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Aidan McIntyre shares his experience with learning and playing a difficult song, Country Roads by John Denver, for his capstone project. He explains how music is a passion for him and how learning this song pushed him outside of his comfort zone. Aidan describes the steps he took to learn the song by listening to it and playing it by ear. He faced challenges in finding the song by ear and developing his own style. His brother served as his mentor, helping him with the chord progression and providing motivation. Through this project, Aidan discovered his resilience and ability to overcome obstacles. He plans to continue learning more advanced songs in the future. Capstone Project Experience with Playing Guitar by Aidan McIntyre How much practice and knowledge will it take to learn and execute a new song that's very difficult? For my capstone project, I will be learning a new song called Country Roads by John Denver. This advanced and difficult song will teach me new chords and tunes while also pushing me outside of my comfort zone. I've never done a song this difficult, so I will be documenting my journey through this process. In the future, this song will propose new opportunities, as music is a valuable part of my life and something I would like to pursue. Why did I choose this idea? How does it match my passion? Music is very valuable to me, especially playing the guitar, as I am very passionate about it. To me, music is an outlet, and it's a way to express yourself without having to speak. It brings me calmness and relaxation while playing the guitar. Ever since I was young, music has always played a huge role in my life, and I've always had a passion to learn as many songs as I could. I've always been interested in different genres and cultures of music, which has slowly been expanding my abilities, and for this project, I will be expanding it once more. What were the steps? In order for me to learn a new and advanced song, I first needed to listen to the song many times in order to get a thorough understanding of how it should sound. After I felt I had a good understanding of the song, such as the pitch and speed, I started trying to hear the notes being strummed. Usually, I would go online and find the chords, but I wanted to push myself further and try to learn the song purely from listening to it. This step was definitely the hardest, as I have had very little experience in doing this. I would play a part of the song and then play a few chords in different progressions to see if I was making a sound that was similar, if not exact, to John Denver. After this long step, I was ready to start playing the song with only one to two strums with each chord. This means the song went by very slowly, but is opening me up to being able to throw my own take on how I played it. Finally, I felt comfortable taking my own reins and playing the song at an impressive pace while changing how some of the chords were played out in order to give me my own ring to it. What challenges did I face? Finding the song from ear was definitely the most challenging part of this, as I did find myself wanting to search up the chords. Finding my own style and coming up with my own strumming patterns to fit the song. Learning and playing new chords and tunes. Since there are new chords and tunes, it was extremely difficult to change in between them. Since there are new chords and tunes, it was common to skip strings and miss the correct chords that I needed to be playing. How did my mentor and other sources help me? My mentor was my brother, Will. His entire life, he has played instruments such as the drums, guitar, and the keyboard. He is the most musically influential person that I know, so I knew he would be the perfect mentor. I knew he would be the best choice of mentoring me along my journey of trying to learn this song the way I did. I wouldn't allow him to tell me the right chords, even though he bugged me constantly about it, but he helped me in ways in which I played them, in order to make the chord progression smoother and less choppy, something I knew he could do very well. I was very thankful for this help, and he motivated me a lot during the process. Whenever I had questions or concerns, he was always more than willing to help me out in any way that he could. What did I learn about myself as a result of doing this project? After I reflected on my experiences and how I was feeling during the completion of this project, I realized that I can continue through with something, even when I face very tough obstacles. Although there were many challenges in learning this new and advanced song, I did my best to overcome them. This song has taught me many new chords and tunes, with the help of my mentor, my brother, I will prepare myself for even more advanced songs in the upcoming future. This project has shown me how truly resilient I am, and that I am able to accomplish what I set my mind to. Thank you for watching and listening.