Playing the days away

A year or so ago, I bought a keyboard to plunk away on. I wanted to play some video game tunes and some other stuff, but instead of following my dreams, I played for a few days before promptly forgetting about it and letting the keys collect dust.

That was, until recently. I was listening to Charles Kynard’s Woga, bobbing my head along, when I said to myself “I wanna do that”. So, after wiping off so much dust off the keyboard, I sat down next to my music jammed out. I’m sure I wasn’t even half as good as Kynard, but I didn’t care because I was having a good time.

This to me was a pretty big deal since it was the first time in a long while that I’ve really just played music in a non-judgmental way.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I love music and have written a bit about it. I love listening to it. I love collecting CDs. And I love the history of how songs and albums are made and about each and every bands’ unique creative journey.

But what you might not know about me is that I used to sing. And not for a little bit.

Before even singing in choir, I was singing karaoke songs with my mom and dad. Michael Jackson was a favorite passed on to me from my dad, but I eventually came to grow in my own likes. I would sing Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray any and every chance I could get when it was family karaoke night.

And during that time, I grew as a vocalist, starting with middle school church choirs and going so far as getting a college degree in music. I even started teaching myself guitar and could sing along to some basic songs (hello Wonderwall.)

That’s over a decade of music 🤯 (or 8 years if you only want to count the time I was specifically taking theory courses in high school and college.) And it was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything else. I did some cool things like perform on stage with choirs and in musical theatre, watch my colleagues grow over the years both as artists and human beings, and sing with the Rolling Stones (I’m not kidding this actually happened.)

But there’s a big problem with studying something you enjoy:

It stops being fun.

Every little aspect of a performance gets nitpicked to death in school. Things like did you have enough breath support? Is there an emotional connection with the music? Are you even standing correctly? (For singing, this is a far bigger deal than you’d think.)

And I could never get away from this thinking, even when we got together again for family karaoke night. Those thoughts of judgement still invaded, keeping me from enjoying the moment.

So, after years of analyzing every little detail of singing, it’s no wonder I ended up stepping away from music once I graduated (Below is one of the last videos I have of my performing — probably from 2016/2017 but I can’t quite remember.)

Since then, I’ve picked up music here and there. I was in a small community choir in my mid-20s, but flunked out due to depression and other life events. I tried picking up guitar again, but every time I put that instrument in my hand, I had the same self-critical thoughts buzzing through my brain. I don’t think it helped that my brain had some unrealistic dream to be the next Iron & Wine or Wilco (I mean Jeff Tweedy’s a Midwesterner, so that means I can do it too, right?!)

But then there was piano. Despite going to school for music, I surprisingly didn’t touch the instrument all too much. I used it for vocal warm ups and plunking through new material, sure, but I never really learned how to properly play.

While it’s a little bit of a shame that I’m just starting now, the beautiful thing is that there’s no baggage with piano for me. I don’t have that voice in my ear telling me something sucks or that something could have been phrased better. No expectations of sounding like any specific artist.

It’s just me, the keys, and my quest to learn because of the simple fact that I love music and want to have fun.

So who knows? Maybe you’ll see me play at an open mic or something, having the time of my life. Or maybe you won’t, because I’ll be too busy jamming out from the comfort of my own home.

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