Singing practice

The teen at the end of the street is a drummer now. He practices a lot. Truthfully, I usually don’t notice until Mom says something. It takes me back to my attempts at drumming.

Sadly, of the various instruments I have tried, I think this is the one I could have been the best at. I just couldn’t let loose enough to keep practicing when it was so loud. Obviously, I had the wrong personality for it. When Jason’s band was practicing, they got loud enough at least once for neighbors to call the cops, and he was proud of it. I cannot be that way.

Now I realize I should have been practicing on cushions and other things to get the motions down, and then less of my practicing would be noisy, but the real issue was that I just couldn’t share anything. I tried showing some of the songs I wrote to Mike, and then I felt embarrassed and insecure and stopped. I could not bear scrutiny, as inadequate as I felt.

Given that, it should be odd that I love karaoke so much, because then you are really out there, but it’s not like that. First of all, there isn’t really that much scrutiny, but for what there is, you are in the right place for it. It is specifically set up for you do go for it, regardless of talent and ability.

I have been surprised recently to see several tweets by musicians referencing karaoke, because they get to perform all the time—why would they need it? It’s like musicians playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band (which also happens). I guess it’s actually the same principle, in that you get the freedom to do something different. The drummer can play guitar and the bassist can sing and the singer can do songs by an artist who has a completely different style.

Obviously this sort of freedom means you sometimes get some truly horrible performances, and people will still applaud, but I don’t want to do that. My rules are that I want people to be able to enjoy the song, which usually means an upbeat one, and I want to do a decent job, which means that the song is at least mostly in my range. Also, I want to know the words and the tempo well enough that I am not wholly dependent on the screen, so it doesn’t matter if the screen is wrong, and also that I can get into it and feel the song. Obviously, this also means it needs to be a song I like.

Based on these rules, when I have an opportunity for karaoke coming up, I like to have some songs in mind and be practicing them, but in the past there has been an issue with having time to practice. Sometimes I would sing quietly on the way to the bus stop or something, but usually I was saving it for times when I was home alone, and that basically ended up being about two hours every two weeks. Well, telecommuting changed that, and suddenly I was getting two hours weekly, instead of just every other week. Eventually, I got bolder.

Telecommuting changed the way I was listening to music too. I mean, I listened to music a lot at work, but it was always on the headset, and it was only whatever CDs I brought in, or what I brought up on Youtube. Now I have all my CDs here, and I can also run music on the home PC, which I feel better about than using the work PC, though I do use that too, depending.

I don’t use headphones at all. This means that Mom is hearing my music. There were some initial complaints, but I guess she adjusted, and she started liking some of it. That may have smoothed the way for what happened, but really, it all started with “I Wanna”, by the All-American Rejects.

Somehow I had missed it the first time around. Actually, I don’t remember much from their third album. I was kind of living in a hole that year. Anyway, I was listening to other songs, and randomly clicked on that, and it was one of those love-at-first-listen songs. I would be walking and it would just be going round and round in my head, and it occurred to me that it might work well for karaoke, and I wanted to sing it. So, I just started singing at my desk, and life has gone on.

I’m not saying Mom loves it. Actually, I asked her about my music, both singing and playing, and she was not enthusiastic, but I made her actually listen to Fast and Slow (also by the Rejects; I love that one), and then she asked if he had anymore, and then realized that’s what I had been listening to, and didn’t say much after that.

Well, that song is pretty irresistible. I realized a few things from the conversation, one of which is that it is actually really easy to not let music enter your brain, and just shut it out as noise. I told her to tell me if she ever hears anything she likes (which she will forget to do, so I will have to keep an ear out for humming). Also, I have to admit that I have been listening to a lot of stuff that I don’t like lately, just trying to get educated. I finally quit putting off the Ted Nugent segment yesterday. So, there’s that side of things going on.

Mainly though, it is kind of great to rediscover how much I enjoy singing. One of the great tragedies of growing up is we just quit doing things we enjoy because we have responsibilities and worries, and we become self-conscious about things that don’t really matter. A lot of joy is totally accessible if we just make a point of doing it.

So, I sing for about 30-40 minutes a day now. Technically it is karaoke practice, but not strictly. Some of them are just songs I like to sing, and that work for me. I usually do “29” by Gin Blossoms, and that is not one I am going to do for karaoke, because I wouldn’t expect them to have it, and it is a slow song and I still think the upbeat works better for me performance-wise. (If I do Gin Blossoms for karaoke, it will probably be “Hey Jealousy” or maybe “Til I Hear It From You”.)

Others I believe I would perform well, and would be crowd pleasers, but may not be available, include “Dragostea Din Tei” by O-zone (the Numa Numa song), “Lambada” by Kaoma, and “Saturday Night” by the Misfits. I hope I can find “Saturday Night” somewhere though. It will make me sound demented, but it will be awesome. I should be able to find “Accidentally in Love” by the Counting Crows. I do still sing “I Wanna”, and I hope I get a chance to perform it. (Oddly, Mom has called that song “wild”, but never said anything about “Saturday Night”. I guess it’s that old sex versus violence thing.)

I realize there are not a lot of girl songs in there. I have thought about “Kiss Me Deadly” by Lita Ford, but I’m not sure it would work. I had thought about Scandal’s “The Warrior”, and actually did it on the cruise (along with “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World”), but there are a few notes that are problematic on it, and also in the middle there is nothing to do but dance fighting, and that worked in the video but on stage it would just be weird. So technically the only female vocals I have really pulled off were “Never Forget You”, by the Noisettes, and I have already done that twice, and I don’t like to repeat.

That leads to my other dilemma, which I will save for tomorrow.