The Importance Being Able to Play Songs On The Spot

Today at rehearsal, the singer for this band that I've been playing guitar for informed us that one of the bands playing before us at a show tomorrow had to drop out because one of their members got their hand slit open. The venue told us that we could all extend our sets by a few minutes, so the singer asked if I could learn a song in a day to play tomorrow. (I'm relatively new to this band so I only know a fraction of what they usually play) Though I didn't really want to, I saw the opportunity to challenge myself a bit. I asked if they had any easier songs that I could just sight read and we could play it on the spot. They brought up "Godzilla" by Blue Oyster Cult so I pulled up a chart, looked at for a second, and threw myself in the fire. The first few bars weren't perfect by any means, but I fell in fine once I got the general feel for the song. Where I'm the only guitar, it was a bit weird fitting in the iconic lead parts in between where I'm supposed to be playing chords, but I ended up finding good spots to play the leads then go back to the chords. We ran through the song a couple more times to work out a few kinks and just like that we were ready! 

Godzilla isn't necessarily a hard song, so It's not a huge accomplishment to be able to sight read it well. There's been more complicated songs that I've sight read before but I was pretty proud of myself anyway :) If my sight reading skill wasn't as decent as it was we definitely wouldn't be able to play another song tomorrow. 

Comment below about moments where a skill you honed in on has came in clutch!