A Message to Young Musicians: Why is it Important Continuing Pursuing Music, Even as a Side Thing?
A. You have a talent not a lot of people in this world have.
Let's look back to high school days. Back when I was in high school there were about 150 people involved in something music-related out of over 1800 students. A lot of you guys can read sheet music. That in it of itself is a talent a small group of people in this world have. In addition, you can divide even further into it when you take into account the different sections, a la choir (even further into Sopranos, Altos, etc.) or instrument players (strings, brass, etc.) All of these things made you different from the rest of the student body.
B. Coming back to music is incredibly hard to do.
This is something I'm noticing a lot with people. Most of the time when you're in school, you were constantly playing a musical instrument, whether it be in class, in after school rehearsals or events, or just at home practicing. The moment you graduated, you feel like you don't have to continue with music.
As a result, the musical skill you had begins to diminish, and this is especially noticeable for wind instruments, mainly Brass. I can say this because I was guilty of it. I barely kept playing my trumpet after graduating and now I went from being able to play high Cs above the staff to barely being able to play high As. This is different from the knowledge you learned from other classes because even if you may forget that knowledge, you could always read & refresh it most of the time. But for musicians, even if you do refresh that knowledge, you still have to worry about being able to stay in tune or for brass players, having the endurance to continue playing your instrument without your lips giving out.
C. You have creativity that sets yourself different from the real world.
Now some of you guys are thinking when are you ever going to use this in real life and are/were probably only using the course to get an elective out of the way. To be fair, you do have every right to be skeptical. But hear me out:
How many of you can recognize movie soundtracks like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. Can soundtracks like these harm a movie? It's possible, but you really have to try to mess things up. But more than not, music is an important factor that enhances a movie experience. Don't believe me? Here's an example:
Let's look at another example. How many of you are gamers? Now how many of you can recognize certain songs from games? A lot of people, mainly those older than 30, still associate video game music as these electronic/MIDI themes you hear from while playing a game. Even some people my age & younger say video game music isn't real music, to which I call bullshit. Music has gotten more elaborate as the video game industry grows. We now have full symphony orchestras recording soundtracks for video games.
Now your next thought is these are all big industries for music. So let's look at something smaller scale. When you read this quote, "Nationwide is on your side," you're probably singing it while reading it. That itself makes a big impact on a person because now they recognize the company with that jingle & it works with multiple. A person came to my college and he played multiple instruments on top of writing music. Now he's became a marketing director for the company who makes jingles & songs for advertising.
If you think that's still too big. Let's go to something smaller. I've seen multiple weddings in recent years & I'm noticing a trend of less & less instrument players at weddings. There's a demand for real instrument players, but there's not a lot of instrument players to fill the role. You'd be surprised how many want a trumpet at their wedding. I've gotten paid $300 to play 3 songs at a wedding.
BOTTOM LINE:
Music isn't something to be taken lightly and is probably the most under-appreciated thing in this world. People underestimate how important music is in the world and the musicians who play it. I understand where a lot of you are coming from. You think this is useless information you're not going to use in life. I have a counter-argument to that. Information itself is never useless. It's only useless if you never find a way to apply it.