Some kid thing

I wonder if anywhere in Singapore sells this....


I'm no fan of Illidan or the SoulKeeper(Parang seems to favour this character, I prefer Anti-Mage), but the action figure does look very cool.

Mateus, the corrupt.

cool right? Anyway, I suddenly started surfing for FF action figures... some really very nice looking.

Knights of the Round !!!

幽灵公主

At first I thought it's some children's play. Hahahah... turned out not. The kids are good lah. Pro man.

烂音

GENUS is yet again plagued by an old and familiar disease.

Bad Sound.

After sitting in to listen for the last rehearsal, I realised that the portion of bad sound compared to good sound is on the rise. You will notice it when there much less "Dong" sound and much more "Tong" and the ultimate "TANG" sound. Of course, with it comes the lack of tone as well.

I think many of the players don't realise they are making music. Perhaps playing music to them is like answering Math questions for an exam(the concert). If you get 75% of them right, you get your A1. And it doesn't matter if your handwriting(tone) is hell-forsaken as well.

This issue needs to be addressed because I believe that a person will naturally stay away from bad sounds; i'm talking about audience and even the player him/herself.

pirates of the CarriFeAn

After hearing it from SH and Barber, I checked my email and realised that in the meeting that I did not attend, whoever in the meeting has managed to morph my SYF concert idea into their use. Here's the interesting idea.

GENUS is going to charge 500 bucks for doing workshops with Sec. schools participating in the SYF, of course, with respect to their SYF pieces. And the money earned is going to be used to support the arrival and lodging of the german group performing with GENUS next June.

I'm a bit annoyed because, the workshop idea was one of the proposals I submitted to Jacey for Xpose's concert. I have also talked about it with Robert once when he called me regarding the concert plans for GENUS. What I had in mind was that, we invite students(the good ones) to perform with us, do a bit of piece analysis and technique stuff with them in a few sessions. In turn, they purchase the tickets for our concert.

Anyway, it didn't feel right when they use my proposal for their own use without asking. Much less it's when part of the money earned goes to Robert's composition and the German group. I mean, CFA should pay for Robert's composition if they want it to be premiered.

Why should the players fund-raise for the conductor's composition?

How can GENUS charge for workshops, considering their standard now?
(I think some JC/schools are better loh.)

Local band instructors may charge up to 1000 bucks per month. and that's like 3 sessions per week, each rehearsal is 3 hours or more. Most of them have diplomas or degrees in their instrument. We charge $500 for one session??? Zen Hai Siu Sei Yarn....

Ventilating

One of my old acquaintances is now a band/instrument instructor. Free lancing I suppose.
He quitted from school teaching.

In a way, I kind of feel that's a very nice thing to do actually. And I wondered if I'd ever be put in any kind of position to quit my job and do some work involving music. In some way, I admire/envy him.
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Anyway, I am again plagued with rehearsal timing problems. Sincerely, I want things to work out. I need to work with people to rehearse pieces and others need people to help in the sectionals; I'm so tired of this bouncing problem. It's like you are trying your best to do something better and something keeps tugging you back to the same problem, as if it was I who CREATED the problem.
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There's something seriously wrong la. We are like picking pieces depending of availability. Whatever happened to the sourcing and planning of repertoire? It's like...

"Ok we need one more piece."

"ok let's see what we have in the cabinet."

"Ok this will do."

And we wait for the next performance and we go on another repertoire panic.

We have like a world-class conductor/composer, 2 tutors and none can generate something new!?!?!?

I tell you ah... cantonese say "MOH NGAN TAI" ah....
like sibei sian right?

I cannot understand it, and so I give up on it. It's like working with musicians who are not ready to INSPIRE/MOTIVATE the group members. It's that kind of mind set. - "Just do my job and whatever lah."

I just cannot stand the "get it done and over with" mentality.

While I am constantly sourcing for new stuff for Xpose, I simply comprehend why others cannot do the same. Aiya... talk also SAI HEI....

七剑

Haha... my 7-string guitar has finally arrived. Just picked it up yesterday!
The sound is pretty decent, the 7-string bass sounds a little like contrabass though. I was running through the notes in "Waltz of the flowers" and suddenly realised that there was a fret extension up to the 22nd fret! High D!

Previously I asked Yudi to help me ask if they made extension up to high C, Yudi got back to me to say that the asturias people don't do it. It was a little disappointing, since I thought I was making the guitar for the quartet, might as well solve all the range problems we encountered in our scores. But hey... I was so surprised to find the extension done nicely and beyond what we needed. Hahaha...

Must thank Shuhann for helping a lot in this... the looking and sourcing for the guitar, the negotiations and everything else. Without his grizzly intervention, I probably would be guitar-less for still quite some time yet.

