I have about as much musical talent as a deaf hippopotamus, but that didn’t stop Grandmommy from trying to cultivate some form of sound from me. She was determined to teach me how to use my voice to sing serenades. Anyways, there was a time when I was very young and she meant to teach me how to increase and decrease the pitch of my voice. For the life of me, I didn’t even understand the concept of altering my vocal pitch. Eventually, Grandmommy was reaching for ways to motivate me to learn how to sing and she stumbled upon the only thing that would motivate me at the time, a colored printer.
See, I was a child who was created lots (and lots) of Kid Pix artwork on both my parent’s and Grandmommy’s Mac computers. In fact, I was a skilled clip-artist for my age! At the time, I had only ever been able to print my creations in black & white. But with the prospect of a colored printer on the line, I decided it was time to learn to sing.
For the record, the original deal with Grandmommy was if I learned to raise and lower the pitch of my voice, she would buy a colored printer to enable me to publish my Kid Pix artwork. Seemed simple enough. I ended up struggling with the musical concept of pitch for most of the day. I recall singing “up the ladder we can go” over and over, steadily increasing my pitch. Although this feat was eventually awarded by my prized colored printer, in the process, we both discovered I was a lost cause in terms of singing. So, her attention for music shifted to other grandchildren while I was satisfied with my prized colored printer.
