Dad's Perspective

 

    For this blog, I chose to interview my dad. For some background, my dad grew up in Los Angeles in California. His father is a guitarist and during my dad's childhood, he was exposed to a lot of music, musicians, and live shows. He also taught himself how to play the piano.

This is my dad playing piano:

    Before the interview, I texted him and told him that we were going to be talking about how music has effected his life. When I called him, I didn't even have to ask any questions, he just got straight into it. So without further a due, here's my dad's relationship with music:

The Beginning:

When I asked him what his first experience with music was, he told me about the first instrument he had: a wooden pump organ (with a King Kong sticker on it). He was seven when this instrument entered the house and he would play it casually. I asked him if the organ is what sparked his interest in music. Short answer- kind of. 

He said "what really started it was my dad used to take me to rehearsals... I would go to both Captain Beefheart and with Frank [Zappa]." He said the first piano he ever played was Franks. Around 13, armed with some familiarity with keyboard instruments, he would go around to all of the keyboards and pianos they had in rehearsal and mess around. That was the beginning of his interest.

Once the people around him noticed he was interested in the piano, family friends gave him a piano and a few lessons. My dad describes the lessons as "ok, they didn't really do anything." The whole lesson thing didn't last long. After those ended, his dad showed him how to play the Boogie Woogie. And that concludes my dads musical training. 

The first performance my dad did was actually a Boogie Woogie tune in his elementary talent show. He got 2nd place, so good job, dad!

Where does music come from?

Music started to become a larger part of my dad's life when he was around 13. At this time, his dad was always on tour, his mom was always working, and he often had the house to himself. He would be alone a lot of the time, so he started to play more music "out of solitude." He would go out with friends and stuff like that, but when he got home, music was his "entertainment." When he said that, I asked "so what did music mean to you at this point?"

He said "that's when music started to become my soulmate. That's where I really started to realize where music comes from." He described how music is a way to express and communicate feelings you didn't even know you had. To him, when you express yourself through music "me and you are just vessels. It's the music in the soul and that emotion that takes over. Once you realize that, that's something very special."

"Get it"

My dad thinks of music in a deep, spiritual way and if you also feel music that way, you "get it." He says that this is something that not everyone has and that it's a gift if you can see music in this way. You can be a good musician-- you can play the right notes and not "get it." To him, the best music comes naturally and it flows freely though you. We talked about it being almost like an instinct. The way music is so natural is what connects the music and people from all over the globe, even if the language or culture is different. "You don't have to understand it. You feel it." If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't.

A quick side note of something I thought was interesting. My dad talked about how being trained in music, being taught idioms and music theory, can get in the way of pure musical expression. It's like your raw emotion gets put through a filter before you turn it into music. I'm interested on what you guys think of this. I kind of agree with him. It's hard for me to improvise without thinking about music theory or musical expectations.

What was your most embarrassing moment as a musician?

When I asked my dad this question, I actually got a pretty interesting answer. First he recalled a gig he had in an ice cream shop, then he switched to talking about another one he had in a fancy restaurant, and then to a time he played at a church close to our house. In all of these performances, there was no embarrassing event. It was the fact that he was performing in front of other people. He saw the performances themselves as embarrassing. When I asked him to dive a little deeper into that, it boiled down to how his audience wouldn't "get it." I think this makes sense because if to you, music is an extremely personal and spiritual expression of your emotion, it would feel uncomfortable to do it for an audience, especially if they're not in a mindset that is willing to take that in or listen. 

Something else he described as embarrassing was when he would play, people would request songs and ask "can you play this" and so on because he's a good player and people in the audience assumed that his skill was taught to him, but what they didn't know is that he never had any lasting formal training, he can't read music, and he doesn't know any composed songs. I think that's something for all of us to think about as musicians that are currently deep into music education, is the way the music world is built around trained musicians and how we will assume, if someone is good at their instrument, it's because they've had professional training. That's just not always true.