Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
Hmmm, I wonder if Anthony Amusia has a pathology of some kind affecting his inner ear, subcortical structures or hippocampus. Perhaps a brain worm, injury or other cognitive decline? Absent any pathology, he should easily be able to sing along to simple familiar songs. Children can do this at very early ages.
You misunderstand. He's quite capable of singing on key. And he can sing tenor parts as well as the melody.

But every now and then, I'll be on the piano playing a song written in Fm and think "Em is a much easier key to play this in.", and proceed to do just that without telling the choir. You've already made the case for relative pitch, and a half step isn't generally going to change much, especially for the tenors.

But this singer has caught on to my ploy. So if he's got trouble singing his part, his first thought is that the problem is that the key has changed, rather than the more probable we're all getting older and he's not listening closely enough.

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In any event, I hope “Anthony” isn’t preventing you from grasping the underlying “Happy Birthday Concept”; that healthy humans are wired and capable of cooperatively singing with one another.
What's this "cooperatively singing" thing? I thought the goal was to sing louder, so everyone would have to sing in the right key (i.e.: the key I chose).

As a youngster in church, I quickly figured out that my Dad and my Uncle Rich (seated a few pews back) weren't just singing loudly because they were into the hymn.

No, each was trying to out-sing the other.

To them, singing was a competitive sport. crazy

-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.