I am hopeless at singing particularly singing with other people and I have found the solution – I mime enthusiastically! I think it is more evidence of my lack of concentration sometimes – I’ll be singing along not too badly, then I’ll go off in the wrong direction and sing all the wrong notes in a totally random order. I find it really difficult when singing with others to find the right pitch so I feel as if I’m squeaking or groaning. Over the years I’ve become quite self-conscious which is why I mime ‘Happy Birthday’, the national anthem, and hymns at weddings and funerals.
I do like singing and will sing along to favourite music – especially in the car, but even then, I hear myself bellowing out the wrong melody. Maybe I need to practice… although when we were at school, especially junior school we sang every day. At juniors we had at least one song in assembly, plus ‘singing’ a couple of times a week and hymn practice too. There were plenty of hymns at Sunday school, as well as ‘choruses’ which I loved because they were little stories encapsulated in a verse or two. ‘Build on the rock, the rock that ever stands, build on the rock and not upon the sands; you’ll never fear the storm or the earth’s great shock, you’re safe for ever more if you build on the rock’… ‘wide wide as the ocean, high as the heaven above…’ or my favourite (with hand movements,) – ‘do you want a pilot, signal then to Jesus, do you want a pilot, then bid him come aboard, and he will safely guide across the ocean wide…’ etc. and ‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness’…
My enthusiasm at Sunday school withered when we children were recorded on a tape recorder, our songs to be sent to some mission school far, far away; we were played the recording and there were all the children singing away harmoniously, just about, and there was one discordant, cheerful bellowing voice… I blushed in horror when I realised it was me. Nobody said anything and I know there’s always one singer like me in a group… but it did seriously dampen my enthusiasm
So maybe I should go to an empty beach or hillside, and bellow out my old favourites, not just the old Sunday school choruses and Hymns Ancient and Modern, but all those folk songs with such good stories in them that we sung at school… My friend Marianne who is an amazing, prize-winning singer, goes out into woods and pastures and sings… Any passing walker or rambler would no doubt stop, listen, applaud and go on their way, their hearts lighter… If I was there ‘singing’, that same walker or rambler would no doubt hurry past, probably trying to contain their mirth!
Here is Marianne out in the open on an autumn day… we’re in the height of a real summer now, but in a few months…
Lois Elsden 