At the ripe age of twelve, I began to listen to classic rock music. The more I listened to the heavy riffs of bands like Led Zeppelin, Boston, and The Rolling Stones, the more I realized that my dream was to be a guitar player. Often times I found myself daydreaming in class, envisioning myself performing in front of a massive, roaring crowd. With a musician and drum extraordinaire of a father, I suppose it was only inevitable.
Later that year, I got my first guitar for my thirteenth birthday, but little did I know that this day would set the stage for my future musical career.
However, regardless of the intrinsic glory that I felt in simply possessing a guitar, learning to actually play the guitar was an entirely different story. Rather than hold true to my daydreams, practicing guitar became a chore and a frustration. For a solid year and a half, I felt like I was getting nowhere.
A turning point came when I joined a local performance-based music school known as the School of Rock. There, I saw other musicians my age flawlessly executing the very same rock songs I had been obsessively struggling with in my practices. Through them, I found a source of motivation and inspiration. I was instilled with a new will and desire to improve. Unconsciously, practicing the guitar came to be infused with a sense of timelessness, as time became meaningless, and minutes of practice turned to hours and days without warning. It was during these times of playing my guitar that I felt the greatest rush of happiness and satisfaction.
My joy for guitar-playing soon became much more than just a hobby. The most prestigious honor possible for a School of Rock student is acceptance into the School of Rock AllStars Program, an exclusive group of students representing the best of the best from every School of Rock in the country. The AllStars tour throughout the US, sometimes with famous rock artists, and perform at various music festivals in Europe. It follows that they are treated as celebrities in the School of Rock community.
Luckily, I was selected to audition for the program during my first year at the School of Rock. With my newfound dedication, I prepared for my audition meticulously for eight months. After those eight months of intense devotion to perfecting all the nuances in my pieces, playing the guitar became intuitive. Whether it could be described logically as merely the result of muscle memory, or defined as an unconscious connection between myself and the music—whatever you call it, at the end of those eight months, I no longer consciously thought about playing the guitar. The playing just flowed out of me in the most natural way. In the end, not only did I develop a greater connection to playing the guitar, but I was also accepted into the AllStars program.
I spent the remainder of my time as a high school student performing with my local School of Rock as well as the AllStars with which I got to tour the east coast from Miami to Boston, perform at countless large venues such as The Electric Factory in Philadelphia and The Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan, and even perform at major music festivals such as Hangout Music Festival and Gathering of the Vibes. Upon graduation of the program, I imagined I would never have such incredible opportunities again.
However, much to my surprise, during the summer after my freshman year at Duke, I was invited to perform in an AllStars reunion concert at one of the most beautiful venues on Earth, Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The show sold out quite rapidly, and soon after I found myself performing in front of a massive crowd of roughly 10,000 in the beautiful mountains of Morrison, Colorado.
To say that experience was a dream come true would be the biggest understatement I could possibly make. If you are truly passionate about something and just immerse your mind and soul in it, there is no reason that you can’t live the wildest of your dreams.
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