Padilla has a passion for music that shows when he speaks about it.

“Anybody can blow into a trumpet or hit a drum but that doesn’t make them a musician,” he said.

He said when a person starts “feeling the music” rather than just playing what’s there, that’s when they become a musician. He said he first “became a musician” when he attended a band clinic and the clinician introduced him to the concept of feeling the music.

He said she told them, “As a musician, a piece of sheet music is like a canvas and your job is to color the music and shape it like an artist.”

He said he started playing the music with feeling for the first time at a concert at the band clinic and, at that point, the music was overwhelming to him.

“That’s the first time I think I really felt the music,” he said. “… Music, for me, is the equivalent of eating and sleeping,” he said.

He said band was one of the things he was most glad that he got involved with. He said he has met some of his closest friends in band and he feels it’s like a family. He jokingly said that over the last four years, he has probably spent more time with them than his mom and dad. Participating in band has taught him “pride, honor and dedication,” he said quoting the 50th Regiment’s motto.

“I’m extremely proud to be a drum major with the caliber of performers we have,” he said.

He said he believed the show they are performing this year is one of the most creative they’ve done and he’s proud of the band’s performance.

Padilla said if he had to sum up the entire experience in one word, it would be — “lasting.” He said he knows the qualities he learned — pride, honor and dedication — were qualities he could take through life. He also said he felt it was coming to an end too soon and he would “love to go back and do it all over again.”

“Out of all the things, I’ve done 4-H the longest,” he said.

Padilla said he has been involved with 4-H since he was in fifth grade, where he was project chairman. He shook his head and laughed as he realized the full circle he had come by being project chairman his senior year.

He said he has participated in the performing arts category every year at 4-H. He said he would have participated in every performing arts category until they added dance last year.

“That pretty much threw me out of the running for participating in every category,” he said with dry humor.

Padilla said a close second with band is his love of theater. He said, since he was a little boy, he had always wanted to be a film or television actor. He actually auditioned for a scouting company in Albany when he was in elementary age and made the “callbacks” to Atlanta. Nickelodeon and Disney were some of the agencies at the callbacks and they asked to speak with him. He said he had fallen asleep during the wait for the callbacks and when he woke up he was rather cranky.