For most of life I haven't considered myself a singer. I did some at school when I had to and would sing along to records in private, but never really performed. A couple of years back I did some singing with the Secret Bass drum group and did a few performances that I quite enjoyed. I've also done a couple of singing workshops at the music centre my kids attend. Then last year I started going to the Plough pub sessions and performing various covers. I've not been that happy with my singing there. Either I run out of breath, can't hit notes or just can't get my voice to do what I want.

So I decided I needed professional help. I found local singing teacher Liv McNeil. Tonight was my first lesson. I spent 90 minutes doing all sorts of exercises and singing a bit of Muse. Overall I'm not terrible, but I have some bad habit that's creating a grating tone at times. She said she hadn't come across this problem before, so we're trying to work out what to do about it. It may just be that I don't relax properly. I've got a CD of exercises to try before I go back in a fortnight.

Normally when I sing at home it's done fairly quietly and at the pub I don't really project, but in the lesson I could make a racket. It felt good, even if it didn't always sound good. I don't anticipate being the next Freddie Mercury, but I think I could improve on what I've been doing up to now. You can follow my progress on my Soundcloud page. There's some songs I did over the last few months. I'll try to do some using what I've learnt.