ENDA Episode 18→ The time when the Endless Apprentice learned the importance of playing Music (Part 1)

“Please, do not stop playing music”

Maybe one of the rarest things that I’ve been told by a teacher in an Animation and VFX school. When I mentioned to him during a group session that I was cutting the days in which I play the piano, due to the workload; he gave me that response in a calm, but serious tone…

For a little context, I started playing the piano when I was 4, but I soon dropped it when I lost interest.

When I was 15 or so, I relinked with the instrument thanks to a piano-pop song that got my interest in learning it. I took lessons again for a while and then continued by myself learning to play many different songs that caught my interest. But then when I was 18 or so, college started to get difficult and I stopped playing again.

It wasn’t until the end of 2016 when I assisted in an Anime piano recital that I retrieved my motivation to play and curiously, ended up being part of the band and later orchestra of the recital’s group.

Thanks to that, I started learning more about music: I finally started learning how to read a music sheet, how to read rhythms at a basic level, follow the tempo of a singer and a strings orchestra.

But more importantly, I got the opportunity to meet many different types of people who did anime music. Some were professional musicians from the National Conservatory, others were aspirants to the Conservatory, others like me, one of the percussionists, the main pianist, and many of the singers were merely enthusiasts but with a heart to give everything for the genre we love.

However, by 2019 the Animation and VFX School had started to get complicated with the final short film project. I was used to play all the songs I knew from Monday to Friday, in order not to lose practice and keep improving for the recitals.

But with the workload from school getting heavier and heavier I started to stop playing certain days a week until the day my teacher found out and told me that phrase: “Please, do not stop playing music”. I’ll confess that wasn’t a reaction I was expecting.

“Wasn’t more beneficial for him that I focus more on the project than other things?”, was what I thought. But the reasons he gave me and later experiences will give that phrase a new meaning for my VFX journey.

What were those reasons? Well, that would be for the next episode.