My Singing Videos
A few of you have probably been a bit surprised recently to hear my old vocal chords being stretched. Let me tell you truthfully; you are not as surprised as I've been! First, I'd like to thank you for your kind and generous comments, as well as providing you with my reasons for bursting out into song. As with most actions I take; there are invariably several reasons behind them.
First; let me assure you all that I have no pretensions to having any more than 'a reasonable' singing voice for an old man aged 76 years. If the voice happens to sound nice and relaxing to some of you, it’s because my singing literally comes from my heart and soul before it reaches my lungs. I find it easier to put my emotions into every song I sing today, because no song I sing is incidental to my choice, or is sung within a particular style of singing. Every song I now sing daily has direct meaning to my life and the experiences I have had. I worry not how I sound, as long as it is as good as this 76-year-old man is capable of sounding. Whether the song holds a reference to my current feelings or past experiences, I will put it in my daily song list. I sing songs from the 1940's to the present day whether they be by 'Bing Crosby' or 'Guns and Roses'. If there is a song that I want to sing that is way outside my comfort zone, rather than not sing it, I bring it back inside my comfort zone by interpreting the song in my way, with the inclusion of key changes to the original and modifying notes and using a style I can sing. Not only has my singing and lung capacity improved over twenty-per-cent this past year of daily singing practice, but I am also daily becoming a 'fine fixer' of all manner of songs.
What do I mean by 'fixer, I hear you ask yourself? It doesn't involve special gadgets, as I have none. The microphone I use is the inbuilt microphone that all laptops have. The manipulations and devices I use is the choice of background musical accompaniment I settle on, and learning to modulate my tone of voice so that I can sing both high and low within the same song, faster and slower if needs be, softer and with more zest where required. As my singing confidence has grown over the past year, I no longer worry when I find a song more difficult to naturally sing with what I have available to me. I add to my vocal armory by sometimes making one note two notes, or halving a note (shortening it) and by adding, omitting or changing a word or two of the original lyrics.This is essentially what I mean by 'fixing'. All that aside, however, I must confess that improving one's lung capacity and learning to modify one's breathing pattern (a skill I acquired during my 50 years as a Relaxation Trainer), have also been significant factors in this recent musical daily venture of mine.
Ever since incurring two serious heart attacks I had fifteen years ago, I was left operating on 60%-70% of lung power. My immobility has worsened over the past seven years and most physical exercises today, such as walking and climbing stairs I do carefully and sparingly; largely because of my deteriorating walking ability over the past twenty years, which now necessitates me occupying a wheelchair if the distance to be travelled is over 100 yards. By 2016, the two cancers for which I have received chemotherapy twice since 2013, along with aggravating osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis I have had since my teenage years, and the consequences of fifty years of smoking cigarettes and a pipe before I quit for good 16 years ago, left me with borderline OCPD..
In addition, between 2017 and March 2019 another two cancers were found in my body; each one capable of killing me if an operation couldn't successfully remove them. I had a deep and malignant skin cancer in my forehead that was operated on twice and will still required a twenty-session course of radiotherapy to remove. I also had rectal warts that biopsies found to be highly cancerous and which required two operations to remove (because after each operation, half my bottom has to be stitched up and healed before the next half of my bottom could be operated on). And just to add to my difficulties, I fell and dislocated my shoulder so badly that it required an operation to replace. However the surrounding tissue and muscles have been too damaged ever to improve with over 50 per cent mobility or flexibility. All four of these operations required a full general anesthetic that is extremely dangerous with my previous heart attacks and damaged heart. (This paragraph was added in July 2019 to update).
I can now report that the oxygen level in my blood has increased over the past year from a previous daily average of 80%-82% (OCPD level) to a current daily average count of 98-99 (99 represents normal to the highest count achievable).This part of my twin objective in performing daily singing practice has undoubtedly worked!
I started my daily singing practice as the result of a newspaper article I read in 2018. The article said that singing regularly is a good way to keep dementia at bay (something I haven’t got and don’t want-thank you very much). The article also identified that when a body is constantly short of normal oxygen supply, that exercising the lungs will strengthen them and one will be able to sing better because of having more oxygen in one's blood stream.
(Brief Background Facts, Reasoning and Rationale):
When I emigrated to Canada at the age of 21 years, I had a good voice, and at that time, I did have pretensions of becoming a famous singer who was waiting in the wings to be discovered. My first two months in Montreal was literally spent singing for my supper at the ‘Last Chance Saloon’ in downtown Montreal. For two months, I earned my living as a club singer. When I started singing at the Club, I thought I was the best pop singer in the world. I soon found out I wasn’t! A character flaw of mine then was never being content to accept any spot on the billboard other than 'top of the bill', and this trait led me to give up my singing career after a mere two months and to try my hand at something else. Between the ages of 21 and 75 years of age (with one exception at a Scarborough pub when I performed one song on stage in 2008 while under the influence), I never sung in public again; until February, 2018, Since that date I have publicly sung one song daily on my 'Facebook Page'. In fact, my wife, Sheila, has also put all the songs I have practised singing since February, 2018 on my own 'YouTube Channel'.
For almost thirty years, I had practised 'Behaviour Modification' methods as an effective means countering problem behaviour and changing response patterns. My most successful area of work was in helping people to manage and reduce their Stress, Fear and Anger levels. I have known for a long while now that my 54 years abstinence from singing in public had grown to represent my highest fear level; a fear I had repressed for over half a century. My knowledge of how to reduce that fear, given the entrenched repression of having resided in my body for all those years, informed me that it required drastic action to have any chance of working. There are two main approaches to reducing and managing fear levels. The most common strategy is a ‘gradual toe-dipping approach ( a bit-by-bit method). The strategy best suited to deal with deeply repressed fears for my character type requires ‘a swamping the fear approach’. This method is achieved by subjecting one’s high fear level to the fullest public gaze that is possible. As I didn’t have enough money to hire the ‘Albert Hall’ for a night, nor was I a well-enough-known singing star that could pack the place out with patrons, I did the next best thing to deal with my ‘public singing fear’. I chose publicly to sing on Facebook Page daily,and also on my website, and even on a 'YouTube Channel' that my wife created for me.
It is not at all unusual for people with terminal illnesses, like myself, to frequently have ‘bucket lists’. And as I didn’t want to be buried along with my highest of fears not having been conquered by me beforehand, I thought I’d do something about it while I was still alive and able to influence events. That’s another bucket-list item now ticked off!
I have saved my best and most important reason of singing daily for the last. It concerns a philosophy which my deceased mother (who couldn’t sing for toffee), held all her life. All my life growing up as the oldest of seven children, as my mother did her housework, she would sing one song after another, all day long. This was one of the major reasons I rarely pretended to be ill and have a day off school. Doing Physics and Chemistry lessons, which I 'hated’, always seemed more attractive a prospect than listening to my mother sing out of tune all day long! You see, like the late Les Dawson, who frequently played all the right notes on his piano, but in the wrong order, so my mother sang!
I will never forget once berating mum for her ‘out of tune’ singing. She smiled and said, ‘Billy Forde, show me the law or the sin that says only fine singers are allowed to sing, and that people who have less ability are banned from singing! Show me the book where that is written down and I’ll obey it! Now, in the meantime, get out of my way because I’ve more songs to sing!’
With these words, my mother was telling me a piece of knowledge that I would treasure for the rest of my life and which the birds of the sky have known since the morning of Creation; why any of us sing? ‘BIRDS SING FOR ONE REASON ONLY; THE BEST REASON IN THE WORLD: BECAUSE THEY HAVE A SONG TO SING’.
Ever since my life was first saved at the age of 11 years when all the medical odds signalled that I’d die, the dice have always rolled in my favour. 35 years ago, the signs of kidney cancer appeared and miraculously disappeared after three days of prayer as a hospital patient in Leeds General. 17 years ago, two grave heart attacks within the space of three days in left me unconscious for three days and on life support. After contracting four different cancers since 2013 (three of the cancers terminal, plus a potential fifth cancer), I had two six-month periods of chemotherapy treatment given to me for the first two cancers and twenty sessions of radiotherapy for my last head cancer. My terminal blood cancer (CLL) has effectively left me with virtually no immune system and therefore I have no means of fighting off illness as antibiotics are usually of questionable worth.Merely coming into contact with someone with a cold will automatically give me pneumonia or even shaking hands with someone with a bug or breathing the same air can lay me up in bed for months at best, or even kill me. For the first six of the past seven years, I have spent on average nine months of them either in hospital, in bed ill or housebound. Ever since these challenges have been presented to me, I have found that I have a song to sing and that singing it daily has helped maintain my happiness levels.
