Having been ploughing my way through the manners thread, I decided to take myself in hand, and make sure I learned more of my repertoire - firstly, I'd been trying not to repeat myself too often, secondly, to fit in with whatever seemed to be the theme or themes of the evening, and thirdly, not to sing something others had been singing. This, and the discovery that I had a bit of a way with the odd parody, so I have been singing "this new thing I wrote" rather a lot, has meant that I have been having the words available in front of me. Not on paper, but a PDA, for which I have been teased as looking as if I were going to make out a parking ticket.

So I recorded myself singing the words, not particularly well, burned a CD, and started playing it in the car. In repeating the songs to burn the words into my brain, I have discovered that I have not held the key I started in for some songs, but gone up a bit. Not far, but noticable. Possibly a whole tone. I always sing unaccompanied, anyway - haven't the skill to dare to go anywhere public with a guitar, and don't have anyone to practice with. I do hold the key when I do have an instrument around. People have made nice remarks about my voice, too (though I think the comparison with Judith Durham was a bit OTT and unrealistic), so it was a bit of a shock to find the wandering going on. Especially as I couldn't hear where it was happening. (There is one song where I know exactly where the problem is, so I don't sing it. It isn't that I'm tone deaf, exactly.)

What can I do? Some songs I can practice with recordings of proper singers, and hope that I can imprint the tune like the words. The ones that are problems do seem to be those where I have learned them from the dots, or from a very long time ago, so don't have a current audio source.

Practicing at home with the keyboard is a bit of a problem as there is a shift worker downstairs.

Penny