You know how it is. When a man is young and poor, he's very devoted to the wife of his youth, although he might neglect her because of work. Then as he gets wealthier, he begins to wonder about what he's been missing - and he starts playing the field.
It happened to me.
As I grew and my disposable "income" increased, so did my interest in music. Except that I'm not the kind to just listen to it. I want to play it.
I learnt to play the violin, piano, keyboard, saxophone and even more (like the recorder-.-). I took up the guitar and drums and had a go with my classmates erhu and cellos. I was in keyboard band, band, some violin playing group thingy and then in secondary school, the string orchestra. I was in hell lot of ccas back then. 6 if I'm not wrong in P6. Including international chess, robotics, AVA, Wushu, table tennis. Math club and IT club doesn't really count. More in P5, like 7.
These were dalliances - some were intense, like my relationship with my violin. By the time I took exams, I was playing it six hours a day. No, obviously not the first few grades. The hours matured and developed in secondary 3. Where I was this young kid out of my first crush, not yet introduced to DOTA and sick of playing table-tennis everyday, either that or doing rolls and jumps and basically PT in gym. The interest in violin rekindled and I started devoting my time to my orchestra and my violin. I progressed fast that year. Really fast. But of course, it didn't last long. Come sec 4, I started to get hooked on dota. Yea, thats when I started playing through the night and then catching up with sleep in class.
I was the playboy of the music world. Sort of a better way to say that I'm jack of all trades and master of none. The thing is: if I'd stuck to one instrument and put in the same amount of time and energy I spent on ALL my instruments, I'd probably be nearer violin godhood than I actually am today. Just think of it, around 8-9 hours on the piano almost every single day for my first 2 and a half years. No, I don't think you understand why I left piano for violin. Piano was like an arranged marriage - violin was like my extramarital affair. Haven't touched drums for a long time. Still keep my drumsticks though. Somewhere in my bottom drawer of my study table. But come next year, I'm gna buy a drum set. Well, actually its supposed to be a birthday present for my brother. But the truth is, I have this burning desire to go back to it.
It was, I suppose, a wasted youth. But not really. When I hear a violin or viola or cello or double bass now, I really know what goes into making it sound like that and I really appreciate the person behind the music. Saxophones don't just sound cool to me. I can hear its player's soul - if he has one. And I know why I will always prefer a drummer on acoustic drums rather than a dude or machine playing electronic sets or drum machines. Of course, I am most particular with piano music.
No, I'm not impressed with people who has diploma in classical pianoforte performing. Yes, Piano has the ABRSM exams as a kind of guide to what to study and what to play in order to develop the needed skills. It's got a clear 'scheme of work' as we'd say in school.
But the problem with classical studies is that they just prepare you to play from increasingly difficult scores. Whether you can do anything else beyond that is another matter.
All of the music made me very sensitive to things like how strings and wood vibrate, the click and tap of a sax's keys adding to the rhythm, the friction of horse hair and the feel of rosin. Even how a keyboard should feel - the amount of play or give a key has, the piano's voice through wood. Finger noise on strings, buzzing on frets. Music is a very, very sensual experience. Knowing where all the other sounds come from actually adds to the depth of the experience.
You embrace a guitar, rest your head on a violin. You breathe through a sax, caress a keyboard, drive a rhythm on a drum. Of all the things human beings have created, instruments must rank among the most intuitively brilliant and beautiful of things. Essentially all an instrument does is make a wave in the air, amplifying or changing its shape in some way, that our ears can perceive. But look at the ways we can do this, that awesome palette of sound we can create - and put together through systems of rules that turn sound waves into euphony.
Wasted? Then again, maybe not.
