The Sound of Altos

In high school, I joined the school choir. In my first year, we had over a dozen sopranos, so I (I think a mezzosoprano?) got made one of the three (myself included) altos. For the longest time I really struggled - not as much because I couldn't sing a tune (though I'm sure my conductor could tell you many an embarrassing tale), but because I found it really hard to hear the melody, but sing the harmony.

I never actually got better at that. I developed a coping strategy that actually worked out best for everyone, which was simply to sing loud enough to not hear the sopranos. It wasn't blatant to the audience I don't think (I hope...), but it meant I could focus on my part and our conductor had a little bit less of a discrepancy in the sopranos overshadowing us. It can't have been too bad as I only continued being encouraged as we got a few more altos the following year.

I have a version of The Sound of Silence on my phone, an MP3 that has followed me from a desktop computer in another country. And it has the two parts separated by channel: tenor in the left ear, bass in the right. For years now, I've been studying the bass part of this song, intermittently, whenever it comes on. I always sing along with that one, hum that one, listen to that one.

I think I've almost got it :)