“It’s never too late to chase your dreams.” Is it a corny statement? Perhaps, but one shouldn’t dismiss it immediately.
The world as we know it is currently not a pleasant place. There is a sizeable chance that our lives could suddenly end at a drop (or a madman’s whim), and we will regret not trying to achieve the dreams we had in our youth.
I’m writing this to let you know that “now” is an excellent time to get the ball rolling on your dreams. If things work out well, I’m honestly stoked for you. If things go south, at least you can conclude it isn’t for you and that you gave it a fair go.
As a tenth grader in 2004, I often dreamt of becoming a musician. However, given my Singaporean-Chinese background, I had to relegate my music as a hobby. That didn’t stop me from having fun with a couple of my classmates; we would spend the occasional Sunday playing pop-punk cover songs. I still remember the Aussie summer of 2005-2006, having a couple of jam sessions at my drummer’s house in East Malvern. We’d cover “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day and then cycle to the nearby Seven-Eleven for Slurpees.
When I started university, I was again tempted by the call of music. In 2010, I auditioned to play the bass for a couple of bands and attended two more auditions in 2012.
In case you were wondering, I auditioned for a hard rock band and a pop band in 2010, and a thrash metal band and an alternative rock group in 2012.
Ultimately, I didn’t get any of the gigs, but the experience left me hungering to play music more.
I just had to figure out how to make that happen. Little did I know that things would start happening after I moved to Nagasaki in late-2018 to work as an Assistant Language Teacher as part of the JET Programme.
Many things had happened between my last audition in 2012 and then. One of those things, in particular, was my introduction to the “BanG Dream!” multimedia franchise. I was initially sceptical of the premise of “high school girls playing in a band” as it had already been done by “K-On!” in 2009. While I enjoyed “K-On!” for its light-hearted story and music, I was let down by the music performance aspect.
I suppose this was because I had already watched the cartoon “Metalocalypse.” After all, the animation studio accurately animated some of the technical lead guitar work, and series creator Brendan Small is an actual heavy metal musician. In hindsight, this does go against Kyoto Animation’s focus on beautiful storytelling, and to be fair, “K-On!” did inspire a generation of light-music bands in Japan.
“BanG Dream!” was a breath of fresh air. The original animation studio put effort towards animating the music performances. The voice actresses for “Poppin’ Party” could also perform the franchise’s music live; this would be repeated for the voice actresses for “Roselia”, “Morfonica”, and “Raise a Suilen”.
The collaboration between the franchise and ESP Guitars might have appealed to my inner metalhead too.
Shortly after moving to Japan, I stumbled upon an interesting post on the “BanG Dream!” Reddit channel. It was an advertisement for an international fan project dedicated to the four existing live bands at the time: “Poppin’ Party”, “Roselia”, “Raise a Suilen”, and “Argonavis” from the all-male spinoff. The aim was to create and deliver original songs and messages of appreciation for the actresses and actors involved.
It took me a few days to decide on my participation in the project. My curiosity won out, and I made one of the best decisions in my life.
Many things happened in 2019. If I could summarise what happened, I’d say it was a learning experience. However, what mattered the most was that I had fun, and I wanted to continue making music.
Roseburn Avenue has since released two more songs, with an additional two in the skunkworks. I could tell you about the highs and lows and waffle on about the many firsts I’ve achieved with the band. However, that would detract from the main point of this post.
Slightly over a month after releasing “Tsubame”, our guitarist floated the idea of putting our music on streaming services. While music is ultimately a hobby for all of us in the band (real life does come first), it would be nice if our songs could reach a wider audience. What sealed the deal was the unanimous decision to donate any money made to charity.
As of the 4th of March 2022, Roseburn Avenue is a verified artist. It’s taken a good seventeen years, but I have finally achieved my dream of being a legitimate musician.