Staying in Tune

Wednesday turned out to be a better busking day.

On a brilliant blue-sky morning, I found my way to Queen's Park station, where the busking location is in a sunny alcove underneath a skylight. I felt lucky to get the spot, having abandoned my original plan to play at Osgoode, where a maintenance team was circular-sawing through a panel of ceramic tile.

Every time I go out busking, I have to work up my confidence to get out and play. It's probably a good thing when I can't play at my originally-intended location, because it makes me feel fortunate to get whatever spot I get.

Today I consciously practiced letting go of expectations and tried to notice my own attention and how it flip-flopped between my experience of making music and my observations of other people and how they were responding to me. (Regular readers of this blog will note that I've written about this before; however, I've discovered that there's a constant forgetting-and-remembering that happens, so I'm returning to this topic.)

I found that I was able to notice the differences in my perception. For brief periods of time, I was fully in the moment of playing and singing; the physical space around me seemed to disappear and I was "in" the song. This experience contrasted with the other times (even within the same song) when I was inadvertently focusing on the people around me and their apparent response, or I was aware of some other thought, such as "I wonder when Dave is going to come meet me for lunch?" or "which song should I play next?".

I'm not sure that either state of awareness is "right" or "wrong". In performance, it's important that I'm in touch with the people who are listening to me and watching me. On other stages, I notice a sort of dance that takes place with my audience, as I connect with them by meeting someone's eyes, for instance, and then I look away. Constant connection with the audience is distracting, while constant inwardness (even to the point of closing one's eyes) distances the performer from the audience.

When I'm busking though, this interplay is even more complex, because some people are clearly "listening" (being an audience, and perhaps wanting contact) while others are not. And of course, my own consciousness of them might come from a secure performer's stance ("I'm playing this song for you") or an insecure one ("Do you like me?").

When I arrived at Queen's Park, I noticed that I had left my electronic guitar tuner at home. Accomplished players probably wouldn't give this a second thought--these devices are convenient but not necessary--and I perhaps rely on mine too much. I figured it'd be good practice for me to get by without it today.

I found, to my surprise, that I kept my guitar in tune without any difficulty, even though I used a couple of alternate tunings for particular songs, and had to adjust the tuning periodically. Some days this is a challenge for me, especially in the subway where the environment is noisy and I sometimes feel self-conscious. It occurs to me now that just as I was aware of my own mental "tuning", and adjusting it accordingly, I was able to make minute adjustments to my instrument as required.