Apparently it was good as I was just notified of my acceptance today

Sweet! Mucho Congratulations Compadre!

My last point I want to make on "devices" making music is the CD player has no choice in what is played. Thus it can't really play music. The audio device "making" music is just a technological technicality, because the music has already been created.

Can we see the revised version if you don't mind? The only issue I had with your essay is you didn't really define understanding. For example, is understanding refer to "I understand the purpose of the piece" or "I understand what this technically is?" This always bothered me as I honestly cannot understand something like an Indian Raga as I sure a large amount of the population cannot. Also, can you truly say you know an artist's intent to write a piece? The old joke about English teacher and the interpretation of novels works well here. The interpretation of books of artistic merit would vary hugely if individual schools were cut off from one another (and teachers from Sparknotes) and music is even harder to understand compared to a book. This is why I never call music a "universal language." In fact, people that do in many of my music courses are shot down almost instantly.

I would love to see someone create a definition for the "understanding of music" though.

About the first person thing, I've had teachers tell me it's bad to use first person and then I've had teachers not care. Your main goal should just be to keep your perspective of writing the same throughout the entire essay.

This topic is actually super interesting, at least for me.