My Ultimate Musical Achievement

I'm a musical person. I started piano lessons at age 5. I began playing French horn in grade school. Along the way, I had a lot of fun, and had several achievements that I'm actually kind of proud of. For example, as a sophomore in high school, I managed to beat out several seniors for first chair French horn. And my senior year, I played at a masterclass for German horn player Hermann Baumann.

I'm not saying this stuff to brag. Honestly, it happened a while ago, and I haven't played much recently. And even when I practiced, I was never good enough to play professionally, or even major in music at a top music school. I just want to give you some perspective so that when I tell you what I consider my ultimate musical achievement to be, you'll understand the scope of things.

It happened this past Saturday evening, at my husband's brother and sister-in-law's house.

We were playing Guitar Hero II on the Xbox.

And here it is, my ultimate achievement: I finally beat Wolfmother's "Woman" on hard.

My husband and I don't have an Xbox. The only time we play is with his brother and sister-in-law. But they live really close to us, and so we're over there pretty often. Both of us can hold our own in the "medium" level, and so we decided to kick it up a notch and try hard.

Hard is a lot harder. Not only do the notes go by faster, but you have to use all 5 buttons instead of just 4. 5 buttons, 4 fingers...you do the math. But even on hard, I could pass all the songs in the first two brackets after a few tries. Except for "Woman." And it wasn't just me who got stuck--we all got stuck. No one could progress past this one stupid song.

One of my husband's co-workers said, "Oh yeah. That's the hard part. Save up star power to get through the hammer-on sections." Good idea, but it wasn't enough. We just weren't good enough.

They got a second guitar, and for a while, the multiplayer option diverted our attention--dueling on "Woman" was ok, because even if you both suck, you can't fail the song. Every once in a while, we'd come back to the solo song, and the result would be the same. Failure.

Finally, my husband's sister-in-law had had enough and started practicing. She worked on this song a lot. She learned to hate it. But in the end, it paid off. She passed the song last week. But she passed it on her band--the band she had set up so that she could track her own progress. A great idea in theory, but it means that the song was only passed in her band. In our communal band--Def Monkeys--we were still stuck.

So last Friday, I buckled down and worked on it. I practiced. I isolated the section I was missing all of the notes and I ran through it on a slower speed. My fingers hurt. And then, I did it. I made it through the terribly hard section, and was so excited I almost blew it near the end.

But I didn't. I made it through. And I was thrilled :)

For all of you who are thinking, "I've beaten the game on expert. What are you whining about?" Well, good for you. You really do rock!

But on Friday night, so did I. Although I don't think I'll even be able to bring myself to play or listen to "Woman" again.