The Karaoke Report, and other stuff
(I'm going to have to re-tag everything at this rate...)

Non-singing stuff out the way first.

I haven't yet told Aunt Maureen about my vegetarianism, and I shouldn't have been so slow; Mark (my brother) came to visit me after visiting her, and came bearing gifts from Maureen; food, some of it turkey. I shall make this the last meat I eat in some time, and will confirm my decision in February, acting as though I'd made the decision only then.

Still, at least she didn't *know*. Mum knows about my Nestlé boycott and yet still gave me After Eights to take back with me... almost ashamed to reject them (minty chocolate *is* gorgeous, anyway), I went with it, and made *that* the last Babykiller Chocolate I am likely to eat in a *very* long time.

Mark arrived for lunch, and a vegetarian lunch eating out was quite possible, thanks to my suggestion of Bella Italia for pizza. Lawks, Soton is so much nastier by car than on foot, I misjudged car parking directions, and ended up getting a car park at the rate of (lawks!) 70p per 15 minutes. Yes. Now, if all car parking was that expensive, *that* be a superb incentive to use public transport...

(For reference; a return bus ticket would have cost £2 for Mark, and nothing for me on the grounds of having a bus pass as part of my university accommodation fees. This £2 fee is a flat one for any part of Uni-link's network, which covers the student quarter of Southampton (read; a narrow arc north of the city centre, roughly bounded by the A33 and the Itchen); I cannot speak for the LastGroup and BlueLine companies who also operate in the city.)



Karaoke Thursday at the Stags' Head SU pub. After missing last week's in the assumption it wouldn't happen (the machine was fixed and got used later on), I made up for it this week. Wearing both my high-vis fleece but matching trousers to boot, I had half a plan for the night. I knew I wanted to sing It's Oh So Quiet, and that I wanted to do it after Showstoppers arrived back from their Fame auditions and/or their Mennyms auditions (second night tonight); I knew I wanted to do one other song that really suited me (read: I'm With You), again after that; anything else was up in the air.

First up was Immortality, and boy did I ever butcher it, not finding the right key for four lines, and never properly recovering. Still went down well. Second up, one I planned for Old Fat Cat, but old enough to be on this playlist (dated November 2005!), Misfit. This didn't go brilliantly either, for the terribly Quirky (capitalisation intended) reason that I was standing in a position such that reading the screens for the lyrics (only required a couple of times, mind) involved looking practically right at some stage lighting. Oh. That'd be why I messed up a line or two.

'That's my messups out the way', I thought to myself while considering a third song. 'I'm going to be a lot better later.' Not long after that, Lyndsay arrives. No pressure. Still, at least this time I don't have singing the 'wrong way' to worry about. I'm With You was chosen, I sung it, sung it well, and got a good reaction. Didn't get to speak to Lyndsay. Did get to speak to a few other people.

Then came It's Oh So Quiet. Not as good as I wish it was given that Lyndsay was there, but nor was it bad. Indeed, in most respects it was very good, but I made the fatal error of getting a tiny bit tongue-tied at one point. Until then it was so good... and by doing a virtual parody of a striptease (removing my coat in the first chorus, my hi-vis fleece in the second, then just removing a couple of buttons from my shirt near the end) I got the crowd going.

Then I got talking to some more people, and this is where things get really interesting. Since the last mention of NI, I have discovered she is having to have her tonsils removed, the operation set for early February. This'll stop her from singing altogether for maybe a fortnight (ruling her out of LOpSoc's production of The Beggar's Opera, where she was set to play the role of Jenny Diver), and the professionals in the music department reckon she won't be at her best for three months. The choral concert is pencilled in for late April, so she will probably be ready by then even if sub-optimal, but she is worried she won't be. Which led me to consider who in our choir could replace her adequately.

Immediate thought: another music student, to now be known as CE. I essentially thought 'she's in our choir, she's a soprano, she's done musical theatre, she's probably similar'. In fact, CE sings alto for us, but quotes her highest note as Bb5 'or C6', and her lowest as F3.

Of course, if I'd told you that she's sung No One Mourns The Wicked in the Showstoppers Winter Revue that would have illustrated the same point in one fact.

And yet... CE was most flattered to be mentioned as a suitable alternative to NI, and very quickly accepted the idea of being involved. She went further, clearly keen, and suggested that perhaps I write some kind of duet for both of them. Possible, very possible; whether this'd leave a suitable solo in the worst instance isn't clear. (It'd require writing a single melody that simply swaps between vocalists, rather than any instance of both vocalists together. Compare and contrast; As Long As You're Mine, For Good.) While I was digesting that, I thought to ask if she could be one of the vocalists for the a capella piece I'm writing; again she said yes, and she will certainly have an alto line. Whether a second alto, one with lower notes than CE's F3, is valuable or not is something I have to decide for myself, or possibly be forced into deciding by availability or lack thereof; but with three vocalists in place (the other two being soprani), there's a chance we can get going on that one now.

And then came the particularly inspired idea. Leave NI's piece as a solo, one that CE can step into and perhaps modify if required, and then write a duet for CE and me. Now that would be one hell of an experience. Only thought of that as I left, and I don't think I told CE... but she'll hear about it on Sunday alright.

Before all that, something that if anything was even better. I got to speak to Lyndsay properly! On musical theatre pieces being disproportionately for tenor and alto: yes, that does happen, it is there for purposes of diction, but key-changing can and does occur, it's just that (fairly obviously) the songbooks are in the original key. On my audition: yes, I really did hit G4, no, it probably wasn't breaking into falsetto, in all honesty it was probably just plain being pushed in a way I might not do to myself otherwise. (Recall also that Chris coaxed a usable E4 and a not-really-usable F4 out of me in October, and I certainly doubted either.) And I quote again: Is that, perhaps, something to be generalised beyond the production of high notes, and into altogether different pursuits?

Oh, and (not-unrelatedly) I finished with the deceptively easy My Heart Will Go On, ranted to a couple of people about how people think it's much higher than it is because Céline screeches at not terribly high notes, and then eventually left.

Way too much to think about. Especially with exams impending. Although, after overcoming my fear in auditioning, exams suddenly seem almost painless. That may actually have made the audition worth it in its own right...