When we find ourselves in a struggle with somethings we might push it aside or into a corner of our mind. So was the case with Adam Valenzuela who had his first guitar when he was thirteen years old.

After receiving his first guitar at thirteen he didn’t start playing a lot more until sixteen because it was discouraging to play something that he wasn’t good at.

Moreover, a breaking his left ring finger knuckle impeded his guitar pursuing.

A few years later once his knuckle healed, Valenzuela bought his own guitar he forced himself to fingerpick and learned the song Simple Man by Lynrd Skynrd and really started to play.

(stopped at 2:00 minutes about playing drums before then getting into guitar and
songwriting….) Before he owned a guitar his parents purchased a drum which he had a natural knack for.

Soon after sinking his roots into drums he wanted to branch out. His older brother gave him the advice to look into the guitar because it is the most prominient songwriting tools.

At the age of sixteen Valenzuela says, “Well music is all theory, before I even played the piano I remember looking at notes at someones house and I thought dang that looks like japanese how do you read that?”

With time came a deeper sense of maturity and he knew he needed to learn musical theory to really become the musician he sought for himself.

“At the age of 19 I took music fundamentals and took a semester of musical theory, so when I looked at the piano I saw the scales, progression and chords and it basically gave me all the tools I needed.”

Highly influenced in punk music growing up his inspirations began to change. “Eventually I realized that it was just an aggressive state and their wasn’t any asethetic quality.” says

Once he started playing other instruments he got into a French Composer Yanntiersen who is a minimalist composer who created the music for the famous movie Amelie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the 1930’s.

Surprisingly, no one in his family really play music, but his mother always had the radio playing, “Which I think had a lot to do with it.” when was more then enough for him to fall in love for music.

“In my music I try to come across the most is a nostalgic feel, which is reminiscent of childhood and something like raw emotion.”

Some might it was the song of a couple semesters ago, Sit Beside Me composed by Adam Valenzuela
“I wrote a song last semester(2013) and I would always play it and I would walk through the halls and I would here people humming it. While I was working in the office and I heard the song and I said to myself, ‘What the heck is that?’ and there was two guys playing the song one on piano and the other on guitar.”

Really getting serious about music at 19

“Im only going to school as a back up . You can’t automatically have the idea with music where you will make it and live off of it, then when you’re 40 you’re gonna be stuck doing construction.”

Adam is going to get a degree in music and if all else fails wants to teach music for a living.

“I rather struggle to eat and live and love what I’m doing everyday, rather than not worry about money, but work in a cubicle.”