Justin Likes Music
Throughout life I've aquired a fondness for music. The first two cds I had were the Small Soldiers movie sound track and the Godzilla sound track.
Now I listened to those two cds forward and backward for probably a year before I realized there were other types of music to experience and enjoy.
I moved from there, to a band I heard on the Godzilla Soundtrack called Green Day.
I thought they were the greatest thing ever. Finally a band that talked about being young
and made me feel like they understood me.
At that moment I knew there was something to this music thing. There was something out there that I could experience that other people were creating. I thought, "Why couldn't I do this" and began whining to my parents like every other boy my age that I wanted to learn to play the guitar.
At the same time I was playing a lot of video games which kept me from doing homework, which in turn, kept my grades down and my parents from wanting to get me anything. Luckily my brother had a guitar that he had tried this same dream on and I began sneaking around playing. Like any younger brother would do in this situation.
Once I began playing I began to look for bands that had songs I could actually play. I looked low and high. Everyone was playing "Stairway To Heaven" or "Smoke on Water". I didn't like either of those songs or any of that kind of music. Then I found Blink 182. It was a jackpot of easy awesome songs that I WANTED to play. None of them had any kind of worth to them, but they were fun and I was a stupid highschool kid.
I clung to them with my friends Curtis and Andrew for a year or so before we began branching out to different music tastes. Curtis and Andrew went into metal hardcore type music, I gravitated toward jam band type music. Eventually we started a band and went through highschool drama and then we weren't a band. After that I kind of lost touch with them for a while and began to pick up the drums.
I bought a drum set from my friend Patrick who was leaving on his mission and looking to sell some stuff for extra cash. He called me up to see if I might want it, so I purchased it for $200. It sat in my room for a few months before I decided to do anything with it. The biggest thing that made me pick it up was I had a surgery done that kept me from doing much of anything but sit. I quickly got bored of surfing the web and watching bad television so I picked up the drum sticks and started whacking.
Not long after that I got a job and Chesbro Music Co. in Idaho Falls, Idaho in their retail print music department as a sales clerk. Now I really have no idea how I convinced the staff there that I was prepared to find sheet music of classical composers for piano teachers when the only real reason I'd ever been up on that floor was to get Blink 182 tabs. The first time they noticed one of their regular piano teachers was in the store looking for a piece by Brahms. She asked me a question about this piece and I replied, "Now how do you spell Brahms?" I was quickly reprimanded and began brushing up on all things musical that day.
In the two years I spent with that company I learned more about music in the five years prior. All the concepts and theory I learned was coming from professionals in the field that I was supposed to be assisting. I learned quickly.
Other than learnind some invaluable knowledge about music, I got super sweet deals on music stuff. The first thing I bought was a new drumset. I was a Tama SuperStar with an orange satin flame wrap finish. A beauty of a set and the same one I play today. I've gone through a bunch of cymbals and I'm not going to list them, but I currently use Byzance cymbals from Meinl and I could not be happier with my selection.
Since beginning to drum I've played in at a few different events at BYU-Idaho. Nashville Nights, Guitars Unplugged and Rexburg Live are all events I've been a drummer in. It's been an awesome adventure to get to where I'm at with all the knowledge I now have about music, but it's all been worth it.