Not totally tone deaf (or something)
My friend, Jen, posted on facebook this link, saying she's recently reacquired the album and had forgotten how much she had liked it:
I took a listen and immediately thought a) a guy sang the beginning and b) the higher pitched woman sounded a LOT like Kate Bush. I listened a few more times, and realized the "guy" was actually a deep-voiced woman. I almost thought it was Annie Lennox, but not quite. So I finally looked up this Happy Rhodes business for myself, wondering if the woman was the /same/ woman throughout the whole song... and if so, it's gotta be one heck of a range she's got.
Four octaves, to be exact, with influences of Kate Bush and the occasional glimpse of Annie Lennox. See /this/ link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_RhodesSo apparently my ears ARE good after all, considering I only listened in passing. Methinks that my family's musical abilities are simply a bit dormant in me and needed to be woken up by my self-instructed musical studies over the years, or, more likely, the intense listening to details in songs I loved combined with the brief studies in high school. I may not have a good singing voice but I /do/ have /some/ sort of an ear for music these days. Heck, I must have had it even several years back, given that I surprised my musician friend, Rob, when I picked out an augmented fifth from a Beach Boys song I'd never heard before. I remember listening to the song with him at work and I was like, "Whoa, hold on. That sounded like an augmented fifth. Can you back that up a second?" He did, already staring at me funny, and so I'm like, "Wow, I've never heard that in a song before, only heard /of/ those things. That is what that was, wasn't it? Or was it? Why are you looking at me like that?" (And I keep thinking I don't have an auditory memory ... I'd learned about augmented fifths in a high school music theory class and cannot tell you now what, exactly, they are... only that I recognized it when I heard it. Talk about /selective/ memory!)
Detecting things in sound is still a mystery to me, though... like, seeing things in 2D form makes total sense to me, but hearing subtleties in music or speech or even something as simple as a bird chirping can completely overwhelm me with disbelief. Sometimes I wonder if I experience sound a little bit like a deaf child would once they got over the shock of sound after an operation to give them their hearing. It's got to be wondrous in many ways, even if spooky and unfamiliar.
Oh!! That reminds me!! I dreamt a poem this morning. It's kinda silly, but it arose while I dreamt of the situation around it... the dream was that I opened a car door and saw the mirror move with it. I had the notion that I was dizzy, and there was a hill right there, going down, a nice, grassy hill. I "heard" the poem float through my mind at that instant, and it kept going through my head as I woke up, so I jotted it down. It goes thusly. I've named it "The Tumbling Dream" since it pertains and I did not "hear" the name otherwise. I figure it doesn't care if it's named or not, or needed me to do it.
I opened my car door
The mirror moved fast
I tried holding my balance
But it didn't last
So I fell down the hill
Where I came to lay still
~w
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