I sing all the time, you can't stop me, though I try to keep it down at work. The current songs that I tend to be belting out at any given opportunity are Randy Newman's "Feels Like Home", and "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens, though "I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha!" is often to be heard and all.

Do you sing?

-- Kymm (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), July 03, 2000

Answers

I'm tone deaf, but that doesn't stop me. I sing incessantly when I'm alone. Particularly in the car and in bed.

Show tunes and folk songs top my list, because the words are always easier to remember. My most oft sung melodies are "What a Piece of Work is Man" from Hair, and the folk-favorites "Lemon Tree" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane."

There was a time when "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret and Simon and Garfunkle's "Homeward Bound" headed up that list, but I can't remember all the words anymore. I'm getting old.

-- Jackie (jackie@jackie.nu), July 03, 2000.

"...my destiny calls, and I go! And the wild winds of fortune shall carry me onwards, oh whithersoever they blow! Whithersoever they blow.... onwards to glory I go!"

Umm, sorry, but I had no choice. After reading the first line of that in the question, I was compelled to keep going. Consider yourself lucky that you couldn't hear me actually singing it.

Which, I suppose, is as good an answer as any. I get set off by random phrases and stuff all the time.

-- (shmuel@nycmail.com), July 03, 2000.

Oops. Forgot to include my name on the last post, so intent was I on getting the rest of the song out of my system. Although I suppose the e-mail address is a dead giveaway.

-- Shmuel (shmuel@nycmail.com), July 03, 2000.

Of course I sing... not well mind you, however it is part of my job. If the kids weren't afraid they might get in trouble I am sure they would all scamper out of their lil squares and grab ear plugs.

-- Alice (Alice@diarist.net), July 03, 2000.

I sing when I'm driving, but only about a half-dozen songs (mostly pirate transvestite songs), which are the ones I know without the music. At home, I'll sing along to some Pink Floyd and EDLOS songs, Deep Purple, Yes, and Sting/The Police. I've been told I have a good voice, by some people with fantastic voices.

-- Colin (ethilrist@prodigy.net), July 03, 2000.

You can't stop me from singing. If I know the words, I sing along. I'm given to fits of bursting into song at any time. Everything from show tunes, to pop tunes, and all the good stuff in between. My friends and I haunt Fells Point with music when we go. Our production usually starts with show tunes and standards like Amazing Grace, we have a handful of sea shanties, and we usually finish the night with the American and Canadian national anthems. And sometimes, we're even in TUNE!

-- Saundra (headspace@anywherebeyond.com), July 03, 2000.

I'm also set off by random phrases. It's frightening how nearly everything can get me to singing. I say that it's because of all the musicals I've worked on, and that as a result the world is my song cue, but I don't think that's the entire truth.

It's all my parents' fault, actually. They named me Carol, which means music or joyful sound in Old French. If you hear me singing to a non-existant band, just blame it on my folks.

For some reason, I can't get "It's Raining Men" out of my head right now. If only I hadn't seen that snippet from "Scary Movie" yesterday!

-- Carol (webgal@ordinarygoddess.com), July 03, 2000.

I hardly ever sing in front of anyone else, because I have a horrid voice and can't sing worth a damn. A few weeks ago, as I was driving from Alabama to Pennsylvania, my 11 year-old and I were listening to an old cd, and Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" came on, and before I could help myself, I was belting it out at the top of my lungs.

My daughter thought it was hilarious.

"Sometimes it's harrrrd to be a WOMuhn..."

-- Robyn (robyn@hiwaay.net), July 03, 2000.

Gods, yes.

It says in my factoids section over at AaL that "I miss singing". I really do.

Sang in many an Anglican choir. Was in a semi-professional a cappella chamber choir for three seasons... only quit because I couldn't commit to the rehearsal schedule, when my freelance work got weirder hours.

Most-missed was the couple of years spent training with my vocal coach. She wanted me to train for opera.

I still wonder what it could have been like.

Now, I just sing around the house, with nobody but my beau as occasional audience. I miss Mozart, and Bach, and the renaissance ballads, and I miss really intricate mass settings, and fiendishly complex but satisfying Britten and Taverner pieces, and I miss learning songs in a bazillion different languages. Sometimes I wonder if, looking at music on a page, if my throat would still know exactly what that written note was supposed to sound like.

Yes, I miss singing.

-- Cameron (cameron@cimtegration.com), July 03, 2000.

Do I sing?! At the drop of a hat! I'm particularly fond of "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Auld Lang Syne," hymns if the late Victorian era of "muscular Christianity," and of course the American songbook as written by Gershwin, Porter, Kern, etc.

I take John Wesley's "Instructions for Singing Hymns" rather serious when he says "Sing lustily. Be not afraid of your own voice, or of its being heard, as when you sung the songs of Satan." I didn't pay any attention to the part about "Sing modestly" though, to my detriment.

/Robert

-- Robert (rbdimmick@earthlink.net), July 04, 2000.

Yes yes yes yes!

