♪♫Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song...♫♪

♪♫and I'll try not to sing out of key.♫♪

The title today is obviously The Beatles, With a Little Help from My Friends. I'm feeling quite melancholy at the current moment. The first stanza of this song has been running through my head most of the evening. I have an audition on Thursday. I'm auditioning for a local singing competition that is fairly karaoke based, but it's for the town festival-of-sorts. You have to do a song using an instrumental track that may or may not include back up vocals. You have to have it memorized. You are judged on: Vocal skills(pitch, breath control, enunciation, tone, etc), Presentation (eye contact, expression, attire, microphone technique), Audience response (using a decibel meter to gauge the response level), and then Judges overall impression. They videotape the auditions and the judges watch the videos rather than judging in person. The auditions are held at a local bar on Karaoke night but you are required to bring your own track. A couple of weeks ago during some weird lapse in judgment I registered myself to compete. I hate karaoke and so this is not generally something I would do. Anyway, I've been going through the instrumental or back up tracks that I have for songs and I've narrowed my choices down to two songs. I would really like to actually sing them to some people and get opinions on which one I should do, as I really have no clue which one sounds better or is likely to get a better audience response. I have a feeling to get a good audience response I'd probably have to bring an audience. The problem is I don't have many friends in town, and don't think my out of town friends would care to drive down to sit in a bar for an hour and listen to good and bad karaoke auditions. I need to sing the two songs to people to see which is better, but I don't have anyone to try them on.

So I feel very stuck. I honestly don't know which song is better... and I don't have anyone to ask. My cats really aren't much help. I suppose I could bring both songs to my voice lesson on Wednesday, but that's not really the kind of singing I want to focus on in those lessons. I sing every day, you'd think I could make a decision on a song that fits best in my voice. But I'm my own worst critic.

The two songs are Broken in the style of Lindsey Haun, or Low in the style of Kelly Clarkson. They are two of my favorite songs. Broken feels like the verses sit lower in my range, but the refrain rings really nice. Low is comfortably in my range but doesn't have the same power in the message that Broken has.  I know it's more about which sounds better, but I honestly don't know, I can't tell when singing to myself. I need someone who can listen and give me ideas and constructive feedback. But tonight I don't seem to have that person. How does one get by with help from their friends, if they aren't able to get ahold of anyone? Maybe I'll take them to work and have a mock audition with my residents and they can help me choose a song. How do I make that a therapeutic intervention...

♪♫Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key.♫♪