Singing (Raw)

I am not traditionally a particularly confident singer. After years of working at it, I now feel fairly confident as a singer in improv shows, but really the only contexts in which I feel comfortable singing in front of another person is in a rehearsal or onstage in front of a paying audience. Yet, I still can’t quite bring myself to sing along to the radio with my girlfriend in the car. I’m getting there, but still. Or, as another for instance, last night a big group of us were playing Rock Band and steadfastly avoided having to take a turn as the singer.

As an indicator of how far I’ve come in my singing, Saturday before the show we stood in a circle and did a note matching exercise. I hate this exercise. I’m not good at matching notes. I have a natural tendency to harmonize. I’m not one to ever sing in public, but I certainly did my share of singing along to my favorite songs in the car or alone in my room growing up. Then one night in college, I was drinking with some friends late at night after a show (after my first public improv performance actually) and I was singing along to a song and the friend of mine sitting next (who had voice training) was amazed that I was singing the harmony to the song perfectly. I had no idea. That, incidentally, is one reason I don’t like to karaoke that much, because when I sing along to songs I harmonize with them. When you do karaoke you’re supposed to actually sing the notes. I don’t know what the notes are, I just know the harmony.

But the point is we did this note matching exercise. One I have suffered through before in the presence of several of the people I was about to suffer through it again. The way the exercise works is, one person sings a note and everyone in turn around the circle matches it in pitch and tamber. As usual, it comes around to me and I miss the note, but my friend would point up or down to tell me where to go to meet it (because of course I was usually singing the 5th). The interesting thing is though, as pointed out to me by another friend in the circle, when I moved up or down to try and match, I would move exactly one note as opposed to some random distance. That, my friends, is amazing. I’ve come a long way.