“C’mon, play louder.”
My band director helicopters over my music stand, his crusty eyes glaring down at me below. This was a scene all too familiar in high school: it’s a month before the band championship, and my terrifying sixty-year-old music teacher reprimands me for the hundredth time. It was daily that I’d get scolded at for not playing loud enough. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get more sound to come out of that gold, refurbished Yamaha saxophone. When I came home from practice, my gray blue eyes would tear up in routine, remote devastation. It was shameful to be humiliated in front of the whole band time and time again.
As the competition approached, I thought that my inability to play loudly might be an equipment issue. So I ordered a brand new, unreasonably expensive saxophone mouthpiece, and when it arrived, I knew I’d no longer get in trouble for playing too softly. It seemed to work at first, but not as much as I had hoped. I still couldn’t play at the level my teacher wanted. The harassment escalated, my band lost the big competition, and everyone seemed to agree that it was all my fault.
The following season, I changed my equipment yet again—to no avail, of course. But it was in that moment when I soon began to realize that my soft, understated sound on the saxophone had nothing to do with my music ability and everything to do with my personality: my quiet, shy disposition. My equipment couldn’t change the fact that I’m an introvert. I was humiliated for not playing loud enough because introverted musicians must play loud for the audience to hear them.
But I believe that introverts can speak loudly, even if you can’t hear them. I have a filter between my mouth and my brain. I think that precise, subtle details are what make music a beautiful art form. Introverts like me shape their ideas to musical intimacy. Extroverts like my music teacher choose not to maintain or nourish their ideas because the ability to communicate loudly is oftentimes a necessity for a musician. Sometimes, I’m not judged on how intricate my ideas are, or how well I craft my musical phrases. I think that’s why my band director wanted me to play so loudly. He wanted someone to make a bold impression to the judges, someone to win the band competition.
But I play softly because it’s intimate. I play quietly because understated music is rich, dense, and colorful. I think that, sometimes, quiet ideas speak louder to my personality than loud ones.
Recording: