Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, k-dreamers! I know we haven’t spoken in a while, so I bring a modest gift: new content. Not in the form of a review, just a life update. A pretty exciting development happened to me recently. I performed in a music festival at my university. I know that sounds pretty lame, but people actually paid to see me (along with two of my classmates). It was my first performance for something I helped write, unless you count that song I sang for Social Studies in tenth grade, which I don’t. The experience was unreal, and I’d like to tell you all about it.
Mic check, one two, one two…
I remember telling myself not to get so excited. After all, I was performing something that I handed in as a school assignment. Still, I rushed my way to school, believing that I was going to be late. It turned out that I was an hour early. I met up with my collaborators. We chatted, waited… and then waited some more. Eventually we made it to soundcheck where our professor got us all set up. We weren’t strangers to testing the volume of our mics. I mean, that’s what we had been doing all semester. I guess doing it in an auditorium made it feel more real.
This is the part where I have to explain that we weren’t playing actual instruments for our performance. One of us was holding a mic to radio static, another person was tapping metal water bottles, and I was rubbing plastic together and scraping it against a cymbal. That’s because my music program is not your average music program. My school tries to encourage new ways to think about sound, hence why it’s called the “Music & Sound” program. Just thought I’d mention that in case you were expecting a kpop masterpiece or something!
Let’s flip this performance on its head some more…
Imagine my surprise when we asked our professor for feedback and he suggested making changes to the composition on the day of the performance! It was more like panic than surprise. How was I going to memorize the new performance? I had worked so hard to memorize my cues and now I had to learn new ones? Thankfully it went better than I expected. Our professor actually helped us simplify the piece while also providing clarity to the sounds.
It was time for the concert. We were performing first, on the first day of the festival. No pressure or anything. Just like I told myself not to get excited, I also told myself not to be nervous, but clearly my heart wasn’t listening. It wouldn’t stop pounding until we actually began. In the end, everything went off without a hitch! We bowed, we walked off the stage, and teachers and fellow students were congratulating us.
This one’s going in the scrapbook.
It was a long and unforgettable day. I didn’t even get into what we did with all of our downtime. I’ll spare you the details, but we just ate food and studied for our exam with our other classmates. Maybe I’ll perform for the festival again someday. And maybe I’ll get to play actual instruments next time. Stay tuned!
From left to right: Edison Tang, Graysen Braun, and Megan Tran performing “Brainstorm.”