Bowling pin shelves and dissonance

I have a truly remarkable and multi-talented roommate.

First of all, Matt was invited to sing at a professional choir here in Denver by the music director of the church choir that he also sings in. On the day that Matt had his first, three-hour choir audition/rehearsal he also painted and built this bowling pin shelf for our living room and this bowling pin bench for my room. Isn’t the bench hilarious? So many different emotions for one bench to feel!

I pretty much trapped him into giving me a too-long singing lesson. I am quite honestly a terrible singer and with Matt’s help, I now can more accurately explain why. Apparently I consistently sing one note above or below the desired note I’m supposed to sing. If you’ve studied music you’ll not that that is exactly dissonant. Eventually through the two-hour session I became only 1/3 of the note off, and eventually was able to since a scale twice. Completely by fluke I assure you, but I’ll take it. Matt was pretty impressed at how I was so unable to sing the correct note and would find ways around them. At one point, he even played a dissonant note (two notes that are next to each other on a piano) and I managed to sing the note inbetween those notes. I barely even understand that, but I know that I wasn’t great. Of course, he’s really a really great, patient and kind teacher who seemed genuinely interested weird musical syndrom.