> From: Barbara
>
> I have a friend who can't carry a tune in a bucket, but loves to sing. What he does is fascinating. Every time he misses the correct pitch, he resets to that key. Two notes later he misses again and the key shifts once more.
Is that common, do you suppose?

Probably something similar happens to many people who can't hold to a tune.

> And this other thing, about myself. I love to sing harmony, and sometimes I am right on, sometimes not. What I have learned about myself over the years is that if I can hear the note I am singing internally, I am on pitch. If I can't hear it, I'm off. Anyone else have that experience?

That ties in pretty well with my own experience, as described above. If I can hear internally, 'auralise', what I want to sing fractionally before I need to sing it, I can sing almost anything, if not, I can't. What drew this general finding to my notice was the particular problem of getting the correct starting note to sing unaccompanied. I discovered that if I always sang a song from the same starting note, chosen so the song sat comfortably within my vocal range, I'd 'learn' the sound of it. Thereafter, as long as I wasn't beset by nerves or anything like that, I could auralise it, and wouldn't need to take a note from an instrument. It was almost as though I'd taught myself a limited form of perfect pitch.