Last night, with Josiah next to me in bed, I was thinking, of certain significant memories I have in my life, and I realise that the memory of them is fading away. There are some details that I just can’t remember anymore. So, I thought I should blog them down before I forget everything in ten years’ time. Wow, sounds like I am losing my memory or something, but actually just getting old and forgetful. 😛
Today I want to talk about how I got into music. When I was very young, maybe around 4-5 years, my eldest sister, Brigitte started learning the piano. So, my parents bought a piano for the house. So everyday, she would be playing on it. At that time, she just started learning, so she would be playing children’s songs like Little Red Indians and the likes..most times I would sit next to her and watch. I guess that’s where I got my first piano lesson.
When I turn 7, my mum decided to send me to Yamaha Music School, so she asked me what instrument I want to learn. You see, she made sure that each of us get to learn an artistic skill, something we can fall back on if we are not the studying type. My eldest sis learned the piano, my 2nd sis learned drawing, my 3rd sis learned classical guitar, and so now it was me.
So I thought hard and long, I thought of the drums, how cool it would be. But my mum was not too keen to see me banging on drums in the house, I think. My 3rd sis tried the violin, but it sounded terrible, the eee eee sound. So in the end, I took up the organ or Electone, as Yamaha calls it.
I started going to class once a week. It was a school just near my house. The classroom is unlike the piano class where there is only one piano, here there were more than 10 organs in one room, and everyone practiced with large earphones on. So it is first come first served, if you come early, you get the newer organs. My teacher was a pretty lady with curly long hair. Everyone there spoke Mandarin and I couldn’t speak at all, only Hokkien, so I ended up being quite anti social.
After two years of learning, I haven’t got my own organ at home, it was a very expensive piece of instrument. Over 10k as I remembered. So I would walk across the road to my neighbour’s house, as his daughter was also learning organ, and I would practice there. Later on my dad invested in the organ, which more than 10 years on now, is a big white elephant in my mother’s house.
I think I did quite well in my time there, and joined a couple of competitions even. One time I got consolation prize, but another time I was 1st runner up. If I had been the winner, I would have been able to go overseas to compete. But it was not to be, besides I had stage fright all the while. I did not know how I contained it at the time. Around 16, my teacher put me in a team of other students, and we started practicing together for a concert. I was the musician, and the rest were singers in the concert. It was really fun, and it was that time that I met this girl who taught me Mandarin. What she did was she started calling me and would tell me she can’t speak anything but Mandarin (which I later found out was not true), and then force me to speak Mandarin back, so that was how I learned it.
So we performed together in Wisma Saberkas, it was nerve wrecking and fun. I actually had some friends outside of school. Well, when the concert ended, we kind of stopped seeing each other.
Later on, I even became a teacher in Yamaha. My teacher left the job to teach at her own home, and left the class to me. I did that during my Form 5 holidays before going to Form 6. There were some students that were so good, one in particular that I remembered. He was able to learn a piece in a week. I even ran out of songs for him to learn. Then there were kids that simply did not have interest. They were forced to be there by their parents, but learned nothing at all. When I was not looking, they weren’t practising. When I went to Form 6, I completely left Yamaha. At that time I was already Grade 5, the teacher’s grade. Another grade, I would have been a Performer’s grade. After Form 6, the school even offered me to further my studies in music and going to KL to do it. I guess I thought long and hard and realised it wasn’t my thing. As it got harder, it got rather stressful for me, especially the exams and all that.
For years after going off to study in UKM, I never played the keys. Only after graduation, did I start serving in KAOG’s worship team as the 2nd keyboardist, playing the synth. Thank God for the skills he has given, how he arranged everything. To be continued.