Impromptu Singing

[vinteuil]

.

... singing I don't mind ( and, like serial, I hear schoolgirls singing pop-type toons on the upper deck of buses from time to time).

Have always loathed whistling, and am so happy that the local butcher-boys tend not to be whistlin' the latest Hinton or Barrett ditty as they cycle their rounds here...

.

[eighthobstruction]

....now here I do have to throw modesty aside (into one of those flip top breadbins everybody used to have), press my humility into that funny little pocket that you get on jeans....and tell you I am one ace impro singer/whistler.....usually based around Miles Davis Milestones if some idee fixe isnt already running around....Erbarme Dich is a good starting point too....some of my best created after EMS....my humourous takes on Leider are known throughout Institute Street....

....as for other folk: miserable...incapable of wit....

[Serial_Apologist]

....now here I do have to throw modesty aside (into one of those flip top breadbins everybody used to have), press my humility into that funny little pocket that you get on jeans....and tell you I am one ace impro singer/whistler.....usually based around Miles Davis Milestones if some idee fixe isnt already running around....Erbarme Dich is a good starting point too....some of my best created after EMS....my humourous takes on Leider are known throughout Institute Street....

....as for other folk: miserable...incapable of wit....

This is a tune I've always found almost as impossible to sing as to pronounce the title!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKqgnyEm0TM

[gradus]

I confess to being a lifelong incorrigible whistler ... there I've said it and I feel much better. It must be infuriating to those that can't stand whistling but I've rarely been pulled-up for doing it although I am nobody's Ronnie Ronalde or even Percy Edwards.
I am also one of the world's leading in-car baritones and have often complimented myself on the high notes I can manage when I am audience and performer in that most intimate of performing spaces. Unfortunately my sensitive temperament precludes public performances, my wife, children and the cats excepted.

[jean]

... o, I know that Hart's Rules recommends surprise. But I have often enjoyed using the spelling preferred by Shakspere, Swift, Browne, Evelyn, Dryden, Addison, &c...

I doubt if that will satisfy Lat!

[jean]

I sing in my head all the time, but not often aloud unless I'm supposed to.

[Richard Tarleton]

Only two spring to mind, from the last 50 years. Walking in the West Highlands immediately after my finals (but before the results), I stayed for a couple of nights in a B&B in Glenelg where my hostess sang the Mingulay Boat Song while she was cooking the supper. (This was not long after the death of Gavin Maxwell. On the day in between I walked down the coast to Sandaig, aka Camusféarna). The plumber who has looked after us for the last 25 years (now sadly retired) was given to singing Country and Western songs in his deep bass voice while working. Otherwise, it's not something I'm aware of people doing. Tradesmen mostly listen to the radio.

We did have some Catalan students on an exchange programme who were given to impromptu group singing, and I saw groups of young Spanish pilgrims doing it in front of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela....

I wouldn't know a Beyoncé song if it bit me in the leg.

[Triforium]

There is this New Yorker cartoon....

http://www.paintingsoncanvas.net/print-27954-9189038/sumer-icumen-lhude-sing-cuccu-new-yorker-cartoon-other/

[teamsaint]

Irritated by my inability to whistle at all, I taught myself to, aged 18.

Still amazed after all these years at my new found skill, I continue to whistle very often , although I try not to annoy people with what is, sadly, still rather poor quality noise.

Still yet to be discovered whistling something I'm not supposed to like, ( Breakfast in America by Supertramp for example) but it will happen one day.
Serve me right, I guess.

[Petrushka]

Does no-one sing along to their operatic or vocal CDs? I used to do this but found Siegfried's forging scene and the first song of Das Lied von der Erde tough going but the upside is that I still know the words off by heart!

[Lat-Literal]

Well, isn't this thread now going remarkably well.

Thank you to all contributors.

I just knew Serial Apologist would deliver - and "prance" is one of my favourite words. No, I didn't see that episode of "Candid Camera" but have often contemplated the possible merits of a contra Taliban policy, ie ban all speech so that people are only permitted to communicate via music. Like Richard, I encountered groups of young people in Santiago de Compostela singing. There were so many of them that it almost seemed that everyone under the age of 18 from Western Europe was there and all absolutely committed to Christianity. I believe the first song of "Das Lied von der Erde" is "The Drinking Song of Earth's Misery". One for the revellers on the night bus, I suspect, once they have run out of hits by Rag and Bone Man.

[cloughie]

Irritated by my inability to whistle at all, I taught myself to, aged 18.

Still amazed after all these years at my new found skill, I continue to whistle very often , although I try not to annoy people with what is, sadly, still rather poor quality noise.

Still yet to be discovered whistling something I'm not supposed to like, ( Breakfast in America by Supertramp for example) but it will happen one day.
Serve me right, I guess.

Mouldy Old Dough is a great tune to whistle and more complex than you think. Rossini overtures are also good to toot along to! Debussy on the other hand is good to sing along to and good for practising notes at the top end of my range as is Ravel's Mother Goose. Schubert is good for harmonising against!

[MrGongGong]

There is this New Yorker cartoon....

Plenty of "impromtu singing" in the Strugglers last time I was in there matey

[BBMmk2]

I sung an impromptu singing at work, once, they were quite impressed with my voice as well! And that was in the music department, too!

[Historian]

I sing out loud a fair bit and usually only realise I am doing so when my daughter starts to look daggers at me.