Some people have harboured years of closeted vocal desires by singing in the shower and warbling their way through karaoke duets. I am not that girl. Those who know me well have learnt that karaoke is my worst fear – it combines my dislikes of reading out loud and singing out loud. The reading aloud portion of my karaoke fear comes from the fact that I’m useless with lyrics. I still make up different choruses for sing-a-long classics like Sweet Caroline and Bohemian Rhapsody. With my luck, I’d discover that the lyrics “sweet dreams are made of cheese” are actually “sweet dreams are made of these” for the first time up on stage, microphone in hand... and after years of thinking “the Eurythmics just get me!” my disappointment with the real version would be palpable.
Technically speaking, I should love singing. You see, I am blessed with the prized “gift” of perfect pitch but sadly, I’ve always felt that I wasn’t gifted a vocal instrument to go along with it. To me, perfect pitch just means I am painfully aware of how off key I am. The last time I sang was probably in high school when I was in a few musicals – exclusively as a chorus girl because I could jitterbug and Charleston with the best. It’s probably unfair to judge my voice so harshly. After all, we would never judge a first-time figure skater as she attempted to execute a triple salchow. Our voices, like all muscles, require training and my singing voice gets a workout about as often as I go to the gym. That said, for years mastering one single song for karaoke has been on my apoca-list (which is my list of things to do before the world ends). I’ve already determined it will be Carly Simon’s Your So Vain. While I own the power of my voice in many realms, I’ve been scared of its song. Sammy Davis Jr, one the singing greats, said, “you always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear” so this burgeoning songbird joined the flock at Hackney Harmony and became a treble maker.
2 Comments
|
Follow AlongNice to meet you...I'm Andi (hence the blog name). I'm a travel aficionado, passionate eater, tireless explorer of internet rabbit-holes, and amateur thinker. Join me as I give it all up (ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration) and go around the world on a mid-career "soul sabbatical" & year-of-learning to figure out what to be NEXT when I grow up. Won’t you grab a cup of chai and stay a while?
Learn More > Archives
May 2018
|