Music, The Baboon Congress

Perfect Pitch

40 Comments

Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

I’m on vacation this week. I’m not doing anything special – just hanging around the house.  A little gardening, a little cooking, a little studio time, a little reading.  OK – a lot of reading.

I’ve gotten a couple of earworms this week, which is way more than usual.  First I got a Beach Boys song stuck for most of a day (Help Me Rhonda) and then yesterday it was The Girl From Ipanema. I don’t remember what started this and I don’t even know the lyrics to this song, but it stuck around all day.   Finally after several hours I started to hum and then eventually, as I was working in my studio, I began to sing the tune out loud.

I can carry a tune. I’m in a choir.  I’ve even sung at the Guthrie (as part of the choir, not on my own).  But when I started to sing, both dogs, who had been snoozing away on the floor near my feet, got up and left the room.

Both of them.

Do you sing the car or the shower?

40 thoughts on “Perfect Pitch”

  1. Not in the shower, but sometimes in the car or around the house. Especially if there is a good “song cue”…and it might embarrass or amuse Darling Daughter. If I’m home and I do it right (?) I can get the dog to sing with me.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

      1. Well, in Europe I was wearing capri pants with socks and Birkenstocks and daughter almost died from embarrassment. She demanded I remove the socks.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  3. I sing in the car. Motown mostly. Lately I’ve been swearing loudly at the radio. Never when there are passengers. In the company of others, I normally save profanity for moments when such language will have the desired impact. But this political season has caused me to vent more frequently than ever before. I must gain control and start singing This Land Is Your Land; This Land Is My Land.

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  4. Never in the shower but do so in the car – especially if the songs are from my high school and college years (late 60s to early 70s). And I often hum along with or play air piano to music on Classical MPR. I wonder what people think when they see me “playing” my steering wheel?

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. Maybe they think it is too hot from the car sitting in the sun and you are wiggling your fingers so they don’t burn.

      Like

      Reply

  6. With my increased pain levels I have trouble finding music even to listen to. Much music I try, my own CD’s itunes, wires me.

    Like

    Reply

  7. Not in the shower, but everywhere else. It seems that there has been a constant, and I mean CONSTANT stream of earworms since the move to Winona. It started out with folk dance tunes from the last night at Tapestry, and has moved on to a myriad of other tunes from my past – and present. I find many of them are things I haven’t perfected – tunes I don’t have all the words to, or folk dances I didn’t know all the steps to. The only way to make them go away is to look up the word and sing along once I know them.

    I suppose there will come a day when I am glad to have these accessible in my head, if I have a condition like Clyde’s where I can’t listen to “outside” music.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. I sing on occasion in car, home — even at work it if seems to be a funny moment. In the car, I enjoy “air conducting” to some classical music on MPR. Love “1812 Overture” for that in particular with all the great stuff going on in the last 5 minutes, and 10 different ‘near endings’ and then several big pointed arm gestures for each cannon boom.

    There’s a good reason why the great classical conductors live such long, wonderful lives. They love what they do, they do it with great passion and all that arm movement is a perfect cardio workout.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  9. Back in 2000 Congressman Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota wrestled with a drunken man in the Capital building. My parody of the event was based on The Girl From Ipanema. Part of the lyric was:
    “The Earl from North Dakota goes wrestling. And as he wrestles, each one he wrestles goes …Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah (painful scream)”

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  10. We don’t have a shower, so no singing there, but just about everyplace else is fair game, including the car. Especially on long trips, we sing along to our “canned” music. But, I’m a hummer mostly, apparently I hum to myself almost constantly and I’m completely unaware of it. Sometimes when I’m grocery shopping, someone will say to me, my you sound happy, thus alerting me to the fact that I do it even in public.

    Some years ago we took a road trip to Wyoming with a couple visiting from Denmark. The four of us singing at the top of our lungs as we’d be driving through vast open spaces. Fun trip, and lots of wonderful memories from it.

    Growing up, my sister and I always did the dishes after dinner. If we weren’t arguing over something, we were singing – LOUD.

    Like

    Reply

  12. There is a woman who has an office near mine who hums and sings when she is annoyed with me and another coworker, and does it to let us know she thinks we are terrible human beings. I don’t hum or sing at work because I don’t want her to think I am trying to get back at her and have sunk to her level. I sometimes sing in the shower on Sunday mornings when I am the cantor at church and I need to warm up before the service. I am a low alto, loud but in tune, and that is about all I can say about my voice

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. In my first office job, I used to drive the woman I shared an office with nuts with my humming. Every so often she’d lose it and say “Shut up, Ms. Pedersen,” and I’d concentrate on not humming for a while. But before long, I’d be back humming again. Just drove her crazy. We got along fine, and I really didn’t do it to bother her, it was simply second nature to me, and apparently still is. I bet she had a party when I left that job.

      Like

      Reply

  13. I love that Stan Getz recording. I can’t think anything better to listen to on a hot and sultry night in the summer.

    Like

    Reply

  14. Related to irritating hummers: I used to work with three women who finished your sentences with you. Two of them were boss and secretary in same office space. You think they would have either 1) learned how irritating it is or 2) killed each other.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  15. I am good at singing and don’t sing very much any place. I have been doing a little more singing lately because singing, even my less that wonderful singing, is welcomed by my 9 month old grandson.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. I sing every chance I get. Not so much in the shower as I usually have the news on in the bathroom. I have no embarrassment about singing along with music piped into stores.
    My mother used to claim that I would hum when something was bothering me.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  17. I have a cat who is strangely fascinated when I sing. I have two tunes I sing especially for her – one is “Baby Mine”, the song from the Disney movie Dumbo, and the other is “Brown-Eyed Girl” revised to “Green-Eyed Girl” because her eyes are green, of course. She will launch all 14 pounds of her ample bulk into my lap when I sing either of those, in spite of the fact that I can’t carry a tune at all.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  18. i have taken to singing whatever comes into my head. often these days i have a little recorder on my phone in case i ever want to plug these wonderful ditties into my broadway musical in the works. i do sig in the shower in the car and in stairwells. i notice that stairwels all have the best ccoustics there is and are usually empty. a song will no doubt jump into my brain upon entering a stairwell and come out with the nashville reverb ala capitol records. me and frank. hey that sounds like the name of a tune

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.