I get questions from time to time from viewers, audience members, and random people from the Internet/off the street. I figured I’d answer them all here.
When I was in fourth grade, my conservative Chinese Christian parents signed me up for piano lessons expecting I’d become an amazing CMEA Level 10 piano star like my older sister. I didn’t. I dropped out of piano lessons at Level 3 after my mom angrily told me that I was wasting her time and money. It’s not like I was having a good time, anyway. My teacher was a strict old Russian lady who drilled me on tonal music theory, and most of what I played were classical/romantic era etudes. I hated practicing. I cried a lot in and out of lessons. It wasn’t fun.
When I was in middle school I started taking drum lessons from a local teacher. I enjoyed these a lot more than the piano lessons, because percussion was an instrument of my choice. Drumming looked cool and sounded cool and I liked that. I started to enjoy music, listening to music, and making music. Did I like practicing? Hell no! But I began to enjoy music as a concept, those pretty sounds and rhythms that made my soul want to dance. At the beginning of high school, though, my parents pulled me out of drum lessons in order to make me focus harder on my studies. They also demanded I stop taking band classes in high school and take language classes instead. I took both sets of classes (with varying degrees of success in both).
Towards the end of high school, I had a weak, shaky foundation in music. I’d gone through music lessons for several years, learned a bit of Western European music theory, and was a mediocre percussionist and pianist. At this point, about 80% of kids who play music will grow up, put their instruments down, and never pick them up again. I almost followed suit.
But I kept going, because I discovered that something strange was happening. Something I never expected and couldn’t ever have anticipated. Without a teacher, there was nobody around to point me in any direction. The complete lack of a guiding authority gave me boundless freedom. So I chose my own direction. As early as middle school, when I listened to a lot of EDM, I started making my own piano arrangements of EDM tunes I liked. They sucked! But nobody heard them, so it was all good. And I kept on going, slowly improving my technique, time-keeping, and ear. In high school, I started arranging pop songs, alternative rock tunes, video game soundtracks, and stuff from the Homestuck music team’s discography, playing both piano and drums. I started listening to hip-hop and letting that influence my musical decisions. In college, I started learning jazz standards and all the anime openings from my favorite shows. COVID-19 lockdowns hit and I just kept practicing. I remember drumming in my 80℉ basement the summer of 2020, lights out, windows open, for hours a day. It was almost too easy to just keep going, to watch the hours fly by as I made music. I loved practicing. When music brings you joy, it becomes impossible to hate practice. For what is practice if not bringing your own music closer to perfection, alone?
Nowadays, I’m still going strong with no signs of stopping. I play music almost every day. I’m trying to pick up guitar so I can shred like Akira Kuwahara on Zenzenzense. Eventually, I plan to try my hand at saxophone so I can zoom up and down the altered scale like Coltrane, or maybe I'll suck so badly that I ruin jazz forever. Whatever happens, I feel like I can safely assume that music will be a part of my life for as long as I live.
I guess I should answer the question already. Why am I cracked at music? Well, I wouldn’t go so far as calling myself cracked at music, but I’m flattered you’d think that. This is why. Because I love music, so I play a lot, and practice a lot, and long hours of play and practice become easy when you’re doing something you love.
Homestuck, an eight-thousand-page-long metafictional-multimedia-creation-myth-coming-of-age webcomic with the world’s weirdest fanbase, happens to be a huge reason why I’m a musician. My sister introduced me to Homestuck when I was 12 years old. Not really a smart move, because Homestuck contains graphic violence, cursing, sexual references, and mature themes not fit for any 12-year-old. So I’m not sure why my sister thought that was a good idea. But I was hooked from the moment I finished Act 1, and to this day, I still regard Homestuck fondly.
What’s had the greatest impact on me has to have been Homestuck’s music. In the early days of the comic, it was mostly chiptune, 8-bit, VGM type stuff. Synthesized instruments and simple, catchy melodies. Over time, more musicians joined the music team and the projects diversified. Tensei brought OC-remix metal guitars. Jit brought classical piano. Toby Fox brought… awesome Toby Fox shit. Clark Powell brought grand orchestral arrangements. And I loved all of it.