"Once a band member, Always a band member"

Posted by,
Ahmad Nur'Zaim Arif
17590
Petroleum Engineer Wannabe
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Once upon a time, I was a naive person who does not even know what 'Music' is all about....

       When I was 13 years old, I entered High School Bukit Mertajam, a school where our fifth Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi studied. In the orientation week, the school's band made a performance and I was amazed by them. At the beginning, I thought of joining the Wushu Club, but my friends forced me to join the Brass Band. I don't want to join it because the members were like 'sissy'. But for the sake of the friends, I joined the Brass Band. I had to... Seriously..

       Then, I learnt about the Music theories about two months. After that, I moved to another school which was MRSM Transkrian in Nibong Tebal. I studied there only for one semester and then went back to HSBM. Then I entered the same unit which was the Brass Band. All my friends did not want to teach me as they wanted to entitle the 'professional' title. (Actually they were not). Without any choice, I learnt all about the music theories in a place where serves lots of free-lessons stuffs, which is the Internet. I learnt it about 1 year and I managed to equalize with my friends who were arrogant towards me. However, although we had some conflicts among us, as the band member, "One Band, One Sound" was the slogan that had united us to be as a team. Then we entered lots of competitions such as Formations and Drum Battle.

      When I was 16 years old, I had been offered to Sekolah Menengah Sains Kepala Batas (SAKBA-SBP), so I went there. After one month later, I had been offered to MRSM Balik Pulau. Again, I moved. To make things worse, both of the schools did not have the Brass Band unit. I was freaking frustrated but what can I do? I came here to study is not it? So I stopped in playing the drums for two years. (that was a big gap though)

       Just after the SPM examination in 2011, I joined International Band Camp that was held in Kuala Lumpur. The event was conducted by the Blue Devils, one of the drum corps in Drum Crops International (DCI). From the event or the moment, I joined Kuala Lumpur Drum Corps (KLDC), the first independent Drumline group in South East Asia (SEA) that was established in August 2008.

       I was given a task to gather the musicians in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS to create a drum corps, but unfortunately, I could not find any of the musicians here. Plus, I do not even see the UTP's orchestra yet except for the UTP Chinese Orchestra.
Maybe I would find them... someday...