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sir_quirky_k (

sir_quirky_k) wrote,
@ 2007-10-25 23:59:00

Karaoke report, October 25 2007, featuring the Eight Simple Rules
The usual Thursday night 'spectacular'.

I came early, sung early, left to get some snacks from the Co-Op cheaper than the bar sold them, then returned, and sung rather a lot later. In this gap, I produced the Eight Simple Rules of karaoke:

1. As n (the number of people on stage) tends to infinity, P (disastrous performance) tends rapidly to 1. Usually, by n=10, P can usefully be approximated to 1.
2. Any male singer, solo or otherwise, will make an attempt at falsetto embarassing enough to make you realise where Gemma was coming from.
3. Nobody ever realises the wide range of songs by Queen, Bon Jovi or ABBA. Or just about any classic rock, come to that.
4. Females singing awful power ballads will be overapplauded dramatically.
5. So will just about anyone else, especially if vaguely in tune or very popular for some separate reason.
6. Nobody ever realises that male-sung pop tends towards the tenor range, and female-sung pop tends towards the alto range. The former is more embarrassing a mistake to make; see also 2.
7. There will always be a song specific to a given venue that is slaughtered on a regular basis. (At this one, it's You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', adopted as a sports team anthem for no adequately explored reason.)
8. The act of analysing karaoke is inherently amusing.

Not five minutes after I finished writing this came about the most impressive challenge to Rule 1 possible. It was only the bloody chamber choir that tried to perform as a collective entity! Their rendition of Summer Nights was bizarre, compelling, and just about distinguishable from disastrous. It was still far worse - I would fervently hope - than any of their properly planned performances. Oh, and the missing link was a certain C. Allinson who nearly tempted me into a classical training pigeonhole that would not have suited me, for he was that good.

Either side of that came my performances. The early song choice was Breakaway, that massively underrated modern classic; didn't perform it as well as I'd like, but nobody in this audience was in any position to care.

Later performance was It's Oh So Quiet. What on earth possessed me of all people to try this? Whatever it was, I'm grateful for it, because it worked exceedingly well. Crawling around the stage, then leaping like a lunatic at the appropriate moments... this was an enjoyable one to properly perform. Not completely sure all the dynamic changes worked, but they were sure fun to play with. Actually, the dynamic changes worked well, but I am not particularly adept at half-singing, half-screaming - something that particular song requires.

Still, great fun. That one's on my list of Songs To Sing Again At Some Point. Next week: possibly Wind Beneath My Wings, along with one other. But tomorrow, another karaoke night at another venue! And with a bigger song list there (I'd hope and expect), that'll lead to some interesting choices...

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Songs to learn and massacre ^H sing.

daweaver
2007-10-26 05:36 pm UTC (link)

1. As n (the number of people on stage) tends to infinity, P (disastrous performance) tends rapidly to 1. Usually, by n=10, P can usefully be approximated to 1.

Yes, P (performance so bad that it makes a Council Estate Slappers album look attractive) ≈ 1- (1/kⁿ), for some constant k, believed to lie somewhere between φ and e. The research should be undertaken by someone we really hate.

3. Nobody ever realises the wide range of songs by Queen, Bon Jovi or ABBA. Or just about any classic rock, come to that.

See comments in another place (and passim, if we're being honest) regarding the difficulty of Abba. Queen made rock opera throughout their career, very difficult to sing. See also: anything that Jim Steinman ever wrote. Including No matter what; readers have already had the opportunity to compare and contrast a professional recording against that of some guys they found down a karaoke bar.

4. Females singing awful power ballads will be overapplauded dramatically.
5. So will just about anyone else, especially if vaguely in tune or very popular for some separate reason.

Could that be because professional singers have such fakery as auto-tune available to them, and karaoke performers generally don't?

It was only the bloody chamber choir that tried to perform as a collective entity! Their rendition of Summer Nights was bizarre, compelling, and just about distinguishable from disastrous.

If they'd rehearsed it, it would have been better.

Later performance was It's Oh So Quiet. What on earth possessed me of all people to try this? Whatever it was, I'm grateful for it, because it worked exceedingly well. Crawling around the stage, then leaping like a lunatic at the appropriate moments... this was an enjoyable one to properly perform. Not completely sure all the dynamic changes worked, but they were sure fun to play with.

