Matthew’s father handed him the envelope that read, “Happy Birthday Love, Dad” with a warm smile on his face, signaling a surprise. After opening up the slip and pulling out the paper, he admired the two tickets to see the Foo Fighters perform live at The Capital One Arena in DC.
“This is going to be unreal”
Matthew has always been a huge fan of the Foo Fighters, as well as all other genres of rock but it had not been until this particular concert, that he truly discovered his love for not just listening to music but also being able to produce it and experience it as a musician himself. Needless to say, the concert was “life changing” and Matthew’s interest in music only grew stronger.
That following winter, Matthew received 
his first guitar as a present from his father on Christmas. It was an eccentric blue and white electric guitar with a light brown strap. As ecstatic as Matthew was to pick it up and begin jamming, he was not sure where to start, whereas he had never attended a music lesson in his life, nor had he even touched an instrument.
“When I first picked it up I was beyond frustrated, it was just not clicking, quickly into my trial I put it down and did not pick it up again for 10 years”
Matthew didn’t have the patience at the time to pick up a new skill as demanding as guitar. This was especially difficult considering he had no interest in taking classes with a teacher.
“I didn’t want to sit there at square one listening to someone teach, I wanted to dive right into it and learn through experience. So about 10 years after that Christmas, I was sitting in my college dorm room bored out of my mind. The guitar was leaning against the wall in the corner of my room for the cool look of it, but I had still not given it another shot. As my curiosity grew further, I decided to mess around with the strings and see if I could make any sort of cohesive sounds. It was a really cool feeling when I realized I was capable of making something out of the notes and it just inspired me to keep going.”
Realizing that Matthew was far more capable of crafting this talent than he thought he was, Matthew jumped on Youtube and searched for a beginners guitar video and started making music.
Through apps like Guitar Tuner and Guitar Tabs Matthew was able to exercise technology as an outlet for furthering his journey with the guitar. He learned the strings and how to properly tune, which opened up the door to quickly becoming successful in following music and creating his own. It’s actually extremely rare and quite impressive that Matthew was able to teach himself with this new skillset, especially at such a late age.
“I’ve always been a quick learner, especially when I’m teaching myself things on my own. I don’t retain information the traditional way, it always seems to click more when I do the research and figure it out on my own.”
Matthew’s strength in self teaching drew a lot of his attention to the internet, where there are an abundance of DIY and at home tutorial videos. As Matthew’s curiosity grew further and further, it allowed him to become seemingly comfortable with technology. Not only was this impactful of Matthew’s musical talent but it also brought him great academic success in school as well. After graduating from the College of Charleston with a degree in finance from the business school, Matthew decided to further his education through an online post graduate program at the University of Austin Texas, that certifies students in data science business analytics. His well verse in digital literacy has has made him an efficient data programer, coder and has helped him conceptualize artificial intelligence.
“I have always been very computer savvy and especially good with charts and graphs. I really enjoy data analytics but my passion is music. I wanted to find a way to integrate my professionalism with my interest in music”
The combination of Matthews literacy in data analytics and music, makes for a very interesting path that he plans to further pursue in his professional career. Matthew plans on taking his interest in both subjects and working for a music publishing company, by doing data analytics for artists. Data analytics is one of the main components to the music industry for many reasons. Matthew intends on analyzing artist’s fan demographics in order to expand their music to its fullest potential. By doing so, one can analyze a song’s performance based on the streaming, how much radio time it gets, where it is being played the most and from this determine who and where to target. This helps the artistic creatively to know who styles of music are popular in furthering their career. Matthew would also like to study the algorithm of music on apps like Spotify, that attempt to accurately predict one’s music taste so that they can rely on the app’s suggestions. Matthews digital literacy skills in both data analytics and music function quite cohesively together, expressing his proficiency in digital literacy and making him a name that you should know. See what I mean? Data analytics can be cool.