Indeed, ever since the age of eleven years, I have had a song to sing and have found many different ways of expression to sing my song. This philosophy has been a lifesaver for me, and at the commencement of February, 2018, I managed to master my fear of singing in public and physically sang my song vocally for the first time in 54 years.That is why I say that my singing of late came not from my weak lungs, but from my heart, soul, childhood relationship with my dear departed mother, and experiences of my life; which also include my daily feelings and events. Despite my worsening health condition since I met and married Sheila in 2012, I can honestly say that I have never been happier in my life. My terminal illness makes me treasure my remaining time on this earth and has made me a stronger person in so many ways. Today, I feel happier with myself and closer to my wife, my family, my friends, my neighbours, and my God. All my life I have believed in the power of love and positive thought, along with the power of prayer and of God. I do not believe that any strength of character I have ever displayed or any inexplicable things that have ever happened to me would have been possible or have occurred without these powerful influences in and about me
In 2020, I developed cancer in my neck, cheek and throat and had a neck dissection to remove. This operation took four and a half hours under a full anaesthetic . Between 2019 and July 2020, I had a total of six operations to remove cancer from different body sites (all under a full anaesthetic), plus forty sessions of radiotherapy. In August 2020, I referred myself back tothe hospital after blood clots appeared in my urine tract. Again, I was tested for the presence of a new cancer in my bladder but thankfully, my Ct scans and other examinations showed no cancer to be present in my bladder and a bladder infection was presumed to have occured and cleared under antibiotics.
Given the nature of my terminal blood cancer, the bad blood will continue to give me cancer in all my major body organs if some infection or other illness such as pneumonia doesn't kill me off first. So, it looks like I will develop a new cancer every so often as a consequence until one of the cancers kills me off.
Have a lovely day all of you and may you all find your way in life to sing your song in this wonderful world of ours'. My current song of life that I dedicate to all of those people who have cancer and in particular the children with cancer who have lived so little of life yet is 'The Quest': https://youtu.be/VD8d_hhoDfg
William Forde xxx: Revised and updated on September 2nd, 2020.
First; let me assure you all that I have no pretensions to having any more than 'a reasonable' singing voice for an old man aged 76 years. If the voice happens to sound nice and relaxing to some of you, it’s because my singing literally comes from my heart and soul before it reaches my lungs. I find it easier to put my emotions into every song I sing today, because no song I sing is incidental to my choice, or is sung within a particular style of singing. Every song I now sing daily has direct meaning to my life and the experiences I have had. I worry not how I sound, as long as it is as good as this 76-year-old man is capable of sounding. Whether the song holds a reference to my current feelings or past experiences, I will put it in my daily song list. I sing songs from the 1940's to the present day whether they be by 'Bing Crosby' or 'Guns and Roses'. If there is a song that I want to sing that is way outside my comfort zone, rather than not sing it, I bring it back inside my comfort zone by interpreting the song in my way, with the inclusion of key changes to the original and modifying notes and using a style I can sing. Not only has my singing and lung capacity improved over twenty-per-cent this past year of daily singing practice, but I am also daily becoming a 'fine fixer' of all manner of songs.
What do I mean by 'fixer, I hear you ask yourself? It doesn't involve special gadgets, as I have none. The microphone I use is the inbuilt microphone that all laptops have. The manipulations and devices I use is the choice of background musical accompaniment I settle on, and learning to modulate my tone of voice so that I can sing both high and low within the same song, faster and slower if needs be, softer and with more zest where required. As my singing confidence has grown over the past year, I no longer worry when I find a song more difficult to naturally sing with what I have available to me. I add to my vocal armory by sometimes making one note two notes, or halving a note (shortening it) and by adding, omitting or changing a word or two of the original lyrics.This is essentially what I mean by 'fixing'. All that aside, however, I must confess that improving one's lung capacity and learning to modify one's breathing pattern (a skill I acquired during my 50 years as a Relaxation Trainer), have also been significant factors in this recent musical daily venture of mine.
