One thing I like to do very much is to sit on Cuddly Human's printer and listen while she is doing singing practice. Cuddly Human says she's a mezzo, but that's something you could argue about, at least if you were feeling argumentative, which I very rarely do. You could equally well say that she was an alto, given her range and the fact that she's very comfortable around the lower end of it (in fact she used to sing tenor, but I'm not quite sure if I'm allowed to say that, because her singing teacher has told her not to do it any more). But she says her timbre is more mezzo than alto, and she does have a point there.
Now the thing about Cuddly Human is that, although she grew up in a fairly musical family and has always enjoyed music, she was never given the proper training when she was younger. I'm not sure about the exact reasons; it just seems to have been one of those cases of humans being more complicated than penguins, even though they have smaller families. She has sung in choirs and suchlike in the past, but it's only in the last two or three years that she has been taking singing lessons, and she will tell you herself that she's no good at sight-reading. (Actually, she's not quite as bad at it as she thinks. She can do it after a fashion, and she's often best if she doesn't think about it too hard. But it's true that she gets stuck on almost anything involving a key change.) She will also tell you that she doesn't play an instrument, although again that is something of an oversimplification. She can play the recorder passably, and she can pick out a tune on a keyboard. It's just that she doesn't have either of these instruments, or at least not one that is in full working order at the moment.
You begin to see why she might have a problem learning her music. Fortunately, of course, there is always YouTube. Cuddly Human thinks this is what YouTube is for, which is slightly odd if you think about it, considering how many other uses it has. I mean, there are wonderful old BBC children's programmes. And Weird Al. And people playing the harp... but I digress. First of all it was lots and lots of Cecilia Bartoli singing Italian art songs, which was fine, although even at that stage Cuddly Human liked to look around for other versions too. She found some gems, including a surprisingly good amateur countertenor who recorded several songs in his garage, by the look of it. Then she started branching out into some of the less terrifying Handel arias (she particularly enjoys singing He was despised, but she didn't need YouTube to teach her that). Just recently it's been mostly Purcell, and that's where it has started to get interesting.
Cuddly Human loves YouTube. She thinks it's the most wonderful invention. You really wouldn't think it to listen to her when she's trying to find a suitable version of a Purcell song to learn from, though. I must admit, I do feel a bit sorry for her, because she can't even eliminate all the male singers from her searches, just in case any of them is a countertenor she hasn't yet heard of. It tends to go something like this:
*click* Soprano. No. *click* Ah, countertenor. Good. Let's have a listen... ouch! His vowels! *click* Alto. Er, no, too operatic. *click* Tenor... ooh, shiny. Lovely voice. *listen, followed by reluctant click* Not my range, though. Who's this? Andreas Scholl? He's got to be all right... *listen* H'mm, well, yes, best so far, but don't you think he's much better singing Handel? *bookmark* *click* Soprano. No, and also aaargh. *click* Bass? Seriously? *click* Eeeep, teenager singing weird pop version, Do Not Want! *click* Mezzo or alto, nice enough, but the recording level is too faint. *click*
After a while, she decides she can't take any more of this and goes back to Andreas Scholl, even if she would really rather he sang Handel. And then, a couple of weeks later, YouTube suspend the account of the person who posted the video and we're right back to square one.
Of course, she could always learn to sight-read properly.
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