Hi. My name is Ramses Garza and I am a senior at Chinquapin Preparatory School. I have been apart of the guitar class elective since 7th grade, however I had to learn a good portion of how to play the guitar myself. The guitar is a wonderful instrument. Not only is it capable of producing professional, intricate pieces of music, but it is also one the best stress relievers I have ever encountered. Whenever I have endured an extremely stressful week of school, I pick up the guitar and start strumming with no specific pattern or length in mind. I just kind of play. I make it up on the spot, and in doing that my mood has taken a different turn in a positive direction. 

Half way through the first semester of junior year, before even starting my junior/ senior project, a requirement was to do research and write a paper related to my project and so I decided to research the history of the guitar. Before diving into the research, I had no prior knowledge about the guitar except that there are essentially two versions of it, the classical guitar and electric guitar. I was intrigued by all the history regarding the guitar I was able to find because it had to go through many centuries of progression and stages to be how it is in our modern day era. The history I found talked about the physical forms it took, build quality, and goals for the guitar. Variations of the guitar came from the push for a louder instrument that came from the public and through the many outcomes of that goal wanting to be achieved we are where we are today in terms of guitar variations. Also, because there was such a drive to want a louder instrument, it has influenced the two different extremes of music that we have. The louder the guitar became, the more that the rock ‘n’ roll era music era was creeping in a drifting away from the classical beauty of the composed guitar pieces. In my opinion the history of the guitar is fascinating since it has influenced music and styles of what the guitar is today.
 

I thought for countless hours on what I was passionate enough about to continue a project for two years and produce a project that I would be satisfied with. I eventually came up with the idea to have a project regarding the guitar and I eventually came to the conclusion of wanting the spread the interesting knowledge I gained regarding the history of the guitar and along with that I wanted to perform a semi-professional level concert where I play four classical guitar songs in front of my whole school. The songs I decided to learn was "Romanza" by an unknown composer, "Lagrima" by Francisco Tarrega, "Op 60 Study No 23" by Matteo Carcassi, and "Op 60 Study No 3" by Matteo Carcassi. Each song is difficult in its own respect, but I wanted to learn each song as well as possible in order to provide an entertaining concert with beautiful sounding music. I want this concert to not only be informative and a time for my school to listen to classical music for them to take their mind off, if even briefly, their stress, but I also want it to be a time for me to get out of my comfort zone while presenting information and performing solo guitar pieces in front of a crowd on a scale I have never played in front of.