Teacher

Since before I could even speak, I have been obsessed with sound. At age 3 I was constantly tapping on things to hear what they sound like. Now, at the age of 23, I still carry that curiousity everywhere I go. At age 5, I started learning piano, but I was drawn to the guitar. I got my first guitar as a gift at age 7. I went through school while having private lessons all up to the age of 16 and then decided I wanted to make music a career. I enrolled in the music program at Douglas College, with classical guitar as my primary instrument. In 2012, I completed the program with a 3.9 GPA. My guitar teacher taught me to be very disciplined and never move on from a section of a piece I was learning until I had it perfected. I would spend hours literally focusing on a 4 measure section. What I learned from this experience is that classical music can sometimes tend to push on technical discipline, but take away from creativity. This became most evident when I was teaching my mother how to play guitar. She was a trained Classical Pianist who had been told the exact way to play piano for decades, and when I sat down and said, "let's improvise! There are no wrong notes!", she found it very hard to do so. I am not at all saying classical music is not the proper way to go, but I do believe that if you want to study classical, you should also learn about other things. Music should bring people together, not shove people into small practice rooms. Again, practicing on your own is really important, but it shouldn't be the only thing you do.