Playing guitar, baritone saxophone, listening to metal, and loving orchestral music is the person I am. These are the things that I could bring to you’re college. What I bring to the stage isn’t something that most people have. I have diversity and awkwardness that makes me the person that loves anything. People have trouble understanding why I’m this way but it’s easy to understand.

I got my first guitar when I was five-years-old, but I didn’t have an interest in it until the end of my eighth grade year. People came in for career day and showed us what they did, and one of them was a man was playing guitar. Watching him play was the thing that inspired me to go home and dig my blue acoustic Hofner guitar out of the closet, and ask if I could get lessons. I ended up taking lessons for about a year and a half but stopped because there was no money to pay for it. As time went on I progressively tuned my guitar lower and started playing faster more complicated riffs. Since starting playing guitar I have gone through five guitars and at the highest point I had five guitars and over 2,000 dollars worth of guitar equipment in my room. I’m now down to one guitar and a bass but am looking at acoustic guitars again.

Something that most people don’t picture me doing is playing in band. I started playing around the fourth grade, mainly because my brother did and I wanted to be like him. I started playing the alto saxophone but in sixth grade my teacher asked if I wanted to switch to the lowest sax, the Bari. Ever since then I’ve been playing in band even though my brother stopped.

Listening to metal goes along with playing the guitar. The reason that metal appeals to me so much is because the guitar riffs are complex and different from everything else. People think metal is screaming into a microphone, but it’s more than that, you have to look past the screaming and actually listen to the music. Listen to the movement of the guitar, the way the notes line up perfectly when someone executes a perfect sweep pick. Listen to the message in the lyrics; listen to the way that the drummers have to have perfect hand-eye-foot coordination.

The same thing goes for the orchestral music. Listening to it and trying to pick out the little things is what makes it music. People shouldn’t just listen to the main melody they should listen for the flowing background of the low winds and brass. Reading about the background of the piece and finding out why the composer wrote it and afterwards trying to pick out the certain spots he/she mentions in the background is something that everyone should do with music.

Like I said before, those are only some things that make me the person I am today. It gives me the diversity and awkwardness. But it’s what makes me who I am; those are some of the things that I could bring to enrich the communi