the pep talk palace

Ever since I was young, I knew music was my thing. The first song I remember learning was TikTok by Kesha (or key-dollar-sign-ha, iykyk). I used to love singing and dancing in my living room with my extra special pair of slide socks so I could do impossible turns and other cool tricks. When I was with my babysitter, all I wanted to do was listen to the radio and find all the cool pop songs the older kids were listening to. However, my mother had other ideas.

Growing up, all I was allowed to listen to in the car was Christian Pop. On the way to school, to a friends house, on the way to church, you name it. The soundtrack of my life became filled with artists like Toby Mac, for King and Country, and MercyMe, along with other popular Christian artists that were playing on the radio (channel 94.7 to be exact). It was all I ever knew. When I was getting older, my babysitter made me a CD with different songs on it, but even that CD couldn’t escape the christian influence because it included the absolute bop that is “Gold” by Christian artist, Britt Nicole. I went to a Toby Mac concert in my preteens and I thought ” Wow, I am only going to be able to go to Christian concerts and only consume christian media for the rest of my life? How boring.”

Fast forward to 5th grade, I joined the jazz band because I needed an elective. Now, to be honest with y’all, I don’t remember why I chose jazz band over any other elective, but shhhh, that doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I joined the jazz band. Yay! In the first week of the class, our band director gave us a list of instruments and told us to rank them by which one we wanted to play the most, but he also said that he would give us the instruments that he thought we (the students) would be best at. I ranked trumpet first ofc, probably because I thought it would be the easiest instrument to play due to it only having three buttons (I was sorely mistaken btw) Because there were only like 5 or 6 people in jazz band, our director kinda had no choice but to give us the instruments we wanted to play.

The day I got my trumpet, I remember opening the case and just being in awe of how shiny it was. Over the next couple of weeks, me and the other people in the jazz band started learning the basics of our respective instruments and it was truly such a fun time. Our band directors made us buy the book “Essential Elements for Band” (that book is still in my closet to this day and it has yet to see the light of day) and we used that to learn different simple songs….. and that was all the trumpet education I got before September of 2020.

kinda a cliffhanger because there is so much more to say about music and me so there’s gonna be another post with everything from 2020-now.

until the next oversharing session ✨

– abby f