Hymnasium

There are many people who are not professional singers.

Among those many, there are still those of you who enjoy singing. But, unless you have the time and opportunity to join a musical group, you may not get the chance to practice as you should.

(Bellowing in the car or in the shower, however enjoyable, isn't proper "practice".)

So - you get a membership at the hymnasium. Perhaps you already know what you need to work on: breath control, tone support, vowel coloration... or perhaps you're not sure, and would like some assistance in discovering how you're doing with respect to intonation, timbre, phrasing, or whatever.

The practice rooms start with the private booth. Soundproofed so your singing doesn't interfere with others, you can adjust it to be sonically live (shower) or dead (coat closet). Each booth is equipped with professional-grade headphones (please bring, or rent, suitable clean earcovers), and a good quality sound playback and recording system. (Inside the headphones, you can have an electronic acoustic profile - anything from 'pub' to 'Sydney Opera House'.) You can get a good amount of feedback (data, not audio squeals) about your practice session from the built-in computer and its various software packages.

If you bring a flash drive, you can jack it into the USB port to get a recording of your session, along with your reports.

You can sing from memory or from music; acapella or accompanied, solo or ensemble. You can provide your own recordings or MIDI files, or can borrow from the extensive library. (To keep costs and copyright problems to a minimum, the library concentrates on public-domain music; much of which is from older sources. Since this includes a large portion of sacred music... well, that's where the name comes from.) (Don't feel limited, though - if you want something raunchy, the baroque Italian madrigals, for instance, have you covered.)

If you've brought your ensemble in vivo rather than recorded, there are larger rooms with capacity for small groups. These also contain the same computer audio equipment as the booths.

There are always a number of vocal coaches on hand, this being a prime employer of music majors from the local uni.

So - come on in, make some sweet tunes, get your blood oxygen and dopamine levels up, stimulate some brain activity, and get your confidence to the point you don't have to be drunk to karaoke.

And you don't end up in a sweat, either.