My First Solo.

Today’s Marketing Cookie is about finding your rhythm.

I learned to play the guitar through a video game on the Xbox called Rocksmith. The way it works is you plug your guitar cable into the USB port on the Xbox. Then, as the colored notes of the song drift down and land on one of the six colored strings at the bottom of the screen, you have to pluck the correct string, on the correct fret, and at the exact right moment to earn some points.

It all starts pretty slowly, with maybe one note every beat or so. As you get better at hitting all the notes, the game continues feeding you more and more notes until you’re eventually playing the entire song just like on the album. As the notes drop down faster and faster, like those little shapes in Tetris, I had a very hard time keeping up, especially for the solo parts. I couldn’t really play fast. As it sped up, I got really stiff and tense and just played harder. I constantly broke strings, and the pickguard was so scratched up you’d think I had been dragging it across the pavement on my driveway.

The first two songs where I managed to earn a decent score were “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and “The Thrill Is Gone” by B.B. King. My playlist kind of sounds like I needed to hire both a therapist and a marriage counselor. The game had a feature called the riff repeater that allowed you to work on one section of a song over and over until you nailed it. I’m sure my family regretted giving me this game and a guitar for Christmas, as they had to hear me incorrectly playing the same snippet of a song over and over for a few hours every single day.

Well, after playing the game every day for almost a year, the game stats showed that I had logged about 1,000 hours. My neighbor down the street was a teacher at a music school in town. One day, when we were both shoveling snow out of our driveways, he told me they had a rock band program coming up where I could learn some songs with a band, and after six weeks of practicing together, we would perform in a rock show. Wow! I signed up right away.

On the first night with our band, it came time to pick some songs. I immediately threw up my hand and said, "How about ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones?" Everyone agreed. Whew! I knew that I would have at least one song that I could play. Then another guy suggested “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger. The teacher got excited and declared that during the bridge, everyone in the band would have a solo. I didn’t know what a bridge was, so I raised my hand and decided to ask, "What are the notes for the solo I will have to play?" He laughed and said, “That’s not how solos work. You just play whatever comes naturally.” I nodded with some fake confidence, as if I’d naturally made up solos every day of my life, and said, “Okay, cool. I just wasn’t sure if you had any special requests for, um, my solo bridge.”

Six weeks later, the big night for our rock show came, and I nailed the Stones song. We played through our other songs, and finally, it was time for “Old Time Rock and Roll.” It was going great; the audience was standing, dancing in the aisles, and clapping along with us as we got to the bridge. Just as we had practiced, our music teacher, who was playing bass, started shouting out people’s names for their little solos.

He yelled into the mic, “Give us a solo, Joe.” Joe played a cool solo on his guitar, and the audience cheered. Then he said, “Myles on guitar.” I stepped forward, all stiff like a robot, and looking down at my guitar, played a B.B. King solo that I had memorized from “The Thrill Is Gone.” It didn’t really fit the song at all, but it was the only solo I knew. I think a few people clapped. Then he yelled, “Sheila on keys,” who played a cool riff on the keyboard, then the drummer did a thing, and finally, our teacher played a crazy solo on his bass. I was pretty relieved that the solos were done. But then he called my name again.

I was stunned.

For probably the first time in the show, I actually looked out at the audience, whose heads were all bobbing up and down with the rhythm. Then I met eyes with each member of our band as they were gently rolling through the chord progression. I knew I couldn’t just play the same B.B. King solo again, and I didn’t have anything else memorized, so I hit my stomp pedal, raised my right arm in the air, made my best rock 'n' roll pose, and started playing. For four straight bars, I just made something up.

It was electric. It was as if the music had taken over my body and my guitar had something it wanted to say. Unlike the rest of the show, where I had my head down trying to execute a memorized script, my head was up, looking into the eyes of the audience. Although I don’t really know what notes I played, it all came from some unknown place, and they loved it! That was the first time I stopped trying to learn a song or trying to play the guitar and actually began playing music.

In whatever you do, there will be a moment when you are ready to cut the safety cables, put down the script, stop trying to do something, and actually begin doing it. After the rush of that moment, I couldn’t wait to play in the next show. It is very scary to jump out there or even be pushed a little, but when you step forward and strike your best pose, it will be, as today’s fortune says, “There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you.”