As a musician, I have set goals for myself. One of my goals that I set years ago was to learn guitar and be able to play well enough to accompany myself. I think I can finally cross that off the list.
I was asked by a co-worker if I would sing a song at her son’s wedding. I agreed, as singing at weddings is something that I would like to do more often, to make a little extra money. I came up with a list of songs and played them for her, and she chose her favorite. I then discovered that there would be no pianist and no instrumentalists at all, simply a D.J. playing recordings of their selected songs. Which meant I had two choices… accompany myself or sing with a track (shudder).
Although I used to sing with tracks often, doing it now feels like karaoke. There are so many gifted musicians out there, so why use a cheesy track? I think live musicians are so much nicer than a canned track. I probably could have easily found a friend who would have been more than willing to come accompany me, but decided I wanted to push myself musically and try accompanying myself. Plus, I would have had to split the money, and I’m feeling a little broke lately.
So I set about learning the accompaniment part myself. I soon learned that she had chosen probably the hardest song as far as accompaniment went. I discovered there were three key changes, and many chords that my tiny, clumsy hands simply could not accomplish. Rather than give up and go find the accompaniment track, I worked at it, and transposed the first part to my favorite key, D. I then discovered that the song eventually changed to the key of D, so that made the rest of it easy. I typed out my simplified accompaniment, and then practiced it. It wasn’t as hard as I initially thought it might be. It was simplified, but it worked.
I arrived at the wedding this past weekend, and pulled out my guitar and got set up. I was nervous, and afraid that my fingers wouldn’t work like they should. Luckily, they did work. I think my weekly sing a-longs with my residents at work has helped me build up more confidence on guitar. There were a couple places where a chord didn’t ring out as much as it should have, but I kept going, and knew that the majority of the people there would not notice.
I received compliments after the ceremony, many telling me that the song was beautiful and had made them cry. I was expecting those compliments. The ones I was not expecting were the, “Nice guitar playing!” from people as they passed me. For some reason, I always feel the need to say things like, “I’m not that good on guitar,” or “I’m a better vocalist than a guitarist,” to cover up any little flubs that might happen. For some reason, I find it extremely hard to believe that someone might actually enjoy my guitar playing.
I had found myself hoping there would be no guitarists in the audience. Of course there was, and of course I met him afterwards. But even he had kind words to say. I’m sure he caught the flubs and mis-fingerings, but I’m sure he also understands the pressure of performing.
Now my goal is to stop trying to “cover up” for my not great guitar playing and instead accept the compliments as encouragement for accomplishing my goal.