first fourteen years of life about as unmusical as one can get, but now I thrive on the creativity.
bespectacledbassist 