oh wow cool i actually legit get my own user page. good thing squido was taken and i had to bloody put numbers after my name again.

alright here we go, lazy autobio braindump:

music background

instruments:

• piano, began forced lessons at 4 years old, got to piano for leisure grade 4 AMEB then quit paid lessons when i entered high school at 12. always a huge point of anxiety and childhood ptsd but want to overcome piano performance stagefright (seriously, it's bad. i used to just totally blank and panic attack on stage)
• voice, lord where do i begin. in 2002 (7 years old) i got moved to an amazing school full of white people of an upper middle class background and there was a choir which i joined and apparently even skipped morning maths lessons for (got caught by the principal once who told my mother, eep). some australian girls choir recruiter people visited our school one day and tried me, i was a little keenbean and my mother started paying for my attendance there, where i started shifting away from the regular cute one-part pieces written for kids and towards poppier and musical theatre-ier repertoires, along with tailor-made choreography by the ever-energetic dale pope. started dancing with my unco body, "performing" really. also got into wearing ribbons in my hair haha. it wasn't until year 7 i could join another school choir again after leaving beautiful white school after year 4, and that was full of classical requiems and shiznit. four-part pieces, mostly piano accompanied. in 2008 though i'd say discovering the band muse was what really blew my mind open to the world of music and music culture, the people and humanity aspect of it. muse was melodically relatable (taking progressions and orchestrations from classical music), lyrically meaningful (often challenging the status quo and vocalising all the buried frustrations i'd developed for life as i learned more about how the world around me worked (and didn't), and performed powerfully (by matt bellamy's undeniable vocal machine and moving dynamics). muse connected the dots for me from music to human, and from that point it was self-interest led discovery through genre like rock, alt rock, prog rock, punk rock, metal, pop, pop rock, indie, then later jazz, funk, blues, etc. and bands like coldplay, and i'm almost ashamed to admit linkin park, nickelback, greenday etc. man, the sounds of my high school years. anyway, at the same time, beginning in year 8 i was eligible to participate in the annual school musical production in the chorus and in my penultimate senior year, as female lead. so got into musical theatre, my aus girls choir performance background really let me shine on any drama or musical stage, and i eventually needed to strengthen my voice for that final role and spent a good half year trying about three singing teachers, all from varied backgrounds, one more classical (sang some german, did some sightsinging), one super chinese, also male (sang chinese, of course, classic folk opera type pieces) and one slightly less chinese but by far the most impressive (sang italian, did some opera and like pop opera like bocelli x celine dion's the prayer). so yeah these days i'm a mix of all of that. pretty much the only thing i don't do (or more accurately, just haven't attempted) is rap. don't make me, please. i love pushing my vocal ability to see what i can come up with - love putting on accents for the kicks and making vocal sfx. when i do pop tunes i tend to be more dramatic, and when i do opera i tend to be more poppy. go figure. goal is to strengthen and elasticise my voice in the long run.
• guitar, saw aria on sale one day near my birthday at the piano school i was attending, begged my mother to buy him for me. just found out we were probably ripped off the other day thanks to an internet search (by like $150 - $50 guitar, bought at $200, mofos.) obtained end of 2006, collected dust for a year, then started taking guitar more seriously when i was in year 8 where half the "bandalism" program involved us learning guitar chords during friday music practical class. since then (2008) self-taught (although i took about 10 weeks' paid lessons with a guy called glenn who i thought was super badass but i really couldn't keep up with him, i didn't even know who eric clapton or jimi hendrix was when i started learning stairway to heaven lmao)
• uke, had a lonely nye end of 2014 i think? or 2015. saw a music shop on my wanderings, went in and had a quick convo with the storekeep about the origin of the aria brand (japanese and trusted apparently) and eye was caught by mahalo hanging bright and yellow at the back beside its other rainbow siblings. couldn't resist, best $35 ever spent on nye. tried to learn the basic four-chord pattern but kept forgetting. took it up seriously with merdan's request of ocean man at the end of 2018 - still don't know how i'm supposed to hold it but i can chord change (pivot! pivoottt!) kind of now :D