Patrick Xu Diploma Program

Patrick Xu explains how pi­ano helped him to get into UCLA elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing

Grad­u­ate from Eva Mar­tin Hol­laus Pi­ano Stu­dio

Ques­tions to Patrick:

Patrick, how has pi­ano helped you get into col­lege?

I’ve re­ceived a lot of awards and ac­co­lades through pi­ano, which def­i­nite­ly helped. There aren’t a great num­ber of pi­anists that aren’t mu­sic ma­jors that can play con­cert reper­toire and be rec­og­nized for it. So that was great for my re­sume. An­oth­er thing is that I had a sto­ry, since I fin­ished all the ex­ams for Cer­tifi­cate of Mer­it and Guild col­lege prepara­to­ry spe­cial in 2 years and be­came a top pi­anist in So­Cal de­spite a tech­ni­cal dis­ad­van­tage ini­tial­ly, so that helped as well.

What is your ma­jor?

My ma­jor is elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing, which is one of the most pop­u­lar and dif­fi­cult ma­jors in UCLA to get into. The en­gi­neer­ing school has about a 3-4% ac­cep­tance rate, with 20000 fresh­man ap­plications and 650 spots across 8 ma­jors. The av­er­age GPA was a 4.4 and sat was a 2180, so I’m sure that my ac­com­plish­ments in mu­sic cer­tain­ly helped me stand out.

How many years pi­ano to­tal and with me?
Years of pi­ano- I’ve stud­ied pi­ano for 12 years, start­ing in Sep­tember 2002. I stud­ied with you for 5 years, start­ing from my 8th grade
year. In those 5 years, I did about 20-30 com­pe­ti­tions and per­for­mances.

How in par­tic­u­lar has my teach­ing and pro­gram helped you get into col­lege of your choice?

I def­i­nite­ly learned how to learn through pi­ano, and while that may not be com­plete­ly no­tice­able on an ap­pli­ca­tion, it cer­tain­ly helped
me do well in high school and tests, and will con­tin­ue to help me in col­lege.

How is my teach­ing dif­fer­ent / su­pe­ri­or to con­ven­tion­al, main­stream pi­ano lessons?

Dif­fer­ences from oth­er teach­ers

The first thing is the em­pha­sis on foun­da­tion. I can’t stress how im­por­tant it is to have a good foun­da­tion. I didn’t have a stel­lar founda­tion when I start­ed, and it took me years to close the gap be­tween my­self and my fel­low com­peti­tors. There are cer­tain things that you just can’t play well if you don’t have those pat­terns en­grained into your brain from day one. It makes learn­ing and re­fin­ing a
piece so much eas­i­er.

The sec­ond is the em­pha­sis on lay­ers. You learn the tech­nique, and fun­da­men­tals of in­ter­pre­ta­tion when you learn a piece. Great. That doesn’t win com­pe­ti­tions, that doesn’t make you mem­o­rable. The great part about learn­ing in lay­ers is that each time you polish a piece or de­cide to work it fur­ther, there’s more to dis­cov­er and learn. From re­fin­ing the dy­nam­ic con­trast be­tween sec­tions, to
line lead­ing, to fin­ger­ing, to fi­nal­ly just let­ting it go, there’s more to a piece that can be tack­led in one work­ing of a piece. You have to ap­proach it from mul­ti­ple an­gles and oc­ca­sions to re­al­ly get it. And, learn­ing in lay­ers does ex­act­ly that.