Ever since incurring two serious heart attacks I had fifteen years ago, I was left operating on 60%-70% of lung power. My immobility has worsened over the past seven years and most physical exercises today, such as walking and climbing stairs I do carefully and sparingly; largely because of my deteriorating walking ability over the past twenty years, which now necessitates me occupying a wheelchair if the distance to be travelled is over 100 yards. By 2016, the two cancers for which I have received chemotherapy twice since 2013, along with aggravating osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis I have had since my teenage years, and the consequences of fifty years of smoking cigarettes and a pipe before I quit for good 16 years ago, left me with borderline OCPD..
In addition, between 2017 and March 2019 another two cancers were found in my body; each one capable of killing me if an operation couldn't successfully remove them. I had a deep and malignant skin cancer in my forehead that was operated on twice and will still required a twenty-session course of radiotherapy to remove. I also had rectal warts that biopsies found to be highly cancerous and which required two operations to remove (because after each operation, half my bottom has to be stitched up and healed before the next half of my bottom could be operated on). And just to add to my difficulties, I fell and dislocated my shoulder so badly that it required an operation to replace. However the surrounding tissue and muscles have been too damaged ever to improve with over 50 per cent mobility or flexibility. All four of these operations required a full general anesthetic that is extremely dangerous with my previous heart attacks and damaged heart. (This paragraph was added in July 2019 to update).
I can now report that the oxygen level in my blood has increased over the past year from a previous daily average of 80%-82% (OCPD level) to a current daily average count of 98-99 (99 represents normal to the highest count achievable).This part of my twin objective in performing daily singing practice has undoubtedly worked!
I started my daily singing practice as the result of a newspaper article I read in 2018. The article said that singing regularly is a good way to keep dementia at bay (something I haven’t got and don’t want-thank you very much). The article also identified that when a body is constantly short of normal oxygen supply, that exercising the lungs will strengthen them and one will be able to sing better because of having more oxygen in one's blood stream.
(Brief Background Facts, Reasoning and Rationale):
When I emigrated to Canada at the age of 21 years, I had a good voice, and at that time, I did have pretensions of becoming a famous singer who was waiting in the wings to be discovered. My first two months in Montreal was literally spent singing for my supper at the ‘Last Chance Saloon’ in downtown Montreal. For two months, I earned my living as a club singer. When I started singing at the Club, I thought I was the best pop singer in the world. I soon found out I wasn’t! A character flaw of mine then was never being content to accept any spot on the billboard other than 'top of the bill', and this trait led me to give up my singing career after a mere two months and to try my hand at something else. Between the ages of 21 and 75 years of age (with one exception at a Scarborough pub when I performed one song on stage in 2008 while under the influence), I never sung in public again; until February, 2018, Since that date I have publicly sung one song daily on my 'Facebook Page'. In fact, my wife, Sheila, has also put all the songs I have practised singing since February, 2018 on my own 'YouTube Channel'.
For almost thirty years, I had practised 'Behaviour Modification' methods as an effective means countering problem behaviour and changing response patterns. My most successful area of work was in helping people to manage and reduce their Stress, Fear and Anger levels. I have known for a long while now that my 54 years abstinence from singing in public had grown to represent my highest fear level; a fear I had repressed for over half a century. My knowledge of how to reduce that fear, given the entrenched repression of having resided in my body for all those years, informed me that it required drastic action to have any chance of working. There are two main approaches to reducing and managing fear levels. The most common strategy is a ‘gradual toe-dipping approach ( a bit-by-bit method). The strategy best suited to deal with deeply repressed fears for my character type requires ‘a swamping the fear approach’. This method is achieved by subjecting one’s high fear level to the fullest public gaze that is possible. As I didn’t have enough money to hire the ‘Albert Hall’ for a night, nor was I a well-enough-known singing star that could pack the place out with patrons, I did the next best thing to deal with my ‘public singing fear’. I chose publicly to sing on Facebook Page daily,and also on my website, and even on a 'YouTube Channel' that my wife created for me.
It is not at all unusual for people with terminal illnesses, like myself, to frequently have ‘bucket lists’. And as I didn’t want to be buried along with my highest of fears not having been conquered by me beforehand, I thought I’d do something about it while I was still alive and able to influence events. That’s another bucket-list item now ticked off!
