What are you really bad at?

[thetyreman]

I am not good at chess or card games

 

[Nelsun]

Avoiding confrontation. But I do know the best way to sharpen, isn't freehand.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've got to disagree with this. Anybody can make the noise that singers make

Oh, you sad, sad person. I feel for you ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYt2HlBuyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5SlUmCdXf0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ8bwd0EQGU


(try watching and listening to Garrifullina or Janeckova without falling in love all over again )

 

[u38cg]

No, no. Really, I can't sing. My best buddy (the guy I caught corona virus from) is a professional concert singer (baritone) and a teacher at a couple of the UK's top musical colleges

These people are the absolute worst to get information on the fundamentals of singing from because they've never in their lives had to deal with anyone who can't pitch. They have no idea how to teach it. (There's also the social side of it, which is another issue entirely...)

when I joined a new school in the 2nd year of junior school by my music teacher, Mrs Dawkins, the wizened old crone, that I couldn't sing and to go to the back of the class and play the triangle instead. I never did get over the embarrassment and still never sing in public.

Same. I didn't learn to pitch and audiate until I was in my twenties and it's still by far the worst aspect of my musicianship, but it's been transformative for my abilities.

After that my violin teacher told me I am tone deaf and it would be better for all concerned if I stopped my lessons at that point. So I quit while I was ahead. I regret that now, but I am still tone deaf so I am sure the neighbours benefited.

Again, a teacher unable to teach a fundamental skill blaming the student. But saying you're tone deaf is like someone who doesn't know the symbols 0 to 9 saying they can't do maths. Not right now, you need some tools. But ignorance isn't the same as inability.

Anybody can make the noise that singers make (I can even make the horrible noise that opera singers make) but the point is getting the right notes.

Other way round. Singing opera is awesomely difficult and requires control of muscles you don't know you have. Audiation is fairly straightforward to train.

I suspect that there are intermediate levels between pitch perfect and tone deaf.

In the same way there is a spectrum between couch potatoes and marathon runners. And it's true that some people have to work harder to make progress, as with everything else in life. But the biggest predictor of improvement is wanting to. And it's fine not to want to, of course, but that's not the same thing as "can't".

 

[rafezetter]

Acquiring the nerve to post photo's of stuff I've made on this forum for fear of being thought of as incompetent.

Don't be, a few years back I remember a post where a members posted pictures of "his first mortice and tenon" and most people were encouraging (although he did get one reply asking if he had cut the tenon with his teeth! - ouch.)

we all start somewhere - but yes some people are really showing off !

 

[Andy Kev.]

I've got to disagree with this. Anybody can make the noise that singers make

Oh, you sad, sad person. I feel for you ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYt2HlBuyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5SlUmCdXf0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ8bwd0EQGU


(try watching and listening to Garrifullina or Janeckova without falling in love all over again )

I do appreciate your sympathy. :mrgreen:

And if I'm being terribly serious, yes I can hack the very occasional operatic melody (I found Paul Potts' (have I got his name right?) performance on that ghastly "talent" show to be quite moving) but for me there is too much tuneless, horrible sounding rubbish in opera. Think of Wagner or Richard (?) Strauss and shudder. Even the melodically divine Mozart can lose it completely in an opera. Look at Beethoven: what a lad when it comes to symphonies! Fidelio? Now where did I put Keith Richards' last solo album (and Keith ain't a great warbler).

Try this little experiment: In your best baritone go "Bwa hahaha haha hee" (the notes don't matter too much). Now repeat in your best soprano. And there you have it: the entire operatic experience in about ten seconds and you've saved yourself forty quid on a ticket. You can get change from buying a chisel for that.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I've got to disagree with this. Anybody can make the noise that singers make

Oh, you sad, sad person. I feel for you ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYt2HlBuyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5SlUmCdXf0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ8bwd0EQGU


(try watching and listening to Garrifullina or Janeckova without falling in love all over again )

I do appreciate your sympathy. :mrgreen:

And if I'm being terribly serious, yes I can hack the very occasional operatic melody (I found Paul Potts' (have I got his name right?) performance on that ghastly "talent" show to be quite moving) but for me there is too much tuneless, horrible sounding rubbish in opera. Think of Wagner or Richard (?) Strauss and shudder. Even the melodically divine Mozart can lose it completely in an opera. Look at Beethoven: what a lad when it comes to symphonies! Fidelio? Now where did I put Keith Richards' last solo album (and Keith ain't a great warbler).

Try this little experiment: In your best baritone go "Bwa hahaha haha hee" (the notes don't matter too much). Now repeat in your best soprano. And there you have it: the entire operatic experience in about ten seconds and you've saved yourself forty quid on a ticket. You can get change from buying a chisel for that.

Opera is a bizarre artform designed to show the other aristocrats how much money you can spend on supporting opera - conspicuous consumption for the 1700s. The French had their chamber music, so the Germans one-upped them with Germanic vorsprung durch technik, and the Italians took the Micheal, as only Italians can.

