Hello! My name is Shaanveer Gupta. I’ve been a part of EKS for the past 10 years, and I wouldn’t trade that time for the world. When I first started learning guitar in second grade, I saw it as a way to take up time in my otherwise boring day. But as I kept learning with Dr. Raley Beggs, known to me as “Mr. Raley,” I began to develop a love and passion for the instrument (and music more broadly) unlike anything else. My time at EKS has only grown my love for music and I can confidently say that I have teachers and community at EKS to thank for that. EKS taught me to play beyond what was written on the page. Playing music, I learned, is much like reading Shakespeare. If you play exactly what is written on the page, you will have music, but it won’t have the depth and meaning you or the original composer intended. But when you read in between the lines and learn to interpret the music, that is when the black and white notes on the page come alive into a colorful masterpiece. The act of deliberating for hours over a single line of music to make it sound exactly how I want it to has become one of the most fulfilling activities, and my time with Mr. Raley, and now, Mr. Fred Springer, has been instrumental (pun intended) in my success as a musician. Emotion is oftentimes impossible to translate into words, so Mr. Raley and Mr. Springer taught me to translate them into music.
This fall, I will be attending the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Biochemistry Major on the pre-med track. I hope to double major in Music Technology as well, and I hope to continue my musical studies throughout college and beyond, whether by joining a band, making music on my own, or doing solo performances. I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported me along the way, including my instructors throughout the years–Mr. Raley, Mr. Springer, and Mr. Carl Straussner–; my parents, who have constantly given me the support and motivation to keep me going; Ms. Ellyses Kuan, who always greeted me with a smile while managing an entire music school; and finally, the broader EKS community, who turned a music school into a second home.