I have saved my best and most important reason of singing daily for the last. It concerns a philosophy which my deceased mother (who couldn’t sing for toffee), held all her life. All my life growing up as the oldest of seven children, as my mother did her housework, she would sing one song after another, all day long. This was one of the major reasons I rarely pretended to be ill and have a day off school. Doing Physics and Chemistry lessons, which I 'hated’, always seemed more attractive a prospect than listening to my mother sing out of tune all day long! You see, like the late Les Dawson, who frequently played all the right notes on his piano, but in the wrong order, so my mother sang!
I will never forget once berating mum for her ‘out of tune’ singing. She smiled and said, ‘Billy Forde, show me the law or the sin that says only fine singers are allowed to sing, and that people who have less ability are banned from singing! Show me the book where that is written down and I’ll obey it! Now, in the meantime, get out of my way because I’ve more songs to sing!’
With these words, my mother was telling me a piece of knowledge that I would treasure for the rest of my life and which the birds of the sky have known since the morning of Creation; why any of us sing? ‘BIRDS SING FOR ONE REASON ONLY; THE BEST REASON IN THE WORLD: BECAUSE THEY HAVE A SONG TO SING’.
Ever since my life was first saved at the age of 11 years when all the medical odds signalled that I’d die, the dice have always rolled in my favour. 35 years ago, the signs of kidney cancer appeared and miraculously disappeared after three days of prayer as a hospital patient in Leeds General. 17 years ago, two grave heart attacks within the space of three days in left me unconscious for three days and on life support. After contracting four different cancers since 2013 (three of the cancers terminal, plus a potential fifth cancer), I had two six-month periods of chemotherapy treatment given to me for the first two cancers and twenty sessions of radiotherapy for my last head cancer. My terminal blood cancer (CLL) has effectively left me with virtually no immune system and therefore I have no means of fighting off illness as antibiotics are usually of questionable worth.Merely coming into contact with someone with a cold will automatically give me pneumonia or even shaking hands with someone with a bug or breathing the same air can lay me up in bed for months at best, or even kill me. For the first six of the past seven years, I have spent on average nine months of them either in hospital, in bed ill or housebound. Ever since these challenges have been presented to me, I have found that I have a song to sing and that singing it daily has helped maintain my happiness levels.
Indeed, ever since the age of eleven years, I have had a song to sing and have found many different ways of expression to sing my song. This philosophy has been a lifesaver for me, and at the commencement of February, 2018, I managed to master my fear of singing in public and physically sang my song vocally for the first time in 54 years.That is why I say that my singing of late came not from my weak lungs, but from my heart, soul, childhood relationship with my dear departed mother, and experiences of my life; which also include my daily feelings and events. Despite my worsening health condition since I met and married Sheila in 2012, I can honestly say that I have never been happier in my life. My terminal illness makes me treasure my remaining time on this earth and has made me a stronger person in so many ways. Today, I feel happier with myself and closer to my wife, my family, my friends, my neighbours, and my God. All my life I have believed in the power of love and positive thought, along with the power of prayer and of God. I do not believe that any strength of character I have ever displayed or any inexplicable things that have ever happened to me would have been possible or have occurred without these powerful influences in and about me
In 2020, I developed cancer in my neck, cheek and throat and had a neck dissection to remove. This operation took four and a half hours under a full anaesthetic . Between 2019 and July 2020, I had a total of six operations to remove cancer from different body sites (all under a full anaesthetic), plus forty sessions of radiotherapy. In August 2020, I referred myself back tothe hospital after blood clots appeared in my urine tract. Again, I was tested for the presence of a new cancer in my bladder but thankfully, my Ct scans and other examinations showed no cancer to be present in my bladder and a bladder infection was presumed to have occured and cleared under antibiotics.
Given the nature of my terminal blood cancer, the bad blood will continue to give me cancer in all my major body organs if some infection or other illness such as pneumonia doesn't kill me off first. So, it looks like I will develop a new cancer every so often as a consequence until one of the cancers kills me off.
Have a lovely day all of you and may you all find your way in life to sing your song in this wonderful world of ours'. My current song of life that I dedicate to all of those people who have cancer and in particular the children with cancer who have lived so little of life yet is 'The Quest': https://youtu.be/VD8d_hhoDfg
William Forde xxx: Revised and updated on September 2nd, 2020.
The list of songs I have sung can be viewed below. By clicking on your preferred song on the list you will be able to view the videos directly on my YouTube channel.
Click here for my Christmas Songs & Carols.
Click here for my Christmas Songs & Carols.
