*snort* I'm also starting to regret having ranted about never knowing hymn tunes: every wedding I've been to since then has come with sheet music, and the effect of this is that I now no longer have any excuse to cover the fact that I can't sing :-)

(I think it's a feedback problem. Playing the violin was a matter of making the hand motions that caused a particular note, and trusting that that note would come out; there was some auto-correction for fine tuning, but by and large you corrected a wrong note by not doing it again next time. With singing I don't really know how to produce the right note from the instant my voicebox goes live, so I have to fall back to the next best thing which is to start with an initial approximation and correct it by auditory feedback. This is very hard when the people around me are drowning out my voice even to my own ears...)

You should try it with a full PA and several heavily amplified instruments! There are times when I don't so much need my ears as the soles of my feet to tell me Carl's bass amp is in perfect working order..

Put a fingers in one ear, Spinal Tap stylee. Looks ridiculous, works a treat.

Hmm, I wonder if my noise-reduction earplugs would work too.. the beauty of having long hair to hide 'em ;)

Yeah, that works too, and also has other advantages like still being able to hear the next day.