Sophomore Justin McDonald took piano tutoring into his own hands.  He watched his older siblings play, and decided that he wanted to follow in their footsteps.

“I started when I was two or three and I’ve been playing for almost 14 years now,” McDonald said.

In order to tutor himself, McDonald used resources such as pianoworld.com as well as YouTube when he needed an example of how a specific song was played.Since learning, McDonald has turned to posting his own work.

“I have three [videos] uploaded on Youtube but they’re from a year ago. Unfortunately, My more brilliant stuff isn’t recorded,”McDonald said.McDonald likes to play songs from a wide variety of genres, including classical, pop and even rap.

“Sometimes I even mash songs together, it sounds pretty funky. I’m passionate about making it flow well together,” McDonald said.

McDonald has also taken to composing his own work. He wrote his first piece at the age of eight.

“It was a simple song in the C major scale, nothing fancy,” McDonald said

Since then, McDonald has created several pieces. His pieces last three minutes on average and his creative process is very free form.

“I’m at the point in playing where I improvise a lot, meaning I don’t know the next thing I’m playing in three seconds. When improvising, if I stumble upon a nice tune, I’ll polish it and turn it into a working song. It usually takes a week to make the song flow nicely, and even up to a month to add brilliance. I’m not very good naming my songs so I don’t name them,” McDonald said.

Over the course of 14 years of practice, piano has become a big part of his life, one that he is passionate about. In the future, McDonald would like to pursue a career that allows him to continue to express his talent for writing and playing music.

“I’m a very creative person when it comes to music. I can sit at the piano for hours without getting bored,” McDonald said. “Composing music is my stress reliever, it gives me a ay to let my emotions flow onto the piano.”