A Teenager's Musical Journey

It was pandemic and I got nothing much to do, I was cleaning our house to kill time. I suddenly found our piano that has not been used for years so, I decided to open it and use it. I got interested in it and tried to learn some basic notes at the start. I practiced day by day and was getting bored since I only know the basics, so to prevent me from getting bored, I started to learn the Music Theory, which is one of the fundamentals in learning music, I learned a lot of new things and techniques as well as how the chord progression works. The music theory significantly helped me improve.

Fast forward a bit, and I’m already jamming to some sweet tunes within just a month! From Yiruma’s “River Flows in You” to the OST of “Your Name,” I was on fire and realizing that I'm improving. Soon after, I mastered how to play "Experience" by Ludovico Einaudi. It was so hard as it requires a consistent tempo and a high BPM to make it sound good.

So, I decided to take my skills to the next level and joined my school band in 10th grade. And guess what? With Prom around the corner, our school coordinator wanted something special for the big night, he wanted us to play a special performance for the event. Fast forward to Prom, it was a blast! I even got nominated for "King of the Night," but I didn't win. No problem though. If I had won, who would've played the keyboard? We were assigned to play "King and Queen of Hearts" while the Prom King & Queen is dancing so yeah.

But here’s where it gets interesting. In 11th grade, I was all set to audition for the Padayon Band when bam! I suddenly got sick, thus, preventing me to attend the audition. But hey, I didn’t let that stop me. Soon after, they announced that a big event is coming, and it was a battle between bands, I was very excited and thrilled! I joined the Battle of the Bands at school, built a band, made friends with co-musicians, and practiced hard, we played "Antukin" by Rico Blanco and "Huling Sandali" by December Avenue. Although we didn’t win any trophies, the experience that night was so good.

After the event, a teacher from another school got interested to us as she watched our performance on Battle of the Bands. Suddenly, we got invited to perform at Nineveh Academy’s foundation day! We performed five songs: Love story, Araw-Araw, Elesi, RomCom, and Bagsakan. The audience are still asking us to perform another one last song but we didn't get the chance to do so because there are other programs next to our performance, although we had a back up song called "7 11" by Toneejay. Still, even though the performance was not monetized, the organizers surprised us with a sweet love gift of P3,000! Who saw that coming? We only expected the free t-shirts as it was the only one written in the contract.

Now, while wandering around the mall, a magnificent sight caught my eye - a grand piano on display! To my surprise, they said that anyone can play it freely. Without hesitation, I ran over and seized the opportunity to play on such a grand instrument. The sound was heavenly, and the experience of bringing music to life on a grand piano is very satisfying. The size of my piano is nothing compared to the grand piano I used at the mall

But you know what? This journey ain’t over yet. I’m gonna keep chasing those musical dreams, learning new techniques, and becoming well-known on every instrument I lay my hands on.