What does music mean to me? Okay, I’ll give something other than a technical description because I’m not really great at explaining things. Well put simply, music means everything to me. I really have no idea where I’d be, or even if I would be, if I didn’t get into music. If I may get into a nice back story, I didn’t really listen to music much until I picked the saxophone up. I took roughly 5 years of piano, but I never really “felt” music until I picked the saxophone up. It was a bit hard to play at first, but even with my first note, I literally felt engaged with the sound. I can make anything I want (within reason) with just a puff of air, and I loved it. I've been a bit lax in practicing lately though. I should change that.
However, even with my new-found love of music in general, listening to recorded music was seldom done until sixth grade. I got introduced to metal like Tool, and even though Tool is a very…strange band for a 12 year old to listen to, I loved it. I rocked out, and wanted more. I always had strange urges to freak out and, well, end it all in a terrible way involving other people. I never understood why, since I have friends, a great family, and an awesome life in general, so I always pushed it aside as nothing, and music made it a lot easier to forget about it.
Fast forward a couple years and I met the person that’s probably made the biggest impact in my life, mostly because that’s just as insane as me. We connected through our similar music preferences, and have been friends ever since. Little did I know that it was because of the fact that I was able to connect with her, with music as a catalyst, I ended up saving her one night while I was showing her new music to listen to. I never did have the courage to tell her the same. The thoughts still come around, but much less so after meeting her, and circling back, if it wasn’t for music, I’d have one less friend in the world, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
So, there’s the explanation of “or even if I would be.” But music has done much more than help with “teenage angst.” Like most, I recently found out that music, especially bassy electronic music (so…the ZO would be pretty awesome for me), gives me the concentration power of, from what I’ve heard, Adderal. I honestly stopped trying in school as much freshman year. It’s not that I didn’t care, but I was stressed out by other outside sources and couldn’t concentrate. Like most Head-Fiers, I tried listening to music (well, rock), and it didn’t help. A year later, I realized that I concentrate on the lyrics more than my work, so I figured that if I listen to non-lyrical electronic, it would help. Lo and behold, it did. The stress problem still hasn’t been solved, but now that I’ve found electronic music to help me concentrate, I can finally get my grade past a 4.0 (we go on a 5 point scale) so I can get into a nice biomed college (looking at U of Illinois and U of Minnesota along), and hopefully help me be able to fulfill my dream of creating mechanical prosthetics (I’ve always felt terrible that some people can’t do things like walk or listen to music, and I want that to change).
The collecting of music has been something I consider myself to be proud of too. It gives me a strange sense of pride to know that I have enough music to listen to for the length of being stranded in a desert island for a month. The different genres, even the different music from different countries within a genre, show me how incredibly diverse the world is—enough to make me want to travel the world just to hear music. I hope to do that eventually.
Being a Head-Fier has changed me more that I’d think too. I started just wanting some nice IEM’s for my phone, and end up being a full fledged member because, well, it’s a really interesting place here. Sure, we’re not all friends—some hate each other more than others, some are Grado lovers, some love AT, but the collective group ends up being quite entertaining, and I’m glad I found this place. Oddly enough, being here has helped my wit and I’m a more fun person to talk to because of it, as much as I hate to admit that I’m interesting because I belong to a group of headphone geeks.
…so yeah. In my life, music has helped save a life, hopefully give people a better life, and expose me to culture. I didn’t really know how to word this in “only” 1000 words, so I left out too many details. I have roughly 150 words left, but that just isn’t enough. I‘ll just make it easy and say that put simply, if it wasn’t for music changing my life, I’d probably be in a mental hospital right now or something worse. Music means absolutely everything to me.
Headphones and kisses,
-Kyle.
I do think that very few people will read all the posts in this thread though...