Junior Finnley Free has a passion for music. They not only play violin in the Symphonic Orchestra, but taught themselves how to play the piano, guitar, electric bass, and drums. Free said this hobby started by a desire to play songs they liked on these instruments.

“[The reason I taught myself was] mostly to play different songs. Right now I’m teaching myself ‘Stick Season’ by Noah Kahan on the guitar just because I listen to songs and I’m like ‘oh, I want to do that,’ so I just teach myself. It’s fun,” Free said.

Free said they teach themself through YouTube tutorials since different instruments require knowledge of different sheet music clefs.

“ You can find literally any tutorial for any song on YouTube. For piano I watch little videos where the notes are falling down and I just follow that. I mostly use YouTube because I can read sheet music but I can only read treble clefs and the different instruments have different sheet music so I just don’t worry about that,” Free said.

Free said music is a huge aspect in their life and they enjoy making connections with their friends through the art of music.

“Music is pretty much everything [in my life] because I listen to music with my friends and then my friends will send me songs. Also music is just like a different language on its own. It’s more poetic which I think is really cool. Music means a lot because you can sense so much with music,” Free said.

Free said their goal for this hobby is to compose a song with all the parts written and played by them.

“I’d love to compose some songs at some point once I know all of my instruments and I can put them together. That’s kind of the plan is to play the guitar part, then a bass part, then drum part, and put them all together and sing,” Free said.

Free said they are inspired by many different types of music but especially appreciate the 70’s music such as Fleetwood Mac.

“I listen to alot of different genres [of music]. I love Fleetwood Mac, they are so good. I’m really inspired by the 70s era of music. I do like classical music but it’s not my favorite.”

Free said they practice whenever and whatever instrument they want, which currently takes form in playing guitar nightly.

“I practice whenever I feel like playing. I have been practicing the guitar a lot because it’s such a different technique than violin as well as drums. Drums are so hard because it’s completely different. So if I wanted to get really good at drums I would practice more but I don’t practice as much as I should, but I have been practicing guitar pretty much every night which is really fun,” Free said.