Oozing Musicality

On Saturday I went to my guitar lesson.  It was the second week in a row for me, which was quite an achievement.  Due to school and other scheduling conflicts, I hadn't been to a lesson in, oh, about 2 months prior.  My daughter, with whom I began lessons, was still attending her lessons despite my absence and although I made her practice (not as often as she should) I had picked up my guitar only a couple of times during the previous weeks.  Even in the week between my lessons, I only practiced twice and had concentrated solely on the chords for the songs we had previously been learning the melody to (so that my daughter and I will be able to play a nice duet at some point).

During the lesson, we worked some on chords, especially those crazy "bar chords" (in which you hold down multiple strings with one figure) that seem to defy my playing them.  My teacher, who is an incredible musician, a fun teacher and a generally cool guy, also taught me a neat variation in playing chords, so that rather than strumming them, you pluck the strings at the same time, much like you would play a chord on the piano.  You can take that further and do a little walkabout with the chord as well, playing each of the notes individually in turn.  Sorry if all this is rambling nonsense to anyone who doesn't play, but for me, it was all very interesting.

Then, out of nowhere, my teacher flips a few pages ahead in the book and wants me to play a song I hadn't played in months and which involved notes on a new string.  So, there I am, basically sight reading my way through a 4-string version of "Amazing Grace".  We repeated it 3 times (with teacher Steve playing a lovely accompaniment to my melody).  We finally finish and I am totally frustrated because I was still making mistakes and I turn to Steve and the man is sporting a huge, glowing smile.  "Wow!" he says, "You were in the zone.  Just oozing musicality.  Some people play for years and never do that.  Awesome!"

So, all the while I was hung up on getting the notes right and being frustrated by my imperfections, I had something going on.  Something I didn't even realize I had.  Something that is very, very awesome.  I guess sometimes it's good to see things from someone else's perspective, especially when our own perspective is not the most favourable.  I know I am often my own worst critic -- wouldn't it be wonderful if there were always someone else around to point out any perceived awesomeness they noticed that I didn't?