Living in Great Music! Again!

I know, I know, how much music do I need to be happy?

All of it! Every note, every bar, every sung word.

Well, no, that is not accurate, either. There is plenty of music I intensely dislike. But not much of it. Soundtracks, rock, bagpipes, Scottish music, Irish music, hard rock, punk, alternative, some mild rap (very little, admittedly, but I do very much enjoy Wonderful Tonight (Featuring Lateef) by Fatboy Slim), one country song, The Devil Came Down to Georgia, classical, some opera, Big Band (40s music), 50s music, 60s music, NO disco - absolutely not, 80s, 90s, most recent music, but no bubble-gum pop. This includes Britney Spears, Lady GaGa, a whole host of unsavory music makers that really - it turns out - aren't making music!

That's right. Think you are listening to a wondrous new artist with the posed moves and a whole huge backup group? The answer is not a unanimous yes any longer. Thanks to a heinous device called Auto-tune, you too can sound like a rock star even if you can't sing Note One. This device should be burned in effigy. There is nothing worse than false advertising in art. It's one thing to gripe about someone singing the National Anthem in 50 degree weather during the Inauguration - there are a lot of reasons for the artist to lip-sync, not sing, the lyrics. Who cares? Anyone who has seen her in concert knows she can sing.

But giving voice to the non-singing voiced? I can't sing either. I accept that I have no aptitude nor a pleasant singing voice and that is fine. It doesn't bother me in the least. I don't sing in front of others; I sing/howl in my car, my house, my head, the shower, always with the music. My timing is good, I can hold most notes, although I try not sing out of my range (I have a naturally low voice), trying to hit high notes (I definitely cannot do what Kate Bush can - she can sing a multitude of ranges. But I don't expect to be something I'm not. I've had accept various changes of fortune in my professional life, until I found what I loved and was - to a large degree - good at. It was fine, too. We don't all have the fortune to have jobs we love or have aspired to all our lives.

I was going to be an astronomer. but I couldn't do simple math - forget the kind of higher math a scientist has to do. That cut out all the sciences, to be honest, and left creativity. But I went through a phase trying to live on art and that killed the talent - I very rarely draw at all now. None of that. It was a while before I found Human Resources.

What's missing from the list? Singing! I have no singing voice, at least one that could be cultivated into something that would provide something in the way of a vocation. It has never bothered me.

But to sully music with an Auto-tune? No, that is just so WRONG.