thats a first!

As some readers of these ramblings may know, I love music. Jazz, music hall, swing, real old school stuff mostly, but I love pretty much any kind of tune. I've made a long suffering woman out of my old flute teacher, with unlearned scales and improvised melodies in exams, and my new piano teacher looks like shes going the same way too, but Ive never had a singing lesson. It always was the one instrument I've wanted to be able to play and play well, but something’s always held me back.

I try to be the type that will try anything out, and damn what people think, but with singing, it just never happened. I think its got something to do with the idea that if I was to sing a song terribly, the original singer would be writhing in their grave and cursing the day s/he ever sang that song, all for it to be effectively disgraced and thrown atop the heap with all those songs that other innocent singers have sung unwittingly knowing they were later going to be re sung in the future sounding little better than nails down a blackboard. If that made any sense at all...

Ive heard people sing truly terribly. Its not good. I wouldn’t risk inflicting my vocal chords on blameless sufferers. Never.

A good friend of mine is pretty much the local Beyoncé, so when I met her and heard this stunning voice singing in local shows, I was introduced to the world of Amateur Dramatics. 7 years down the line of our friendship and I finally cracked and joined the local music society. Because Id never sung before, I assumed I was tone deaf, and genuinely thought it fluke that I got into the school choir (I mean there’s always one that gets the sympathy vote isn’t there). I thought I’ll humour myself and join these people and when they get sick of notifying me I'm in the wrong key or a couple of octaves out of tune then I’ll tell myself ‘at least I tried’.

My family is notoriously un- musical- my Nana tap danced as a child, but that’s as good as it gets, so heaven knows what happened to me. It was a bit of a shock to the system for the parentals when, after a few months of the singing malarky it all started ‘getting serious’ re- the first audition. Trying to find a decent song, learning the words, bringing movement into the mix, and trying to smile at the same time makes for one not entirely calm 17 year old. But somehow I remembered the lyrics and I actually recall thinking I may even have got the tune right. Apparently the Musical Director agreed with this line of thinking, and so it was that this occurred:

Wont lie, there are times when I think ‘what the heck am I thinking doing this? My parents have never heard me even humming and I'm belting out a classic to a load of complete strangers- WTF!!!’ notably a matter of seconds before its my turn to take up the microphone- when the brain is convinced it will explode and the armpits could water a rainforest. But really, once you start, its oddly…calm. And fun! I actually enjoyed it! Who knew?!

So the moral of the story is……well, there isn’t one as such. Just take risks! If you make a fool of yourself then, well, there are only so many strings on your bow, but if you don’t… well, there are always other opportunities!

Jx

A bit of free publicity and shameless plugging...

http://www.cmp-berks.org.uk/