No Music No Civilization

Hello, this is one of the thousand million music lovers around the world

To introduce my puny background of music, at age of four, I started scribbling around the music sheet. I still have it, it was my ‘Rhapsody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars’ and other children’s song. An epitome of how dissonance screws the masterpiece (teehee xD).

After learning violin for 3 months, then I officially started to learn the piano at the age of 7. Now I am 16, I’ve been playing for 9 years, wow. Despite the length of my experience, for me, it was only for a ‘hobby’, not sort of a person aiming for Juilliard. I only went to local piano concours two times, but still got 4th places in both competitions (the trophies go only to the 3rd place. muy triste).
(me in 6th grade =])

And recently, I have decided to be a composer. Reasons are simple yet compelling. I have found the ‘knowledge’ of music of my own philosophy just as Buddha just gets something out of his 40 hour meditation.

I’ll tell you readers how I got to this finding. I have played numerous works of Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov and you name it. I’ve seen famous pianists like Rubenstein, Zimmerman, Horowitz, and Lim Dong Hyek, Baek Gwon Woo play (they’re so good that I kept on drooling while I watched them in Youtube). And I also have seen many other people playing same pieces on the concours.

Isn’t this a little bit strange? It feels like, we pianists, are the puppets of the composers two centuries ago. I felt like a puppet. Then ‘The Thought’ stoke me. Why I am playing Chopin? Why I am playing Beethoven?

I want to BE the Chopin.
I want to BE the Beethoven.

And midst of this holy confusion in my mind, I have crossed few famous ‘bands.’ One is Crystal Rain, the rising acid electronica jazz band in Korea. They are one of the ‘first’ bands to play live performances ‘with instruments’ in Korea (K-Pop’s are trash musics and also refer to this). They are receiving special attention because of their risky experiment of mixing popular melody lines with jazzy base. The vocal, Crissie, is a phenomenon singer; born to sing!

Second are some Metal pioneers like Sonata Arctica (my post about it here) of Finland, Kamelot of US of A, Nightwish, In Flames, and about a hundred more I have in my iPod. Why are these band famous? Because it’s simple: they’re showing and creating stuff that didn’t exist before. One music critique described works of these melody alchemists as “Pioneers of music to the undiscovered area.” Sonata Arctica and Kamelot has popularized Heavy Metal with familiar melody lines with heavy, yet harmonizing music.

Nightwish was one of the first to fuse opera with metal. Tarja, an ex-opera singer had become more famous around the world by becoming a rock star. Other bands that follow Nightwish are Epica, Within Temptation, Nemesis and Blackmore’s Night.

(Tarja Turunen, the Opera Rocker of Nightwish)

In Flames, HIM, Children of Bodom, Trivium, Dark Tranquillity, Metallica, Judas Priests, Disarmonia Mundi, Dragonforce, Stratovarius, Iron Maiden, Angra, Helloween… and including Sonata Arctica and Nightwish, these are few of the bands that are considered to be the ‘metal gods.’ These band were the initiatives to all this mel0-metal whirl sweeping the world as industrial music like Nine Inch Nail is withering away.

I value music caused by inspirations as well. My Chemical Romance was generated by the grieve of 9/11, and Sex Pistols are the output of the repression-society they have since the Victorian Age. Lots of classical works, like Chopin’s Ballade #1, are inspired by artwork or a poem.

Lastly, Tonci Huljic is revolutionizing the world by crossover-classical music by using Maksim Mrvica. His songs like Flight of the Bumblebee, Wonderland, Cubana Cubana, are constantly played in the radio and in commercials.

So my point? A true musician should know how to be Original and that’s the one and only goal of a musician. Everyone can play Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude or Beethoven’s Pathetique sonatas. To become successful, we have to be original. For a musician, we have to learn how to compose. And to become famous worldwide, we have to discover.

(Innovation of music requires bravery, like this kid making playing his own Mozart, standing up and throwing his shoe away in a middle of a concour. What Spirit!)

This is basically why my dream shifted from “piano player” to “composer.” Get the difference? No matter how good the pianist is, he or she is just a marionette of the true Masters (reminds me of Metallica’s best song). When I reallized this, I was really really really really x 1000 scared. In the world there are some stupid ones who just practice 7 hours a day and play the same thang over and over, and aim for Juilliard what so ever, sorry to say, but they are just ‘trashes’ of the society. They aren’t creating anything but repeating what million other people had already done. They are the ‘redundant existance’ of the society just thinking of their own pleasure of playing the piece. They might justify over by, let’s say, playing their ‘own chopin,’ ‘own yadiyada,’ but expression is what every musicians are born to do. My current status is ‘trash’ as well because I haven’t done anything. And I’m dissing on all the people who are better than me so i am just a garbage of garbage.

Why does music exist if everyone does the same thing? In piano, pieces that kids learn are all the same: Fur Elize, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Eine Cline Naght Musik, La Campanela, Mazurka, Prelude in C… same piece, same piece. Like my friend Patrick’s blog title, You Must Create. I hate math and science because there is no creativity to be created (Like I always used to say, “I would study Chemistry hard if I could become an alchemist”). There are only about 52 keys in the piano, yet possibility of creating a masterpiece is infinity.

(my grandiose source of inspiration)

(Kind of hard to see, but with having very limited knowledge of music ‘theory,’ I have adapted by composing and scribbling on my own template. woohoo)

Creating is not hard, but it’s hard to please people with it. That’s why only genius makes music less-talented musicians become the players. I am going to be one, the creator. Every single who wants to have career relating to music should have this spirit in mind.

The writing went way longer than I had anticipated. Well, I love my music and I love others’ as well. It is difficult to become a musician, a true one. The quest will never end, so wish me, a bon voyage!

Photo Credit: Tarja: berserker244 ; Me and my stuff: self captured; Piano Anime: A Perfect World of Kai by Makoto Isshiki

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