Musical Rewind

There was a time in my life (pretty much all of grade school) when music was a close second to the passion of mine in soccer... and considering there were periods I played 7 days a week and on 3 teams at once (+ running track)... not to mention a couple tournaments halfway around the world, i'd call that pretty serious.

Honestly tho, if I had put the time I spent on sports into my studies as a musician, I'd probably be a music teacher right now. It wasn't a question of what I enjoyed most, just priorities I set.

Remember those tests in junior/senior year that supposedly narrow down your aptitude/career choices? Little surprise when they came back saying I should be a composer, hahaha. How the heck do y ou determine that??? We all know those tests are skewed anyway by the sheer reality that we answer questions with certain aims in mind... kinda like how we try to answer political survey/test questions without regard to related subject biases.

But the result merits some thought, actually. At one time I was actually really excited at the thought of writing my own music. When I got to music theory (senior year of HS), life circumstances at that particular point had suddenly put me in a pretty craptastic state of mind... unable to focus enough to actually compose anything with the most basic knowledge in composition to boot. It was no coincidence that I dropped my grades significantly the last 6 months either.... good thing my path to Purdue was already set.

In all reality, the decision to move away from music was based on my fear of not being a good teacher. Ironically, I eventually chose to be a pilot... and becoming one basically requires teaching experience, LOL. I've done a pretty good job with my students so far, and so that fear was laid to rest. So what if I had stuck with music? I'm really not going to sit here and regret that I haven't played my Sax since freshman year in Purdue's Concert and Symphonic Bands, but since then I did the same thing to music as i did with art... I just set it aside when other things became more important. Also a twist of irony... my final performance as a musician was directed by composer David R. Holsinger. It was quite inspiring :)

There's a big difference from just being a talented musician/music teacher to being a composer. Quite frankly, there's nothing to say I would have been any better at it than anyone else... for any musician reading this you know just the idea of it is out in left field, haha.

Recent events have messed with my brain however, in that the constant soundtrack of music playing in my head is just too painful to not mute. You can call them the voices in my head... they just happen to be singing instead of talking, and with a strikingly similar tone to music you might have heard. Anyway, the silence flipped some switch in my head, where I have this poignant urge to play again, and melodies i'd never heard randomly form in my head... wishing I could write them down, and at the very least play them on guitar. I'll stop short at the singing... nobody wants to hear me there ;-) It's just odd... i haven't had this kinda thing happen much since high school, when I was still anticipating the point where I could write.

I should have taken up guitar... there's not much sax playing in my head. But there's a lot of stuff I wish I could send to the Goo Goo Dolls, LOL. j/k. The music i live in tends to be 90s rock and a lot of random Christian music. So I guess I would have done better in a garage band back in the day.

I would have loved nothing more than to be in an instrumental music group at church. It always bugged me that I couldn't. I sang in choir a lot, even through college, but nowhere could I play an instrument. It always cracks me up tho, at the number of guitars that show up to play in comparison to everyone else. I'm pretty sure I'd play Bass guitar... and sing if I had the voice. I've always loved worship through song. And man, if I only had gotten to the point where I could write my own.

Hey, maybe I'll pick up a Bass someday soon... :D