Meet Ethan Gonzales of Northridge

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Gonzales.

Hi Ethan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was always kind of a musical child. My earliest memories making music was bringing around a ukulele in middle school, playing Steven Universe songs and making silly jingles. But in the isolation of the Covid lockdown, I found a deeper passion for music, composing for games, movies, film along with learning some guitar. I read a couple hefty books on music theory and composition and was writing everyday. When the lockdown lifted my junior year, I started playing drums and piano, finding a love for performing in bands in my high school community and a developing a budding interest in jazz. I didn’t feel confident enough with my skills the time so I applied to LACC for piano performance and after two years of study managed to get into CSUN studying Jazz Piano Performance and Music Education.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In “Why Music” by educator R. Daniel Mooney he explains that we play music, “… so [we’ll] recognize beauty, so [we’ll] be closer to an infinite beyond this world, so [we’ll] have something to cling to, more gentleness, more good– in short, more life.” It’s a powerful sentiment that resonates with why I got into playing music. It gave me something bigger than myself, a community to be a part of, a craft to trust in, and a passion to hold on to for life. Reflecting on the struggles I’ve faced on my own musical journey, the most dangerous thing has been losing sight of why I play music in the first place.

I back on the influencer culture of artists I saw growing up chronically online and how it pulled me away from this fundamental love of music. On YouTube, there is an expectation that if you create eye-catching content and constantly churn it out, you’ll become successful. Otherwise, you will get washed out in the constant river of content. With that mindset, it’s easy to become creatively bankrupt and burnt out. Nowadays, I see how artists’ pages are filled with them dancing or miming a song they’ve been promoting, with a funny caption or gimmick. Oftentimes, all it takes is a viral clip online to get some recognition as a musician.

Many of my negative thoughts have come from of this influencer-forward mindset. When the industry values creating novel and attention grabbing content all the time, you become a lot harder on yourself. When the algorithm shows you all these killing players talking about all these musical concepts, and all these books to read and all these records to listen to, you never just sit down to meditate on one thing at a time. You’re zooming by on the internet bullet train, seeing the beauty of the world blurred by how fast you’re going, never fully appreciating or practicing what’s right in front of us.

Suddenly, music stops being a part of a community, finding and making beauty in our immediate surroundings, learning about ourselves and the world. It becomes about playing a nasty drum fill, a slick 16th note bebop line, having all the chops in the world at age twelve. It becomes about listening to records like you’re collecting Pokémon, having to listen to them all so you can call yourself “hip”. It becomes practicing twenty-four things in one hour instead of one thing for twenty-four hours because you feel that you need to learn everything all at once to “catch up”. It’s not recognizing the accomplishments you have, but beating yourself up for the ones you don’t have yet. At times, this is how music feels for me, and it’s a constant battle. But it’s one that I have meditated on this past year at CSUN, and I work through every day.

So don’t forget why you play music in the first place. Find what made you happy in the first place and bottle that feeling up, learn how to return to that place. For me it was slowing down, taking the time to play with one idea at the piano, not feeling the need to rush things. It was lifting any expectation I had for myself or I thought people had for me. I didn’t need to finish a song by the end of the week, or have all these niche scales mastered by the end of the month, or have finished learning a piece by next tomorrow. That will come with time. Simply trust in process, celebrate the little wins, have fun, and as a community we can walk this long road toward being musicians and artists.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At the moment, most people know me as “ethansharpeleven”, the guy who has a great time playing piano and really likes the color yellow. I don’t have much of a body of work to show people but in light of what I’ve written about, I’m still proud of where I’ve ended up. The music scene in LA has given me opportunities to meet and play with great people. I played keyboards for local legend Persona Non Grata before he went on hiatus and currently I play keyboards for pop act Sequoia Branson. Otherwise, I’m just exploring what it sounds like, means and looks for Ethan Gonzales to be an artist, at my own pace. If you want to hear the beginning of this exploration, check out my tune Riverstone I wrote with Mae Mae. Through working together I’ve found a deeper appreciation for the singer/songwriter music and hope to bring my eclectic musical influences to it.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
So many people have contributed to my musical journey, but no matter how big or small I value every single one of them. If anything, I’d specifically like to shout out the Silverlake Conservatory of Music (SCM). SCM provides quality music education to lower-income families, giving scholarships to students like me so we can join ensembles and take lessons for free. I owe SCM so much for giving me a musical community to call home and I hope to go back and teach there one day. I also want to thank two specific teachers: choir director SJ Hasman and my piano teacher Steven Gordon. Thank you guys for believing in me when I really needed it. I wouldn’t be where I am today without you. Support music education!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethansharpeleven/?hl=en
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/72nrOgpBlyO8NdqndOImDn