Learning to overcome my fear of singing was as easy as do-re-mi

I thought I couldn’t sing. Then I discovered there’s no such thing as ‘tone deaf’ – and that singing is not very different to speaking

It’s lunchtime on a sunny day in early June. I’m standing on London’s Fleet Street outside an imposing door that’s sandwiched between a solicitor’s office and Ye Olde Cock Tavern. I feel nervous and sticky-palmed. A message pings into my phone. It’s from my 17-year-old daughter. It says: “Try not to worry Dad, it’s only an hour and then it’s over forever, and you never need to do it again. Love you!” I swallow hard and ring the bell. There’s no going back. I’m about to have my first ever singing lesson.

In the same way that some people are non-drivers or non-swimmers, I am a non-singer. I do not sing. Other than croaking out Happy Birthday or groaning through the occasional hymn, I just don’t sing. Like so many people, early criticism of my quavering vocals cut me to the quick and turned me into a life-long mimer. My lips move, but the volume is set at zero. Two events stand out. In the first I am seven years old. I’m in the gym and one by one we are summoned to walk across the wooden floor to the music teacher, who sits behind a piano. When we get there she plays two notes and asks which is higher. To me they sound the same. I take a random guess… and the whole class collapses into hysterics. I walk back across the floor with my cheeks on fire. In the second event, answering the headmaster’s call that the choir needs more members, I join my friends for an open practice session. It’s all very jolly. Half way through Kumbaya My Lord, a teacher puts his hand in the air and melodramatically cries: “Halt!” Has he been wounded? What’s happened? He swivels round slowly and singles me out: “You! No thank you!” My friends collapse in hysterics once more and my cheeks explode into colour. That’s it, I think, never again.

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