When I'm not singing out loud, I'm singing in my head. I'm the one you pass in the car on the freeway who's wildly belting out whatever's on the radio -- assuming the radio's even on. I was in choir from seventh grade on, and I sang in every school group that'd let me in. I sang with a church choir, and took voice lessons for a total of about 7 years in both high school and college.

Once in college, I was, again, in whatever choirs they'd let me in. By the end of my freshman year, I'd decided to major in Music Education -- which was, in all honesty, the longest-lasting of my many many majors.

After I left college and got divorced, I stumbled into the SCA, and spent a lot of time singing with madrigal groups. I haven't had a group to sing with in about three years, and it's starting to bug me.

What do I sing? Everything. Anything. If I'm not singing along to the radio, I'll sing snippets of old choral works I've learned, hymns, spirituals, showtunes, standards, madrigals, folk, filk, country, rock, whatever comes to mind. I was even mad enough to put a couple little Real Audio files of me singing whichever song was stuck in my head at the time.

Most recently, I've been singing bits of things from "Rent", "The Pirates of Penzance" and some songs from a country artist named Kathy Mattea.

-- Lisa (lisa@selkie.net), July 04, 2000.

I'm the worst singer on Earth, I think. Jamie's the only one who EVER liked my singing.---Al of NOVA NOTES.

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), July 04, 2000.

I only sing in the car, but I do the Karaoke thing and sing along with whatever is playing on the CD player. I know every word and every inflection in Steve Schalchlin's new CD so that I could do it in my sleep. I'm also very good with Gilbert & Sullivan and a lot of show music. I could do Judy Garland, but wouldn't dare attempt it. (the line must be drawn somewhere, you know)

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), July 04, 2000.

I sing a lot -- in the car and at home. I'm almost always singing in my head.

I miss organized singing. I sang in the choir at school and in college and in various madrigal groups. I'm sure there are opportunities around, but I've never investigated them.

I could always go back to church, I guess...

-- Laura (windmills@diaryland.com), July 05, 2000.

I sing freely in private, not so freely in public.

I'll sing just about anything that's in my head, usually something that I've heard recently. And I change the words wherever possible to make them more applicable to my own life. My cat's name figures prominently in many commercial jingles!

Currently I'm singing "I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me".

-- Catherine (catcoicrit@earthlink.net), July 05, 2000.

I miss choir singing alot, and keep meaning to find a new one to join. There s that great church downtown that I discovered last year, but it's one of those liberable churches that don't kneel enough. The music choice was good, though, and I heard that they have a good choir. Maybe I'll check them out this Sunday, as choir singing is so joyful that it's a shame that I haven't done it for ten years.

-- Kymm (kymmz1@yahoo.com), July 05, 2000.

i was recently asked to be in a karaoke contest ina country bar so I set about learning Faith Hill, Dixie Chicks and Shania, and darn if they aren't the funnest twangs to sing. My new goal is to sing Carmina Burana with a choir (not Karaoke). you can even get the lyrics and what they mean...online. deep stuff.

-- Carolyn (tango@stratos.net), July 05, 2000.

Sometimes, to pass the time on long bus rides or drives, I'll see how much of "You Got Trouble in River City" I can remember.Usually all of it. [It helps me cultivate horse sense, and a cool head, and a keen eye].

-- Joy Rothke (jrothke@earthlink.net), July 06, 2000.

Carmina Burana is deep stuff? I thought it was all about the "joys of spring". Fnah fnah.

-- smallkat (smallkat@hotmail.com), July 06, 2000.

I sing, but usually it's my alternative, obscene lyrics to popular songs. Sometimes I don't even realise I'm singing, and then my husband will point it out to me and I'm like, 'What? I wasn't singing.' I'm mad, me.

The current song he and I both keep singing is Yellow by Coldplay. It's a great song for singing, lots of good, high notes.

-- Jackie Danicki (nein@freeuk.com), July 06, 2000.

I thought Carmina Burana was about lusty monks and wishful thinking!

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), July 06, 2000.

And I thought Carmina Burana was about a swan being slowly roasted or something!

Damn, but those French ice dancers looked incredibly hot skating to it- Annasina and Peyzerat? I could even forgive them those fluttery-artistic raggy costumes...

-- Cameron (cameron@cimtegration.com), July 06, 2000.

Yeah! I love to sing. I sing along to songs on the radio in the car. I hum along with my portable at work.

I randomly sing bits and piece from choir tunes I've performed with various choirs over the course of my life.

I've also been known to break into sudden renditions of "Domine Fili Unigenite" from Vivaldi's "Gloria". One of my favorite pieces of choral work that I've ever heard.

-- Beth K. (owl@littleowl.com), July 07, 2000.

Help! The song "Grandma got ran over by a Reindeer" has been stuck in my head for three years!

-- Poppy (ithesky@aol.com), July 27, 2000.

I sing constantly. I actually have been in chorus since 7th grade which is currently 5 years ago. I am a senior in high school yes and have been in the top choirs since I have been bale to be in chorus. I took voice lessons for 2 years but that trainging wans't necessary for me. I Love what I do and I do it all the time!

-- Casey (Caseygrl17@aol.com), October 30, 2000.