My Musical Culture

    Hello everyone, my name is Aidan Scott O'Donnell. I started my music career at 6 years old when I began taking piano lessons at Lawson Academy of The Arts. As I progressed with my piano during highschool, I started finding interest in other instruments and a wide variety of music. I now play guitar, bass, and drumset/percussion. Music has been one of my greatest joys in life, therefore I could not shut down the idea of majoring in it when I decided to come to Converse.
    
    I was born and raised here in Spartanburg SC and was homeschooled throughout elementary, middle, and highschool. I still live with my family. I have two older siblings, a mother, a father, and a standard poodle named Mona. 

These are the most crucial parts of my own personal music culture. 

1. Music I like right now: Growing up as a classical pianist, I of course have and always will love anything from Bach-Rachmaninoff, but the majority of the music I listen to on a daily bases consists mostly of classic rock. Without question, my favorite artist is the British rock band known as Queen. My reasoning is because unlike many artists, Freddie Mercury was actually classically trained in piano, therefore he often incorporated many classical techniques into the music he made with the band. This of course appealed to me as a classical pianist myself. I have attached my personal favorite song that the band released during their time, Somebody To Love. Not only is it a vocal masterpiece, it is also one of my favorite modern songs to perform on the piano.  
   


2. Music that is personally important to me: Though I have listened to and played many forms of music throughout my life, and though all of it has been personally meaningful to me in some way, there is one specific piece that I believe makes me the musician I am today. It is a very well known piano melody composed by Beethoven. I am referring to Fur Elise. When I began taking piano lessons, I had a limited repertoire, but one piece I could always recognize just based on those first few notes was Fur Elise. I thought if I could get to the point where I could play that piece, I would be a true musician. So after a few years of building up to it, I finally learned Fur Elise, and I recall it being one of the first pieces I truly loved to play. Learning that piece was the thing that made me stop playing what I was reading, and start playing what I was feeling. 



 
3. Music I have trouble enjoying: It is possible that this could come as a surprise, but I am actually not a huge fan of any modern pop/rap music. This is something I know a lot people may find strange about me considering I am part of the generation that this kind of music is made for. However, It has simply just never been able to stick with me. I believe this is mostly due to the amount of actual music making that goes into a lot of modern music. A lot pop and rap consists of programmed drum tracks, and large amounts of autotuned vocals. When you narrow it down, I feel as if not enough music I am used to hearing goes into it, but I can see how some people could find time to enjoy it for what it is. I could not name a specific song that falls in this category because I do not listen to it, but I did find the following example by Juice WRLD and Justin Bieber that I believe is a close representation of what I am talking about.


    

      

Comments

  1. Madi GreeneJanuary 4, 2022 at 4:55 PM

    I love that you talked about Freddie Mercury’s classical training in piano. I think it’s a really cool thing to learn about. I remember when I took piano lessons years ago, Fur Elise was one of my favorites to play too. I couldn’t really play my primary at the time either, so I thought that if I could learn Fur Elise on the piano, I’d be a real musician. I can relate a little bit to not connecting to some of the music geared towards our generation, there are a few styles that I don’t really connect to either.

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  2. Michaela FayeJanuary 4, 2022 at 7:23 PM

    I absolutely love Queen. I actually didn't know that Freddie Mercury studied classical piano. Now that you mention it, I can actually hear a lot of that in his playing! I think it's cool that you mentioned that the first piece you enjoyed playing on piano was Fur Elise. I think that is honestly a testament to how far you've come as a piano player/musician.

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  3. Allana FarmerJanuary 5, 2022 at 12:03 PM

    Aidan - this list is so special and tells me so much about you as a person and as a musician! Like you, I absolutely ADORE Queen, Freddie Mercury and the whole gang. The music he produced was something special and it had qualities about it that ran deeper than the same chord progressions over and over again or the cool bass/beat track underneath it; it had depth, dimension and a lot of thought put into it. All to say, I 100% agree with all of this. This list is awesome!

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  4. Katy GarnerJanuary 5, 2022 at 1:53 PM

    awesome story and oh my gosh I Love queen my parents listen to a lot of queen and I also started to listen to them they are a phenomenal band my choir back in high school actually got to do bohemian Rhapsody and it was so much fun to do I am not familiar with the other songs though. thank you for sharing.

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  5. UnknownJanuary 5, 2022 at 10:24 PM

    Awesome blog Aiden! I found it amazing how you picked fur Elise as your important song and how you had a goal set from the beginning that when you mastered Fur Elise that's when you could say you've done it and you did it. A lot of people cant say they've stuck with their same goal and pushed through and achieved something from it and you should feel proud about what you've accomplished as a musician.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ethan WatkinsJanuary 5, 2022 at 10:29 PM

    the one above is mine lol I used my wrong account

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jordan OwenJanuary 6, 2022 at 12:16 PM

    Awesome blog aiden. I i understand what you mean about rap and pop music because realist lyrics not as much music goes into it . Thats why i have always preferred classical towards it. But one thing i have realized is a lot of rap music is more about the words that they are saying less than the music and the sound behind it. Because a lot of times what they are saying is direct passages from instances that they have lived through. Which is particularly why I’ve loved juice world. Because although he talked a lot about drugs and love. He was strongly addicted to drugs and in his world nobody saw fit to help him which is what led to his sad and unforeseen overdose. He speaks all of his troubles through the words of his music which i think should be listened to more by people.

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