I always thought the Japanese got karaoke right the first time, where the convention is to sing facing away from the audience.
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I totally get that. I’m quite serious as a musician and I just can’t sing or whistle in tune – it’s like I can hit the first note and then completely fail to match the interval to the second one and beyond. Yet I can play things by ear, more or less, on a keyboard or fretless bass.
I played violin in school in the 80s and I was quite good for that experience level (first chair most of the time, except when the conductor decided to rotate me out of it to let someone else have a chance). I also played jazz piano in the high school jazz ensemble, and I was not very good at reading chords and playing independent hands, but could improvise well enough and my overall skill level was about on part with the rest of our (terrible) band.
Electronic music is more my thing – sound design with modular or software, composition, improv, “production” (though I dislike the word) and a very small amount of coding. Hand percussion and taiko as well as electronic finger drumming. I can also noodle almost half decently on a fretless bass in a pinch.
But don’t expect singing. Only a few They Might Be Giants songs when I’m in a good mood (usually when “Experimental Film” comes on I will sing “Yeah!” and leave the rest to my spouse), or some other things when I’m exactly the right kind of drunk, which is pretty rare.
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Some years ago my then boss took the staff to a team-building exercise. Thank the fucking fuck I was too big for the jumpsuits so I got to sit out on the paintball game. After dinner the bus drivers, a surly bunch of middle aged men as they always are, retired to the karaoke room next door and began belting out trot songs and old Korean ballads.
It wasn’t long before the foreign staff joined them and started singing English songs. They were mostly appreciative but I had to go ruin it when I took the mic. Yeah, I’m not a great singer by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t think they enjoyed my repeated invitations to the gay bar…
The fact that the karaoke machine had Gay Bar to begin with has always brought me joy and I consider going to karaoke/ noraebang/ KTV incomplete experiences without it.
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The last song I ever sang at karaoke:
I shit you not.
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It’s probably about equal, but with woodwinds it just feels like a lot more.
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Depends on the woodwind. If it’s an oboe, it takes less volume of wind than damned near anything else, but it takes it at a higher pressure.
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That must be why I couldn’t do woodwinds. I couldn’t get enough pressure out.
I must look for this next time (if ever) I am in KTV. My school recently had some sort of team-building exercise there. I had a cold and was not in good voice but eventually I started singing anyway just to briefly pause the parade of extremely bland Chinese ballads. My best performance was probably “People are Strange,” a re-orchestrated version which seems to have been slightly polkafied, but everyone seemed to be most impressed by my version of Tom Petty’s “Don’t Do Me Like That.” This was the original arrangement and may as well have been Slayer as far as my audience was concerned.
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Saxs are easy and fun too. Theoretically I should be able to sing while playing my uke but I drift off after a few words. Or I sing and stop strumming. I think playing the sax first may have ruined me. When I play sax either I am singing or playing
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Isn’t that what makes it such a great way to sell alcohol?
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While it’s entirely possible that you are as bad a singer as you say you are that hearing yourself takes the fun out of singing, as someone who can sing, I think that the joy of singing is not in hearing yourself or in recognition of your abilities by others. It’s actually the physical sensation that flows through you as you are belting out a song, it’s about getting lost, not in the performance, but in the performing.
That’s about the only skill you need to develop to have fun singing.
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Ehhhhh… As someone who used to always be horribly out of tune and now wavers between reasonably good and out of tune, that sensation was always there – but it’s better when I’m in tune.
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Well, I’m out of ideas then. 
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Yup. Clarinets are cool. Oboes are even cooler. Bassoons are coolest (especially when opening The Rite of Spring).
Of course, nothing is as cool as Jeff Beck’s Strat… because Jeff Beck!
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The ill wind that no one blows good.
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Two things I did:
- Once upon a time I had a job where I had to drive a lot (~1,200km a week – some colleagues hit 2,000km some weeks). I also had an older car with only a radio in it, and didn’t yet know about radio transmitters for mp3 players. So I sang along with the radio to whatever station in the area was the least annoying. That meant I got a lot of singing done, alone, with no-one to judge me or make snarky and/or opaque “helpful” comments. Practice helps a lot.
- Sometimes songs you know but don’t like provide the most lessons. I learned a lot from Thompson Twins’ “Hold Me Now” – coincidentally written by a music teacher.
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Never had any problem - easier than a clarinet. 
And definitely the best tone!
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Isn’t that the French horn?