I like Italian opera, because it is silly. Can't abide all that gotterdammerung nonsense. The real test for any music is "does it conjure an emotion?", but depression, revulsion and teedium aren't the ones we are necessarily looking for. A bit like jazz, or prog rock, its main purpose is for the initiated to impress each other, more than to be a musical experience in and of itself (and I am a bit of a prog-rock aficianado, but only if it's not dull).

The above is probably contentious, and not meant to be a criticism of people's choice of listening pleasure - "if everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other". Takes all sorts, and all that.

 

[MikeG.]

I've got another one: swimming.

I mean, it's not in the singing category, which would be the equivalent of diving in and drowning instantly, but the combination of a high density, dodgy shoulders, and and extremely inefficient technique mean I'm exhausted after a hundred metres or so. If it wasn't for the swimming I'd have made a decent triathlete!

 

[sawdust1]

Living with my other half, i've had 32 years practice but still can't get it right !

 

[Andy Kev.]

[
Opera is a bizarre artform designed to show the other aristocrats how much money you can spend on supporting opera - conspicuous consumption for the 1700s. The French had their chamber music, so the Germans one-upped them with Germanic vorsprung durch technik, and the Italians took the Micheal, as only Italians can.

I like Italian opera, because it is silly. Can't abide all that gotterdammerung nonsense. The real test for any music is "does it conjure an emotion?", but depression, revulsion and teedium aren't the ones we are necessarily looking for. A bit like jazz, or prog rock, its main purpose is for the initiated to impress each other, more than to be a musical experience in and of itself (and I am a bit of a prog-rock aficianado, but only if it's not dull).

The above is probably contentious, and not meant to be a criticism of people's choice of listening pleasure - "if everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other". Takes all sorts, and all that.

I once read opera being described as the "highest form of camp". I think there's something in that and it might also be traceable to the aristocracy you mention. One has only to think of the utter absurdity of Louis XIV (the Sun King is the one I mean: not sure if the XIV is correct). Your theory might also explain why some Italian opera tunes are hummable.

There's an odd thing about Wagner though. The late Anthony Burgess wrote that "instrumental music is the most abstract of all the arts". A moment's thought inevitably leads to the conclusion that he was absolutely right. How could we guess what The Four Seasons is about without the title? And apart from the cuckoo, what is inherently pastoral about Beethoven's Pastorale symphony. The reason I mention this is that I quite like some operatic overtures (I have a CD of all Mozart's overtures) and one night the radio presenter announced that the next track would be one of Wagner's overtures. So I thought, "Oh, I'll give this a listen because it might be as good as one of Wolfgang's". About two and a half minutes in I was laughing at it as being silly beyond parody. In fact it sounded like a self-parody or something that was spiritually on a par with the Laurel and Hardy theme. Now how on earth can you get that reaction to a piece of instrumental music?

As for prog rock: I would defy anybody to dislike ELP's Trilogy and there was some stuff classified as prog which IMO wasn't e.g. The Land Of Grey And Pink by Caravan. As for jazz, yes there's some nonsense which vanishes up its own rectum but a good starting point for anybody interested (and who likes the blues) would be Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell. The furthest out I can go is Thelonius Monk but on the whole I reckon that there is something in jazz for everybody unlike bl**dy opera.

 

[Andy Kev.]

I've got another one: swimming.

I mean, it's not in the singing category, which would be the equivalent of diving in and drowning instantly, but the combination of a high density, dodgy shoulders, and and extremely inefficient technique mean I'm exhausted after a hundred metres or so. If it wasn't for the swimming I'd have made a decent triathlete!

I was utterly c**p at the high jump at school. I reckon it was a coordination thing.

And my worst ever school subject was technical drawing. We only had it in the first year as it was thereafter an option. The teacher, who recognised my complete inability, gave me 20% in the first exam we had, "because it's Christmas".

 

[MikeG.]

Interesting as the music stuff is, this is a thread about what we're bad at. I think one or two have demonstrated that they're not bad at musical critique (although unforgivably we've had no mention of Pink Floyd). Threads wander around, but if this one just became a dissection of opera it would quickly die.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

It would seem that I am really bad at staying on topic.

 

[owen]

I've got another one: swimming.

I mean, it's not in the singing category, which would be the equivalent of diving in and drowning instantly, but the combination of a high density, dodgy shoulders, and and extremely inefficient technique mean I'm exhausted after a hundred metres or so. If it wasn't for the swimming I'd have made a decent triathlete!

I'm just as bad, my swimming instructor when I was a kid told my mam I must have really heavy bones because I naturally sink and most people float :lol: I do love swimming on holiday though but that's not swimming lengths

 

[Alder]

Whilst some have deemed "the music stuff " off topic i cannot resist mentioning the Morecombe and Wise TV sketch with Andre Previn.
Eric Morecombe's line about playing all the right notes on the piano, but not necessary in the right order.
Russell

 

[Alder]

Posting to the correct thread. See new "Musically beyond the pale" thread.
Alder

 

[Garno]

I'm really bad at writing posts and starting threads that people actually like or find humerous :shock: