Often whenever you finish something that you’ve spent the last 2 years of your life working on, you expect to feel an overly large amount of satisfaction and joy from it. But as I found out, that wasn’t necessarily the case for me.
Since the beginning of my Junior year, I always had a vague idea of what I was going to do for my Senior Project, and that was music-related. I researched the history of the guitar and the different styles of playing it, but when it came to starting working on a project, I didn’t know how I was going to move forward with it. But after a lot of thinking and realizing that I’m always watching Youtube videos on it already, I decided to build a guitar for my senior project.
The planning process was very simple, I already knew I was going to make a Stratocaster guitar. This was because all of my inspirations, from Eric Clapton to John Mayer, used one and I wanted to try and emulate their sounds. But, as I was to find out, that was not going to be possible because of the simple fact of not being able to afford the supplies to make it. So I had to start over in the planning and decide how I was going to move forward and still be proud of what I would make in the end.
I felt confident at the very beginning of building. I had done tons of research, watched an endless amount of videos on what I needed to do, and had found a site that I would be able to get all the supplies needed for a reduced price. The issue I ended up running into was the hands-on work. I watched all the videos and thought I knew how to do it, but in reality, I didn’t have a clue on how to use any of the tools to make it. So to learn how to use the band saw and scroll saw, I used small templates and cutouts to make before I used them on the guitar, and that helped me out because now I had some experience in using them and was a bit more comfortable using them.
After learning that, the next challenge I faced was learning how to set up the bridge of the guitar because I was used to the standard six-point tremolo, not a Floyd-rose bridge set up. I had to do a lot more research and many failed attempts before I was eventually able to successfully set it up.
I realized I wasn’t exactly as satisfied with it as I had originally imagined I would be. But it was because I was seeing many things that I could improve upon.
As I neared the end of the process, I realized I wasn’t exactly as satisfied with it as I had originally imagined I would be. But it was because I was seeing many things that I could improve upon. I saw the finished project and was glad to be done but when I looked at my finished result I saw so many more things I would improve upon the next time I would do it. It gave me the chance to look at what I did and gave me the chance to grow from it. So although now I look at the finished project, and I’m proud of it, it also shows me what I can improve upon and grow my skills from.
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