The third is the va­ri­ety of tech­niques taught. A lot of pi­anists, es­pe­cial­ly those who might not have gone to a for­mal con­ser­va­to­ry or were high­ly com­pet­i­tive with it, don’t teach a large va­ri­ety of fin­ger and body tech­niques. They of­ten will play with a sta­t­ic form. While you can get re­al­ly good at 1 form, that form might not be suit­able for every style. The metic­u­lous sharp touch of Bach doesn’t have
the vir­tu­osic force of Beethoven or the sweep­ing light­ness of De­bussy. Tak­ing lessons with you, I’ve learned a va­ri­ety of tech­niques and sounds to max­i­mize the va­ri­ety of mu­sic that I can play. My Chopin doesn’t, and shouldn’t, sound like my Volo­dos. I’ve learned to play on the fin­ger tip, pad, mid­dle be­tween the two, com­plete­ly flat, with­out us­ing fin­ger strength at all, us­ing only the mus­cles in
my palm to play, us­ing my wrist for ar­tic­u­la­tion, us­ing only my arm for ar­tic­u­la­tion, us­ing my up­per body etc. When you have op­tions,
you play bet­ter.

The fourth is the fact that lessons aren’t com­plete­ly pri­vate. There’s back­ground noise with the dogs some­times bark­ing. There are dis­trac­tions with oth­er stu­dents work­ing on the­o­ry or ob­serv­ing you. There’s a sense of pres­sure, and that pres­sure is rem­i­nis­cent of the pres­sure felt on a stage, where every­one’s look­ing at you. The prob­lem with a lot of pi­anists in com­pe­ti­tion is that they’re eas­i­ly
dis­tract­ed; they’re spoiled by si­lence. The is­sue is that in a com­pe­ti­tion, you aren’t guar­an­teed that si­lence. I’ve heard ba­bies cry­ing and cell phones go off when I’ve per­formed, but I’m not af­fect­ed by it. Oth­er pi­anists might get thrown off, and then they can’t get back into the groove. While it can seem, es­pe­cial­ly for par­ents, ridicu­lous that oth­er stu­dents are present when their child is hav­ing a les­son, it’s im­por­tant to re­al­ize that that is a fan­tas­tic thing. They get used to crowds, they get used to ran­dom nois­es go­ing off occa­sion­al­ly when they play.

Patrick Xu, bio

Patrick Xu has stud­ied pi­ano for 12 years. He grew to love pi­ano af­ter per­form­ing Richard Clay­der­man’s “Bal­lade Pour Ade­line” in his fourth grade tal­ent show.

Af­ter be­gin­ning lessons with Eva Mar­tin, he quick­ly be­came one of the most re­spect­ed and ac­com­plished young pi­anists in Southern Cal­i­for­nia. He com­plet­ed all of the Cer­tifi­cate of Mer­it ex­ams, in­clud­ing qual­i­fy­ing for Ad­vanced Pan­el, and the Na­tion­al Pi­ano Guild’s Preper­a­to­ry Spe­cial au­di­tions in just two years, al­ways achiev­ing near-per­fect marks.

In ad­di­tion, he was a CAPMT hon­ors state fi­nal­ist, and has won com­pe­ti­tions such as the Stein­way Pi­ano Fes­ti­val.

Be­sides play­ing the pi­ano, he has also writ­ten a 45 page re­search pa­per on how Adam Mick­iewicz’s poem “Kon­rad Wal­len­rod” in­fluenced Chopin’s “Bal­lade no.1 in g mi­nor op.23”, which re­ceived out­stand­ing re­marks from the In­ternational Bac­calau­re­ate pro­gram in Switzer­land.

Dur­ing his se­nior year of high school, he be­came the vale­dic­to­ri­an and the se­nior of the year as well as be­com­ing the school’s most
ac­com­plished IB diplo­ma stu­dent.

In ad­di­tion, he was a se­nior cadet of­fi­cer in his Ma­rine Corps JROTC unit, help­ing es­tab­lish and im­prove the unit’s ad­min­is­tra­tion
and aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port di­vi­sions. He was also pres­i­dent of his school’s Sci­ence Olympiad team and was in­stru­men­tal in lead­ing the
team from last place to first place over­all in the In­land Em­pire in just two years.

His oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude dra­ma, mod­el UN, and hip hop dance. Patrick will be at­tend­ing UCLA this fall (2014) ma­jor­ing in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing, and hopes to con­tin­ue his mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion there.