Gilliver's Travels
Peripatetic
GOSBTS - why so crap?
Why are we so piss-poor at singing our own magical, neck-hair tingling anthem? The vocal span is only just over one octave, but people always, always get into trouble. So they have to either squawk for the high notes, or change key in mid song. Which sounds pretty ugly. Especially when, ironically, the first high note – that point where everybody gets into trouble - is in the line originally written as “So let your voices ring my boys”.
So why does it all go wrong? Easy. Because we always start our opening doo-dooo-de-doos far too high.
In the official key of B flat, the opening doo-doos are D-D-Dflat-D. But starting there means you reach the straining end of manageable, enough to crack the average untrained male voice. Of course, no problem for girlies, boy sopranos and all those castrati who sit together in J-block.
Anyway, if you do want to complete the song tunefully, without having to change key in the middle, you now have two options:-
1 Cut off your own goolies. (But please check that they’ve descended first, or it could get a bit messy)
or
2 Start the tune a bit lower down.
For readers wanting to retain their ability to participate in leisure pursuits beyond watching the Albion, I would recommend option 2.
So all we need now is a human tuning fork. Or else a large air-horn, tuned to an appropriately sensible starting note. I’d recommend a C.
So now, here’s a new GOSBTS mantra. Think Black Rock. Or, put another way, Always do your doo-doos in C.
Footnote: Many people will know the composer of Sussex by the Sea was one William Ward Higgs. (With that middle name, scoring was no doubt second nature.)
Why are we so piss-poor at singing our own magical, neck-hair tingling anthem? The vocal span is only just over one octave, but people always, always get into trouble. So they have to either squawk for the high notes, or change key in mid song. Which sounds pretty ugly. Especially when, ironically, the first high note – that point where everybody gets into trouble - is in the line originally written as “So let your voices ring my boys”.
So why does it all go wrong? Easy. Because we always start our opening doo-dooo-de-doos far too high.
In the official key of B flat, the opening doo-doos are D-D-Dflat-D. But starting there means you reach the straining end of manageable, enough to crack the average untrained male voice. Of course, no problem for girlies, boy sopranos and all those castrati who sit together in J-block.
Anyway, if you do want to complete the song tunefully, without having to change key in the middle, you now have two options:-
1 Cut off your own goolies. (But please check that they’ve descended first, or it could get a bit messy)
or
2 Start the tune a bit lower down.
For readers wanting to retain their ability to participate in leisure pursuits beyond watching the Albion, I would recommend option 2.
So all we need now is a human tuning fork. Or else a large air-horn, tuned to an appropriately sensible starting note. I’d recommend a C.
So now, here’s a new GOSBTS mantra. Think Black Rock. Or, put another way, Always do your doo-doos in C.
Footnote: Many people will know the composer of Sussex by the Sea was one William Ward Higgs. (With that middle name, scoring was no doubt second nature.)
