Learning to Sing

I love music. Brice Springsteen to Beethoven and Amazing Grace to Living on a Prayer. Music is special, music is a gift, and music adds something special to words. I love the way music and songs capture feelings. They can lift your spirits and let you soar, they can bring tears to your eyes and pain to your heart. They wind themselves around your memories so much that a song you haven't heard for thirty years can take you straight back to the moment you heard it. Songs bind people together, couples have songs, countries have songs. We sing songs of love, songs of worship. Music can be happy and sad, funny and inspiring it can even be educational. I love music, but I can't sing or play a note. Which is a problem as this year I have to sing the Exultet, a 10 minute plain song, singing the praises of the Easter Candle.

So I have to learn to sing, which means practice and some very frustrating hours for my teachers. I have been amazed at how I can't hear differences in notes that they can. I'm flat here or sharp there. It all sounds the same to me. Then we go right back to basics, just like they did in The Sound Of Music, and I started practising scales. Do, Ray, Me, Fa, So, La, Te. Only five notes to start with, C to G. I downloaded a piano app for the phone and a frequency analyser for the iPad. When I played the notes on the piano I could see them appear on the iPad as lines, then all I had to do was copy them with my voice. An hour later I could copy the 5 notes, two days later I can manager 7 notes. I need nine for the Exultet, I have 2 months I'll get there.

I have practised every night this week, and I can feel my voice getting stronger. I can almost hear the difference between a good note and the normal bad ones. I am having fun and like a small child I love the surprised looks on the faces of those around me when I get things right and improve. Learning something new, learning something as wonderful as singing is a joy and a privilege. I don't think I will ever be a great musician or even an average one, but God has given me a voice, he's given me a love of music, and he's asked me to sing for him. Lucky me!

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