My STEP signature project was a creative endeavor to take electric guitar lessons and develop skills for playing and being able to pick up songs that I want to know how to play. This component of wanting to be able to listen to a song and attempt to play it was very important to me and I made sure to make it a goal in my lessons. I took virtual lessons through Musicologie here in Columbus for about four months (Jan-April) and I had a wonderful experience with my teacher and the music studio as a whole!
Here is me with my guitar the day I got it!
The main transformation that took place for me was an increase in confidence in myself as a musician, as well as an increase in my belief in myself and ability to be successful at new things that are outside of my comfort zone. I now feel that I can try anything and I can do my best and that will be good enough. Especially being in a strictly STEM major, biomedical engineering, it was great for me to see that I can be creative and I can achieve highly in areas outside of my comfort zone.
Through this whole process, I have also gained confidence as a performer and become more comfortable sharing my skills or abilities with others even when I have not perfected something. I have always been somewhat of a perfectionist and through this experience, I felt myself loosening up every week and becoming more relaxed with sharing the songs and scales that I had been working on.
The main interactions that led to me feeling more relaxed in sharing songs, scales, etc. that weren’t quite perfect was the act of playing through things during lessons. Sometimes I would mess up and it would make me want to just stop or it would be hard for me to keep playing. My guitar teacher was always encouraging me to keep playing and keep going and it would go better with more iterations and tries and so I developed a mindset to continuously just play and do my best no matter how anxious I was about how things were sounding.
My relationship with my guitar teacher as a mentor helped me gain confidence in myself as a musician and increased confidence in my abilities to learn new things and achieve things I set my sights on. I am grateful for the constant encouragement that I received throughout my lessons, I was pushed to relax more and trust myself and taught that I didn’t have to be perfect for something to still be wonderful and beneficial for me. At the end of my lessons, my teacher said that I had grown a lot and he was impressed with how I had progressed in both technique and ability to learn and apply music theory. I really appreciated that validation.
The act of playing and practicing the guitar really increased my confidence as well. I was able to persevere when I was unsure about something and always felt comfortable asking for help when I needed it. I also was able to increasingly become better at researching and identifying good places to learn what I needed to know – something that I can apply to learning other new skills.
My newfound relaxation with sharing unfinished works can be applied to any area of life – academics, work, family, etc. I now feel more confident sharing what I have had success with thus far, and not just waiting until I feel that something is complete or perfect. This ability to share more often and get input represents growth for me and will help me in many aspects of my life moving forward.
I am graduating in the fall, and this project has given me an advantage for the next stages of my life. I believe that I can do hard things and that I can constantly be learning and growing throughout graduate school and step out of my comfort zone to become a more well-rounded human being and professional. Additionally, this entire project brought me a lot of joy. I now have this source of happiness and I am motivated to keep playing and take more lessons or try to play music with other people in the future.
Here is a video I made in February of bits of some of the first songs I learned: Zombie by the Cranberries, Dani California by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, American Idiot by Green Day (kind of lol), and Just What I Needed by the Cars. Its not perfect, but I think that shows the amount of growth I made with being able to share unfinished works and demonstrate progress.