When I was growing up in Lima, Peru in the 70’s, I was just a rocker bass player, and only wanted to play rock (Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Cream), but when I needed to make money to study music, I had to learn to play every single style of music that made people dance in parties: Salsa, Cumbia, Brazilian Samba, Disco, etc, so I can play in paying Show Bands. I was lucky that I saved enough money to travel to #Berklee College of Music in Boston and study for only one year.
At the end of that year, I met the woman that I have been married for over 33 years now and she made me realize that I would need to go back to Lima unless I applied to a scholarship that could help me pay for the rest of my education.
To get that scholarship, I needed to audition for a large orchestra called “The Studio Orchestra”, conducted by a new director called Donny Nolan, that played film scoring themes and had over 60 players. This meant that I needed to compete with the best players in school, some of them in fourth year, and read music a lot better than me!
So the day of the audition, I had my bass on my shoulder, and I was in line outside the office, behind all these monster players, thinking to myself: “What am I doing here? I have no chance to compete with these musicians”.
When it came to my turn, I went in to the audition room and met the Director. He greeted me and handed me a very elaborate bass part, with a lot of funky phrases and sixteen notes. He sat on the piano and started counting. Thank God to my musical ear, I started playing with him, only recognizing 25% of what was written, but I never stopped. After a while I recognized the patterns in the music and started to play easier. When we were done, he told me that it was a very creative and musical performance, but it was not entirely what he wrote.
When I heard that, I though that I was done with the audition, but then he handed me a new Chord Chart and asked me if I played Brazilian Samba. I said: “Of course”, and we started playing right away! He suddenly started smiling and said: “You are in, you are in!”.
When we were done I asked him about my lack of reading and the fact that all the other players were some much more experienced than me. He told me: “ You can easily learn how to read better, but right now they cannot play Samba the way you do!”.
The situation of needing to make money in music gave me an advantage that I never though I had.
“Everything you learn in life is going to be needed sooner or later”
