First off, welcome to the forums, and What Everybody Else Said. Especially Eddie just above me, the part about "do it for YOU".

I believe I have an interesting perspective on your situation. I am what they call a "filker", i.e., I'm just a singer-songwriter, but I write and perform "filk". Filk is the music of the Science Fiction/Fantasy community.

Way back in the days when blogs were hand-cranked mimeograph machines, someone reported from a convention how a few people were staying up late and singing folk songs with altered lyrics, e.g., "When I was flying the skies of Albedo, I fell in love with a Regulan girl." The person misspelled "folk" as "filk", and the name stuck.

(Best instant examples of filk: Weird Al's "Yoda" is perhaps the perfect parody filk. His "The Saga Begins" is perhaps the perfect example of BAD parody filk, i.e., it just retells the story of the movie. David Bowie's "Space Oddity" could be considered filk; Peter Schilling's original riff on it, "Major Tom", absolutely is filk. And the very shortest filk song I know is, "The hills are alive... AAAAAAAH!" [There's also "Flintstone On The Roof" -- "If I were a Flintstone, yabba dabba dabba yabba dabba dabba dabba doo...."])

I attend and perform at between twelve and twenty weekend SF/F conventions a year. Pretty much all of those conventions have late-night "filk circles", open sings where anyone can come and perform. One of the most important aspects of the whole thing is precisely what you're worried about: It's hard enough getting your hopes and dreams and visions and whatever into a song, let alone getting the performance and vocal chops up to professional levels, let alone getting up in front of strangers to perform.

So, we have a whole lot of people who simply do it for fun. And we are very kind to them -- we were all there at one point or another. (I entered filk in 1985. By 1988, the community decided I was kinda good. It took me until 1994 or so to agree with them.) Everyone listens, we applaud, if you want critique we will give it as gently as we can.

Which leads to: whereabouts are you? If you're in the US, Canada, or Germany, I can recommend a number of conventions where you can be heard with no fear of embarrassment. Heck, you'll get cred if you drop my name -- in the filk world, I'm basically the big fat Springsteen.

There are also filk, and even folk, house parties in many communities. If you know some like-minded singers and musicians, you could even host one yourself.

In short, don't worry so much about your voice. Any of your ways of getting a melody would work, as would using some kind of inexpensive pitch tool (e.g., the Pitch Envelope in Reaper, or Melodyne Essential, or even pitch shifting in Audacity) to get yourself on key. And, even if you can't make it work to your satisfaction, you can always find friends who will listen.

Best,
Tom Smith
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