So I sez to myself...

Call it eavesdropping, call it being nosey or just being there when it occurred. I happened to hear this conversation the other day. The voice was familiar. Then I realized, it was me talking to me! Listen in, as I share with you what I "overheard."

So you love barbershop music and you want to sing well?

Maybe you should have listened to your father when you were young. You remember - that was when he urged you to take up an instrument and learn to read music. Maybe now you wouldn't have to rely on others to read your music and make tapes from which you can learn.

As it is now, you get music that you can't read, and you are supposed to learn the words and music. OK, so you can read the words, but getting the music and words to go together as they are on that sheet isn't working.

Now there you are, struggling to get the words and music the best you can. Somewhere along there, you figure out that you did it wrong. Now you have to unlearn what you did wrong and learn it right this time, hopefully. The difficulty has just doubled.

Maybe what you ought to do is to use one of those small hand-held tape recorders. Then stick it in the face of someone that you feel knows the words and music. Of course, you may select the wrong person and learn the song incorrectly again. Now you have to unlearn (again) and relearn (again.)

Sometimes, I just think that the chorus powers-that-be want people like us to struggle so that we appreciate it more when we do get it. If they wanted to make it easier for us to learn and correct our mistakes, I have to believe that they would have learning tapes, and maybe check out how each of us is singing from time to time.

What's that?

There are learning tapes? They have offered to see how we are doing on the songs? Should we take advantage of them? Naw, that's too easy. Maybe we ought to just keep on learning, and unlearning, and learning, and unlearning, and learning, and ...

-- as the article appeared in Dundalk's Charivari, Tom Wheatley, editor

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