Potential

It was fun taking my kids for band practice today. Quite annoyingly, one of the lousiest sections are the flutes(ya my instrument right...). They are so out of tune, with such thin tone, brrrr.... can't help but *blink blink blink* at them... The clarinets are next to be grilled. Only the saxophones are good.

The brasses are really good too. Are they easier to master at teenage years?
Actually these kids quite a good sound, considering they come from a neighbourhood school with limited funds to provide them with instructors and all. Just for the record, they only have 2 instructors, one is the conductor and doubling as instructor, the other can only teach Brass.

I've been trying to convince the teacher-in-charge to move them to a concert band structure, currently a military/marching band make-up. But ya... again money is the concern. They are going to need the double reeds and the String Bass. And who's gonna teach them right? Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

Speech therapy over the phone

Long weekends are no good for me. It takes a great deal of energy to re-start that momentum of school-going, early-morning waking etc. In between the many errands to run and lessons to carry out, I could still steal time off to do a in-house lunch delivery. Ok, not so bad. I'm actually becoming more and more mortal.

Just had a conversation with Robert over the phone. My oh my, I wonder how Wai or any of those comm guys does it. It's like listening to a native Japanese speak english over the telcos, wooo... I could hardly pick up what he was saying for the first 3 minutes. He was telling me about stuff and I was just trying NOT to say something completely off. Fortunately, my aural adaptation system was fully activated 3 minutes later, and all was smooth, ya maybe he slowed down a little too. Anyway, it was fun speaking to him.

There's so little time to do my "unfinished" arrangements. Sometimes I just wish there's someone to help me deal with the sibelius keying while i rattle off how I want the arrangement to go. Do they rent anyone or anything that can do this???

Everyone is fond of....

This is too good!

龙门吉他室内乐团

Dragon Gate Guitar Ensemble, interesting name there. And these folks are not bad leh... they don't sound professional but certainly rather experienced. Good sound and nice technique too.

I noticed they are all quite elderly(right?), which actually tickled me...
Can you imagine that they are like "year 30" in GENUS? Hahhahaa =)

Their arrangements sound quite Niibori, only they shifted certain parts to the instrument parts they have available. Remember ZQ's difficult high arpeggio in Malaguena? They used an alto to play it. So in essence, the parts are split and jumbled.







Encore!!!!

ASEAN Song of Unity

I'm dumping this here in case some of you out there have not heard of this before.

To die for

Watch the conductor, the first few bars are to die for... what comes after is quite amusing too.

GENUS @ Toa Payoh

Robert instructing the groups...

All perked up and attentive

The numbers are impressive...

Tried to do paranomic photographing, a little odd right? Perspective not appropriate since I'm standing on the right...

A little bit more about the rehearsals with TP counterparts. I always wonder who is the conductor for their group; perhaps he/she did not emphasise the importance of following the conductor. Our guys are pretty good at it, but not as clean in the preparation for HuanYing Vanakkam. Complacency?

TP's sound is very forthcoming and direct. It's a good thing because they don't have projection problems, but it also emphasizes their mistakes because they are too technical and not as musically aware of rhythm and tempi. GENUS produces careful and clean sounds, but some of the players have such a timid projection that it hardly brings forth any element of forte, hence limiting in expression and voice leading through the instrument.

Shucks can't get into backstage. Must be that AnyPig la. She's afraid I'll dirty the dressing room. Drats. Is there an encore telecast anytime soon?

Sleepy Hollow

I've been such a sleepyhead lately. What I mean is I can literally lie down on the floor and sleep for hours, yup, no pillow or blankets. At my workplace, I can sleep sitting on the chair too.

I don't like to sleep so much, but yes, I like to sleep. So just wondering whether it's a good thing or not...
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It's been a while since I got out of the country. Not seeing and experiencing new ideas and things creates a hollow in me. There was a time I travelled a lot and was pleased to settle for a few quiet holidays. I think it's time to go again.

Anyway, there's still one thing in my head which I've not done. Backpacking!

I spoke to Raj about his recent trip to Japan, and I'm hoping he's keen to return there in December. I promised to sponsor my aunt on a trip to Nippon so most probably will set sail. Jin has mentioned before that he might make a trip there too... so I wonder if all this could tie up into a nice holiday?

The call

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder
till it was a battle cry
I'll come back when you call me
No need to say goodbye

Just because everything's changing
doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try know who your friends are
as you head out to the war

Pick a star on the dark horizon
and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye
you'll come back when it's over
no need to say goodbye

now we're back to the beginning
it's just a feeling and no one knows yet
Just because they can't feel it too
doesn't mean you have to forget

Let you memories grow stronger and stronger
till they're before your eyes
You'll come back when they call you
no need to say goodbye
You'll come back when they call you
no need to say goodbye