When I was about 5 years old, my parents forced me to take piano lessons. Coming from a Korean background, learning music was a pretty standard value in a family like mine. And ever since I could remember, I always hated playing and practicing the piano. My family would force me to practice 30 minutes to 1 hour a day, which would, of course, eat into my video game time. I also hated performing at recitals, as I would get nervous and have to put in a lot of effort to perfect a music piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 5 long years when I was finally 10 years old, my mom let me ditch the piano lessons, but said that I would have to choose a new instrument to learn. I reluctantly agreed, and for reasons I do not remember, I decided to switch to learning the guitar. My parents bought for me my first classical guitar for a cheap $100, and I also switched over to a new guitar teacher. And surprisingly, I did not mind it as much as piano lessons. I don’t know exactly what it was, but the guitar seemed to resonate with me a lot more. Since I already learned music through the piano, I didn’t have to worry about music theory, such as keys, sheet music, time signatures, etc. I was able to dig in right away. And before I knew it, I found myself practicing guitar on my own, without my parents having to force me to practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, I stopped taking lessons, and I just started to practice guitar on my own. I found some friends who enjoyed playing other instruments, and we would jam out together too. I even somehow ended up playing guitar for our little church band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In high school, I started to really get into alternative\/rock music, so I asked my parents if I could buy an electric guitar. They agreed, and my world was forever changed after purchasing my first electric guitar, a cheap Grestch Electromatic from Guitar Center. Soon after, I would spend a lot of my youth playing, researching, and spending any money I had on music equipment and guitar gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so it is with life, I grew up and got older. Other responsibilities and priorities have slowly replaced my love for guitar and music. My time now is occupied with family, work, school, and life. And I don’t necessarily regret anything. I find that I don’t nearly have as much time to play music, yet alone listen to music. But every once in a while when I have a little time to spare, I will still pull out the cheap $100 classical guitar that my parents bought me, and spend a few minutes enjoying and reminiscing in my love for music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was about 5 years old, my parents forced me to take piano lessons. Coming from a Korean background, learning music was a pretty standard value in a family like mine. And ever since I could remember, I always hated playing and practicing the piano. My family would force me to practice 30 minutes… Continue reading “When words fail, music speaks.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11721,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11721"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spencershim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}