The promised Next Post: singing, songwriting and self-reliance
Saturday night, Avenue St Andrew's Church. Looks like a new build, or at least a recent renovation; there's a glass-door frontage with a light concrete asymmetric arch over it, and there is a blue neon-lit sign outside with the name of the church in Verdana.

Dressed in black, and fresh from literally running half the way after my radio show, I'm ready for the runthrough of the first choral performance of any pretense of professionalism I've ever been involved in, and my first remotely formal group performance of any sort since my voice broke. (I can't say 'ever', for I was part of a formal-ish choir in primary school. Once. And everyone sang in unison and I'm not sure we weren't all conscripted to join and memories are hazy apart from the pianist.)

Went through all the pieces, at least briefly; got to hear all the solo and small group numbers for the first time. NI and three others performing Flying Free made me cry. One look at the title should explain all. (We'll come back to that theme in a moment or two.)

Ordinary performance anxiety at this point was only mild and mostly positive. Far more pressing was the suggestion, which was being considered for some time before being abandoned not long before we started, that there would be an organ accompaniment for three carols that we would lead a sing-along of (that bit being a surprise sprung on us at the start of the runthrough). The organ pipes couldn't have been more than 6m from my spot right at the back near the middle, facilitating part-swapping and a possible quick exit if it got too much - and believe me, if the organ was in use, it would have been way too much, even though my earplugs were in (and remained so throughout the runthrough and performance, a full three-and-a-bit hours).

Apart from a couple of mistakes that weren't that obvious, I did tolerably well, the part-swapping proving excellent (it may have helped that all the pieces for which I was singing tenor were in the second half, but then again it may not), and we gained a warm reception, and I was most pleased.

This is the kind of experience that university can provide without you knowing it. Would I have had any kind of opportunity like that in Weymouth? Choral singing, possibly; backstage lighting and radio DJing, unquestionably not.

And this choir is most interesting too. It's entirely unauditioned, and so informal that you have a couple of people who can't read music in it; conversely there are some for whom singing's a genuine career aspiration, such as NI.

Something was missing though, and it was the piece I wrote but couldn't arrange. That, more than anything else, is probably the genesis for wanting composition lessons in lieu of vocal tuition; however, I've not given up on my plans yet. One of the soprani suggested at last week's rehearsal that I write a small group acapella piece, and I intend to take her up on that; additionally, I'm intending to write a solo for NI, which is a source of great mutual excitement. (Must admit, from what I thought I knew about her vocally, I thought her range was much bigger than the Ab3-A5 she quoted at me... granted, she's warmed up to at least C6 before, but wouldn't want to use that in performance.) Met EM on the way out, she pointed me at a text on counterpoint by Fux (prounciation: Foox) and suggested that a lot of arrangement is just a case of following rules. If it is, and I can learn them, that's greatly reassuring.

Perhaps, above all, I am a control freak on some mild level. It's about the closest I can get to reconciling the positions of individualism and authoritarianism that brews inside me... having everything in a way that I consider orderly and comfortable is of paramount importance to me, and both paranoid parenting and insufficiently disciplinarian teaching can threaten that.