Money and Music–an insight to JGrant23

JGrant designed his avatar with the intent of portraying his passion for music – and how costly that passion can be. His image depicts an electric guitar, an instrument he “started playing two years ago.” There are two black dollar signs, one on each side of the guitar neck, that he told me represents how expensive the instrument can be. The color scheme is a black and green contrast. The top half of the background is green and the bottom half is black, while the guitar is split into black on the top and green on the bottom. The green, he said, also represents money. 

The thing that probably surprised me the most about this avatar and the explanation was that the two symbols for money (the color green and the dollar signs) had different meanings. I had asked JGrant what the dollar signs meant, and he told me they mean that guitars are pricey. I then asked about the colors and he told me the green means money, but just in general, not necessarily for guitars. 

One thing I thought was pretty cool about our aviators, is that they both have music elements. My avatar includes a music staff, while his avatar has an electric guitar, and I was happy but not surprised when he didn’t have to ask me to know what my avatar was because we both know music pretty well. But one thing I realized while talking to him is that even though we share a commonality in music (him being in Rock Band and myself in Concert Band), our outlook and experience with music is quite different. I realized this when he asked me what “part” I play, meaning lead or background. I had to think for a moment because we usually refer to our music pieces in terms of “instrument 1” and “instrument 2”, or “the melody” and “the harmony”, and for the most part we don’t even have enough players of a single instrument to have different parts. But in Rock Band they have multiple guitar players, so I asked him what part he usually plays and he said he plays “a little of both” lead and background. I then asked him if he played any other types of guitar, to which he answered “acoustic… and some base” 

I think that color is the main design difference between our avatars, because the one color I used in my avatar doesn’t have a meaning, unlike J’s. But both our avatars are simplistic and have main concepts that are pretty easy to understand, but have underlying meanings that may need a small explanation. For instance the pencil that I show in my avatar represents art – especially drawing – , but JGrant asked me if it meant that I write music. Now that would have actually been a really smart design idea but I do not write music, so I told him that it just meant art. Likewise, if he hadn’t told me that the color green meant something slightly different than the dollar signs, I would have just assumed they were the same. Doing this write up made me realize our avatars are a lot more similar than I ever thought they would be despite looking completely different.

“Music” by Chris_Hawes is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Avitar by JGrant