Many Asians were forced to learn how to play an instrument and they gave up on it after they didn't have to play it (e.g. after passing G8 exam). This is because they didn't really enjoy it and just did it because of pressure.
But I am the reverse case.
When I took my grade 2 piano exam in 2012, I never wanted to practice. I only started working my ass off once I got the admission form and got by with a 120. My sight reading was abysmal.
But in 2014 I started playing more, as my school wanted me to play for some occasions. My passion came back for a while and I started to practice more for my G4 exam. But after the exam, my passion was gone again. My sight reading was still quite bad.
It took until 2018 that I really started to enjoy playing. That summer, I was on exchange in Australia, and had music as an elective then. On the first day I got a 16-bar full sheet. I sat by a keyboard, sight read the score in less than 1 minute, then played it out. To my surprise (then) I didn't get a note wrong! At the time 2 of my classmates were shocked and they thought I had lessons before. I told them I was working towards G6 then. A couple of weeks later we had a jam session on the AC/DC hit It's A Long Way To The Top, the first time I played in a full band. I was exposed to reading chord charts from then on. As there was time left after the jam session, I played my grade 6 A3 piece, Rondo by Mozart, for some of my classmates, as they knew I was taking the exam soon. They thought that I would definitely nail the exam and I felt more comfortable while performing since then. I went on to pick up a 127 in my grade 6 exam, which includes a much better 18/21 in sight reading. In 2019 I started playing hymns from the hymn book from my church as well.
In 2021, I picked up a 124 in my grade 8 exam, despite lessons disrupted for 3.5 months due to A levels and covid. My regular lessons stopped after the exam. I didn’t play for months after that, but was really desperate to play again, and finally did so in July 2022 for one of the summer prayer meetings in cru, playing the hymns 我要一生一世住在你聖殿, 光和鹽 and 耶穌惟有你 all from chord charts. I am still playing now, mainly playing pop songs and hymns (the latter mainly for cru events). The most recent song I played was 是你的恩典覆蓋 in a full band in mid-January.
Is there anyone Asian who is like me?
Submitted January 21, 2023 at 10:05AM by 20182717 https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/10hqt5f/are_there_asians_who_hated_when_you_were_forced/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Saturday, January 21, 2023