Musical theatre, always a good idea. It's a desperate shame that so few show tunes are allowed to perculate into popular culture as it's understood.

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Re: Songs to learn and massacre ^H sing.

sir_quirky_k
2007-10-26 08:55 pm UTC (link)

1. That's probably about right... I love your suggestion.

3. What you said about Queen and the Steinman canon; I had vague memories of Gemma teaching me No Matter What, I then lost those recollections, and it's quite possible that she tried it and it didn't work, so she moved swiftly on. I know this happened with the first two songs I learned, both by Andrew Lloyd-Webber (coincidentally, as mentioned in a prior post, the first two songs our choir has covered were also Lloyd-Webber numbers).

4, 5. Absolutely right.

Regarding the chamber choir, my first thought afterwards was 'this is an advert for rehearsals'. They'd probably agree. Incidentally, I missed a moment later on with the musical theatre group doing precisely the same, to a Spice Girls number (I severely hope it was Spice Up Your Life given the timing, but entirely expect it was Wannabe). For no adequately explored reason (oh, alcohol. That explains anything) one of the techies joined them.

Regarding Bjork and show tunes... yes, there's a bigger place for musical theatre in popular culture than it gets. Defying Gravity has come somewhat close to such perculation in the FARCE, from what I've understood, and that it hasn't here is probably sparing us all from dreadful mangling of Schwartz's huge intervals; can we count the High School Musical music?

Karaoke tonight didn't happen, for in fact a live band was scheduled instead. Hearing them prepare, I knew it would be aural torture listening to them, and so I returned here. To aurally torture myself in another way, trying and failing to write an arrangement to one of my compositions...

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Re: Songs to learn and massacre ^H sing.

daweaver
2007-10-28 11:27 am UTC (link)

I missed a moment later on with the musical theatre group doing precisely the same, to a Spice Girls number

If I were advising the group, I'd go for Say you'll be there; it's a fast number, but with plenty of lengthy notes.

Regarding Bjork and show tunes... yes, there's a bigger place for musical theatre in popular culture than it gets.

Insert rant about the BBC's institutionalised ghettoisation of the form here.

Defying Gravity has come somewhat close to such perculation in the FARCE, from what I've understood, and that it hasn't here is probably sparing us all from dreadful mangling of Schwartz's huge intervals

(Goes off and re-hears the actual song. Makes mental note that this disqualifies him from ever writing on Wakipedia about this topic.)

It's a big song, it's correctly placed immediately before the interval, and in voices less adept than Idina Menzel, it can and does come a cropper. Schwartz suggests that Menzel transposed the final section up a full octave; the reverse transposition may be more palatable. Doesn't help with those jumps - an octave and more, if I read the score correctly.

Not the greatest song from the show, I'm far more impressed with the whimsey of Popular, but better than many.

Can we count the High School Musical music?

Too early to tell; we'll know in about five years if it's had any lasting presence.

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...I've just imagined Mariah singing <i>Defying Gravity</i>... bad thought, go away...

sir_quirky_k
2007-10-28 12:07 pm UTC (link)

The extent to which songs that are particularly difficult to sing - and one must count this as an example - can acquire mass appeal is of course something we've discussed already.

(...oh now that's a good time for my media player to throw Alison Moyet at me. A very very good time.)

the reverse transposition may be more palatable.

I certainly approve of Chris Martin's use of such a downward transposition at the end of Fix You.

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	Re: Songs to learn and massacre ^H sing. jiggery_pokery 2007-10-31 05:10 pm UTC (link)
	Conversely, I am frequently surprised by how widespread showtune knowledge is among a very substantial minority of the more, er, fannish female population I encounter online! Showtune women are out there if you can find them... :-) `jazz hands` (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Songs to learn and massacre ^H sing. sir_quirky_k 2007-10-31 07:42 pm UTC (link)
	Some of that population made my LJ friendslist, back when I was there. That said, this was very much related to the remarkable number of classical singers there; there was substantial though not universal crossover, and some of them were more willing to sing musical theatre than others. (Reply to this)(Parent)