Hello, I am Andre-Christopher Marana, a 21-year-old occupational therapy student at Saint Joseph’s University. I am currently located inside my bedroom in my apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My room is where I feel most comfortable to engage in the occupation that is most meaningful to me, which is playing the guitar.
Playing the guitar falls under the occupation category of leisure. When I engage in this occupation, I find myself in a cheerful, relaxed state. Although playing guitar requires a lot of practice and effort when you start off as a beginner, I find it very fun as well as stress relieving, especially in moments where I feel pressured from my academic and social pursuits.
Playing the guitar employs a lot of multitasking in which both arms and hands are concentrating on different tasks. It may also employ a lot of mental processes as well as fine motor skills and dexterity in your fingers. The dominant hand usually is involved in strumming or plucking the strings whereas the less dominant hand is involved in holding your fingers on the correct frets in order to play the correct notes or chords.
When you play guitar, you have to take rhythm, tempo, and musical pitch into account. Rhythm is mainly repeated patterns. For example, you can do a strumming rhythm or you can do a fingerstyle rhythm. Tempo is the speed at which you are playing the song so you could be fast and/or slow. And the musical pitch are the notes you hit when you play the guitar. These all come together to produce music. At first, it is a frustrating process trying to focus on all of these aspects of music all at once, but with enough practice, it becomes second nature!
Playing guitar is meaningful to me because it reminds me of where I came from. Throughout my childhood, I was surrounded entirely by music from all genres. My grandmother introduced me to classical music, my mother introduced me to R&B, Jazz, & Folk. My father and brother introduced me to classic rock and alternative music. Playing musical instruments like a guitar acts as a device that reconnects me to my family and those fond memories, I shared with them as a child. To me, music is love and connection.
