This is good feed back and encouraging for the "Tone Deaf". My dad and his brothers would win talent competitions back in the 30's. My grandfather had the most beatiful tenor voice you'd ever want to hear. My dad also taught himself the guitar, mandolin, harmonica and even the piano. Actually he said that he had some piano lessons but he didn't have a piano at the time. His teacher drew the keys on a paper roll and they would sing the right notes! His family was quite poor duing the depression. My son plays the guitar wonderfully and my daughter the piano. Mom can sing in tune most of the time. Me? Well I have to work at it. I have a low voice and a narrow range. As I said in the original post I have some conductive hearing loss in my right ear which some day will be total but that wasn't always the case. It happened when I was 27. My problem in choral singing is that I get pulled off the harmony by other voices and I always tend toward the melody. If I'm not thinking about it I can hit THE bass line or A bass line, no problem but if I'm trying to learn a bass line while everyone else is doing their thing, AAAAck! My family has the talent in spades. I'm clubbing it!