Last month, I saw a post on my work Slack’s social channel asking what people have studied in college, and the responses varied from English to Computer Science, from Studio Art to Biology. This was not all that surprising to me – I recalled that as a high school student, many of my teachers also had different degrees before they became educators – but it was a fun conversation nevertheless and I enjoyed learning my colleagues’ background.
I also came from a non-traditional background. As I mentioned previously, I am one of the weird ones who got a Bachelor’s degree in Music, and then later got another Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and, finally, a Master’s degree in Computer Science. I chose to study music because I was born with perfect pitch which helped boost me from an average musician into a decent one, and it even carried me all the way into University of California at Irvine’s music program with a mini scholarship. The plan was to switch into a more “practical” major once I got into UC Irvine, but I never made the switch due to laziness, and ended up with a music degree. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy studying music in college, as I was forced to study things that I didn’t care about and performed as part of the requirements. By the time I finished my degree, my passion towards music had waned considerably.
After I graduated from college, I did briefly work as a music performer, educator, and composer, before I got burned out from the work and switch careers. Technically, none of my music work required my degree at all but my college education gave me advanced knowledge in music theory and audio technology which I generously applied towards my music compositions.
Between 2011 and 2012, I took music composing a bit more seriously and made about 30 compositions and uploaded them to YouTube and SoundCloud. Other than 1 of them (“Mystic Stream”) being played nearly 10000 times on SoundCloud, none of the other ones received much attention, and by the time I got my first full time job (not related to music) in 2013, I stopped playing or making music altogether due to lack of motivation and passion, though I did teach piano for a few more years as a side job. Occasionally, I still played instruments and sang karaoke, and wrote a song (“The Chuy Song”) in 2018 to propose to Mrs Chuy, but nothing serious.
Fast forward to the present day. Last month, my cousin-in-law M texted me about Google Song Maker which I have never heard of, but the conversation quickly shifted to my former music career, and with her encouragement, I dusted off my music collection and published my music to all major music platforms, thanks M! I also plan to eventually make more music, maybe together with M.
Without further ado, here is my YouTube music channel and my Spotify Profile, I would appreciate it if you subscribe or follow either one:
I have no idea what my goal is, but the beauty of content is that once you created it, it stays forever, so for a relatively small annual publishing fee, I can keep the music on these platforms for a long, long time. As of the time of writing, I only have 8 monthly listeners on Spotify, but over time, I hope that I will get more listeners and grow a bigger audience.
Why I am writing this post
While my primary objective is to promote my music channels, there’s a deeper reason behind this post.
At one point, music has been a huge part of my life, but as mentioned earlier, college and music work eventually drove me away. Now, I have once again returned to music, and even though I was only publishing my creations from years ago, I feel that the passion has somewhat returned, and maybe I will start writing new compositions this year!
Likewise, I think that for many of you, you may have had a hobby or passion as well but the hardship of life got in the way. I pray that someday you will rediscover the joy you once had, and picked it back up from where you stopped. It will be well worth it.
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