When I was hired as the Information Architect for the PULSE website almost 2 years ago, I had little knowledge of music theory and practically no playing experience. It was a bit daunting to start working on this awesome music curriculum with coworkers who had been playing and teaching music for years.

Luckily, my coworkers were patient with me & answered any questions that I came up with (and there were a lot). Being a blank slate ended up working to my advantage, and I became the Guinea pig for new content in our curriculum! Before I knew it, I was able to participate in music theory discussions with little confusion & come up with fun ideas for simplifying some complex concepts.

About a year in, I decided to put some of my theory knowledge to good use, and started taking guitar lessons from a colleague.

I had tried to do this while I was in high school, but gave up quickly because it was overwhelming & made no sense to me. I figured that I just didn’t have “it” and moved on.

This time it was different. Thanks to the PULSE Harmony unit, chords started making sense! Turns out there is music reasoning behind these seemingly random finger positions that I was forced to memorize. Thanks to the PULSE Form unit, I could break songs into bite size pieces that I could tackle. Thanks to the PULSE curriculum, I began to see the connections in the songs and it’s actually been fun!

I’ve still got a long way to go, but this time I’m sticking to it.