“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”
– Confucius
Guitar Pedagogy Projects
The Guitar program at the University of Arkansas required students to create and present pedagogy projects, in order to develop researching and analysis skills, as well as teaching skills. My guitar lessons often involved a deeper look into certain styles and guitarists, compiled into pedagogy projects from my instructor. The goal was to teach my instructor and the guitar studio class something new about a guitarist they were unfamiliar with.
Through vigorous research and practice, I learned a new guitar technique; playing finger style country music, reminiscent of Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel. Then I had to teach those styles in “reverse” lessons with my guitar professor. That challenge taught me valuable skills about teaching and pedagogy. With my goal to impact aspiring guitarists, I will create more pedagogy projects and incorporate these works into lessons, and into my own research on less popular music styles. This work to the left is an example of the music I created to show students how to play country rhythm guitar (“Boom Chick” Exercises).
Junior and Senior recitals
Every University of Arkansas music student is required to perform two recitals, one in their junior year and one in the senior year of the student. As such, I performed in both recitals, highlighting what I learned over the course of my undergrad at the University of Arkansas. Since a majority of my studies involved solo guitar music, I performed a majority of the set by myself on stage. That came with problems like nerves and less room for error. Another challenge with my recitals were that I was the manager over production, logistics and the band. It was the first time I had been responsible for the entire show, as before I was only responsible for myself.
My experience as the lead manager and performer of both recitals taught me new things about being a professional guitarist. I had to be stern and understanding with my band during rehearsals when we were not playing well. I had to take responsibility for the crew working on our sound and stage, and manage the logistics of the equipment, scheduling, setup and takedown processes. This experience will influence my future performances and projects greatly because I have knowledge gained from reflection and experience on how to lead a concert.
My compositions
I firmly stand on the idea that composing and songwriting are integral to a guitarist development and career. In my senior year of high school, I took a class called “Songwriting 1”. Ever since, I have been writing new songs in a variety of styles, from Country, Pop, religious, classical, jazz, and soundtrack music. When I took Songwriting at the University of Arkansas, I was tasked with writing eight songs in different genres. A problem I learned about myself was that I was better at writing music than writing lyrics. The songwriting professors taught me lyric writing and popular writing techniques, based on their professional experience in those realms.
Composing new music has been a challenge that developed my knowledge and technical skill on the guitar. However, a permanent trait of songwriting is that the challenge is always there, and I will always improve on what I wrote before with new songs. With that in mind, the future in my songwriting will be a lifelong journey of improvement, and new challenges to continuously inspire and teach me lessons about music.