Music Doesn’t Need Effort If You Just Listen to It

I started learning piano half-forced by my mom when I was a kid.

At first I studied with a teacher, and over the years I accumulated quite a bit, though only intermittently. Only when I grew up did I realize how lucky and precious it is to be exposed to an instrument at a young age—not only do you have endless time, but what you build up from childhood feels completely different from learning it again as an adult.

Back then, I knew nothing about music theory; I simply liked playing the piano. Later, by chance in middle school, I started learning guitar. Even though I only studied it for about a year, I learned to strum chords and became a so-called “fret-five warrior” (only able to use chord shapes within the first five frets). Then I was also half-forced to learn harmonica. After learning for a while, I somehow ended up able to play double harmonica, as well as a chromatic harmonica.

I still remember how deeply moved I was after watching The Forest of Piano, and I went off to practice the third movement of Mozart’s Sonata K.535. It took me more than three months of practice before I could barely play it decently.

In middle school, I once dreamed of entering a music program. But music school tuition was more expensive, and my family couldn’t afford it. On top of that, lacking talent might mean starving to death, so in the end I chose the more practical path of pursuing academics.

After high school, under immense pressure to get into college, the piano became my salvation.

Every day after school, I would practice for a few hours before starting to study. Back then I loved watching niconico, especially marasy8, who was famous for being a monkey, so to speak. Like SLSMusic, he often arranged anime songs, played the piano brilliantly, and his arrangements were incredibly beautiful. So I often searched for sheet music written by other people and played along with it.

For some reason, I didn’t join the light music club or guitar club in high school. One reason was probably that I didn’t have the money to buy an electric guitar and amp.

After college, I wasn’t as passionate about music anymore. Partly because after moving from Kaohsiung to Taipei, I no longer had a piano in my rental place; partly because the passion gradually faded. Still, I joined the piano club in college and played a few pieces at the recital.

Influenced by the YouTube channel Good Harmony, I started learning basic music theory. After graduating from college, I bought a Roland FA-06 and began studying timbres while learning how to compose. Later, because my rental place was simply too small to fit it, I never took it out again and eventually sold it.

Music theory was the same. I watched a lot of videos but never knew how to apply them. Every time I listened to the clumsy, dull phrases I had written myself, I couldn’t help wondering whether I simply had no talent, and often thought that if I had been born into a musical family like Fujii Kaze, that would have been nice.

I still envy the version of myself that had plenty of time to practice piano, even though that was one of the darkest periods of my life. Only now do I realize how precious it was to be able to practice piano when I was young.

What really pushed me to impulsively buy an electric guitar was the anime Bocchi the Rock!.

At the time, it was still the pandemic. After watching the anime and being deeply moved by it, I thought electric guitar tones were just amazing, so I bought a YAMAHA PACIFICA. That motivation lasted for a while before fading again. I picked up electric guitar once more during my Refresh leave—the 10 days of special paid time off you can get after working at a company for five years—and went to Ochanomizu in Tokyo to buy a Fender Stratocaster.

Another trigger was that in July I took a trial electric guitar class at ESP Fukuoka, a music school. ESP is a well-known electric guitar brand, and many guitar players have dreamed of owning an ESP. The school is near Tenjin, so getting there was very convenient.

Besides the electric guitar department, there are also departments for composition, recording software, and vocals; there are also corresponding departments for backstage work such as stage production, lighting, and sound engineering. During your studies, you can also sign up for classes outside your own major.

The trial class opened with a performance by a student band from the school, and the stage, lighting, and sound were all handled by students themselves. Honestly, while I was listening to the performance, I was filled with endless emotion. The bass drum shook straight through to my heart, and the young people on stage—almost all of them high school or college students—were singing their own original songs. Watching the guitarist so completely immersed in it, I couldn’t help imagining myself standing on that stage…….

“How wonderful it would be to perform on stage.”

After the performance, the teachers took us into the classroom for the trial lesson. What left the deepest impression on me was going directly into the school’s rehearsal room and doing a short ensemble with a group of high school students. Playing live is very different from playing along with a video. You have to constantly adapt to the other players’ pace, and especially the drummer’s steadiness is truly the soul of the whole band.

My guitar skills were still pretty weak, and my playing was awkward, but I really enjoyed that feeling. It was the closest I’ve come recently to being in a flow state, and it’s one of the goals I want to pursue.

Whether it’s scales, fingerings, guitar techniques, composition, arrangement, or chords, I’m learning all of them at a slow pace. Looking at those high school students who play guitar insanely well, it’s hard not to feel envious: if only I had started with electric guitar when I was a kid; if only I had come from a musical family.

That’s admittedly a bit of hindsight bias. If I had chosen music back then, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to live in Japan and work as a software engineer.

I thought of a former coworker—someone with a music degree, a bachelor’s in physics, and a master’s in astronomy. Sometimes I wonder whether switching careers to become a software engineer was a waste of his talent. He learned incredibly fast, and it made me think: can someone who can focus in a practice room all day crush any field with a dimensionality advantage? There was also a former coworker who was a developer but played guitar beautifully.

I admire those people.

Later, I realized that the reason I had always been unable to take the first step came from self-criticism. If you treat your own creations with criticism instead of joy, then creating itself becomes extremely painful.

In my early days, I always just played for my own enjoyment and for others’ amusement; I never systematically recorded myself to hear the results. Later, taking advantage of a student discount, I bought Logic Pro. Even though I had great software, I still never finished a single song.

There may be two deeper reasons. First is a lack of security: being afraid that others will hear how bad my work is, afraid they’ll say it doesn’t sound good, afraid they’ll say it sounds too much like some other song and accuse me of plagiarism. Second is the gap between taste and skill being too wide, just as Good Harmony once wrote about in an article.

Once you know the reasons, you can make adjustments. Build a safe environment and only let close friends hear your work; learn to enjoy the process of being criticized.

Funny enough, recently I met another friend with a music background at work. He’s a drummer in a band, and his day job is software engineering.

I took that as a sign: “Hey, maybe you should try making music too.”