And there is always music in the air...

July 12, 2002

It is a rite of passage for any 2nd generation Asian to learn how to play either violin or piano. My instrument of �choice� was the violin, perhaps because it was cheaper than a piano.

My folks say I picked it up pretty quickly. They may had visions of a maestro or musical prodigy. Although I must say that I tend to pick any new thing up quickly.

I just tend to plateau as quickly. I may have already wrote about this before, but after a while, I just wasn�t getting any better. I couldn�t intuitively keep a beat; I had to count in my head, and that takes a lot of processing power. Also, I kept forgetting what a perfect 440Hz �A� sounded like. It was as if I had to retune my ear before I could retune my violin.

I was never excellent, merely good. After a while, this disparity grew larger and larger. The final nail in the coffin was my private teacher moving away. I made no effort to ask for a new one, and my folks made no effort to find a new teacher. Every aspiring musician needs a private teacher. Public school teachers are not equipment with the time to help individual students in music.

I kept going to public music classes and to summer music camps. I went out of force of habit, but I was not practicing anymore, nor was I interested.

My last attempt was the audition at summer camp when I was fifteen or sixteen. As I winced at my playing, wrong notes flying everywhere, watching the instructors look at each other with sour faces, I realized that it was time to go.

Do I miss it? Not really. I figure if I wanted to play music again, I would have. And I did pick up the guitar for a little while, but that�s another story.