hello!

[andrewkoay]

Hello everyone!

I just discovered this forum and this is my first post here. Glad to see so many passionate players in this forum!

Self-intro: I'm working as a civil engineer in a stress-filled 8-7pm job, teaching piano part-time for fun, and still dreams of becoming a full-time musician to escape the drudgery that is work haha.... (it remains to see whether this dream is practical or not...  , but I'm already 21 and I think I need to make decisions soon)

Currently working on the Chopin etudes to get my fingers back to speed (especially op.10 no.1 and 12, op.25 no.11) as well as trying to perfect the Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto (I dream to play it with an orchestra one day, it would be so glorious!). Other pieces that I'm working on are the Chaconne from Bach/Busoni, Beethoven Appassionata, some Rach Preludes (they're so unbelievably beautiful and dark!), and some Brahms Hungarian Dances for showing off to friends LOL....

[faulty_damper]

How did you become a civil engineer so young?

[andrewkoay]

Skipped two grades when I was young, took O levels at 15, one yr of pre-university and four years of civil engineering at uni so here I am...

[faulty_damper]

Wow, I'm envious.  I'm sure you had a great upbringing and a nice piano.  Me, I had a shitty high schooling, among other forced educational stints.  Anyway, welcome!

[andrewkoay]

Hehe I only had an upright for my whole life, now as I'm in a different country I have to teach part-time and use the music school's crappy pianos for practice. Doesn't help that my parents are quite unsupportive of any attempt to go into music, so I'm pretty much on my own right now.

Anyway, why do you describe your education as "forced stints"?

[tomt1990]

If all in your opening post is accurate... you've certainly acheived a remarkable amount for someone of your age!

[pianoplunker]

Self-intro: I'm working as a civil engineer in a stress-filled 8-7pm job, teaching piano part-time for fun, and still dreams of becoming a full-time musician to escape the drudgery that is work haha.... (it remains to see whether this dream is practical or not...  , but I'm already 21 and I think I need to make decisions soon)

What kind of decisions do you need to make ?   Every job on this planet has some drudgery attached so you need to look at the stuff you are passionate about . My day job is a 24x7 stress-filled job but I get off on it almost as much as I get off on playing the piano.  Stress is only a reflection of the need to make a decision so if you say it is stress-filled you are probably already making all kinds of decisions day to day. You are already teaching piano for fun, what is not to like?

[Bob]

La, la, lah.... 

[andrewkoay]

If all in your opening post is accurate... you've certainly acheived a remarkable amount for someone of your age!

Hehe take it with a grain of salt, as with everything else on the internetz. I could be a 40 year old creep or a 13 year old kid pretending to be my online persona. 

But in all seriousness, I have no reason to lie and I believe that you will see that over time. I have really worked very hard my entire childhood (both in studies and music) and sacrificed quite a lot to achieve all these and sometimes I wonder if it was worth it or not. But I guess it's not much use pondering over what is past, we have to live in the present and look to the future instead...

[andrewkoay]

What kind of decisions do you need to make ?   Every job on this planet has some drudgery attached so you need to look at the stuff you are passionate about . My day job is a 24x7 stress-filled job but I get off on it almost as much as I get off on playing the piano.  Stress is only a reflection of the need to make a decision so if you say it is stress-filled you are probably already making all kinds of decisions day to day. You are already teaching piano for fun, what is not to like?

My decision is whether music should be my hobby or my career. The safest route is of course to stay the way I am, engineering would make me decent money and I still have some side income from music. But then, I always feel that I really enjoy music a lot better, and I think I'm a better musician than engineer to be quite honest.

For instance I can practice for a whole day (literally from morning to night) and I'll enjoy the whole lonely process for weeks and weeks. I also love to compose music and learn new things (I'm going for SLS vocal lessons and learning some guitar on the side too to make myself a more rounded musician). On the other hand, I'm always dead out tired and stressed out everyday after my job (probably it's just that i'm overworked by my company).