Jazzpiration

Jazzpiration was a huge success, and i thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I think thanks are in order...

to band-mates Boyle, Chermaine, Gao Yuan, Sara, Tania - Thanks for putting up with me. You people are wonderful. Thanks also for the smiles and reassurance - i really needed that at times.

to other jazz club people who also worked tremendously hard for the concert. Especially the j1 bands - kelly's band and sneha's band, who've had to learn everything in slightly under 4 months. I know what it feels like.

to the seniors for teaching us everything in such a short time, and organising everything. And also for still being very, very l33t.

to the senior-seniors (or basically Mark) who came down to teach us stuff despite having NS.

to classmates from 07S03N. Class <3! Thanks for putting up with my complete non-functioningness these 2 weeks, and for covering for all my undone tutorials, assignments, all the lectures i've missed, and for lending me money to buy coffee. Also, for buying tickets and supporting.

On a more personal level, i need to thank God for everything that went right, and some more for everything that didn't. Yay to Sara for instant pre-concert prayer meeting. And perhaps most of all, i want to thank God that it's over.

adam

EASTER !

Easter is wonderful.

I feel inexplicably happy today, which doesn't happen often to people like me. :D I even used an emoticon in a blog post, woot.

I guess it started in the morning. Woke up on decidedly the right side of the bed, and even no breakfast before church didn't dent my spirits like it usually does. The grin stayed on through easter mass (which is the best mass of the year. trust me on this. My heart does a little jump whenever the choir sings 'Easter song' no matter how out-of-tune, out-of-time, sleepy and drugged they are. ) We had to stand up too because the church was too crowded, but somehow it didn't matter. Verily we are slaves to our own negativity- the amount of good things that happen to you is proportionate to how happy you are.

Went out to meet some relatives who're over from indonesia/australia for lunch at Sizzler's. DECADENCE! The fast is over, truly. Then just shopped for awhile, ate more sushi than should be legally allowed, and went home.

Easter is really great. I must be allowed to say that again. Easter is really great. There was something horrible and looming on my chest for the entirety of lent, and suddenly it's off and it's great. Maybe that's supposed to happen, hmm...

adam

Christ is risen, Hallelujah!
Happy Easter to you. That means you.

it's a small world...

I returned to my old house today with my dad. We're moving back in a couple of months, and since the tenants have moved out we now have to refurbish the place, which is in quite an awful state.

I'll say it quickly: the place has shrunk. I've caught myself many times in the past year dreaming of going back to the vast open-spaces, the tall angled ceiling, the endless corridor, the attic with so many doors. I grew up in that place, and growing up somewhere kind of entails the assignment of the size of imagination to places that seem so little now.

Going back was eye-opening - I felt like it was no longer a house, but just a miniature scale model. I could remember everything about the rooms, the corners, the precise shade of blue that the toilet is. I could say, here. Here is where i sat and stared at the way the wall meets the ceiling. Here I lay down sideways on my upper bunk and dreamt of leaping off, sprouting wings before I hit the ground. But it no longer holds any fascination for me; I can almost reach the ceiling by jumping now. It didn't feel like it was the real house; just a scale model for me to point and say, here, here are where my childhood memories are.

I walked through the house. They've chopped down the tree here (it's dying, they said) and that thought seemed to present an ominous symbolism in my mind. I couldn't help but think that ten years ago I would never have walked somewhere assigning ominous symbolisms to dead trees.

It saddens me to think that I've now lost something. One might say, with added height comes a diminished perception of size. With added experience comes a diminished perception of importance. Rubbish, I think - I squatted down and the garden didn't seem any bigger. No matter how I flattened myself against the stucco wall the corridor refused to stretch to encompass infinity.

Have I lost my childhood? No, I still remember everything as vividly as the day; and those were (in hindsight) some of my happiest. But that is sentimental nonsense.

The house is still there. I think i've grown with self-awareness, awareness that my body occupies some space that is far from negligible, and now the rooms are smaller for it. I've lost the carefree idealism (which expands like an ideal gas to fill all available space). I've lost the ability to colour and fill, with the infinity of imagination, the white hard walls.

I've grown up, one might say. But has the world really just gotten smaller?

adam

be happy ALL THE TIME

Be happy all the time.

Because if you aren't happy at any moment, you may die the next second of an aneurysm and then you'd die miserable. How much does that suck?
Even if I've had the shittiest day of my life, the thing I should do is sit down somewhere and force myself to be happy. The human capability for self-deceit is one of the few truly infinite things in this world; even so in most cases there's no need for such.
If there's the tiniest shard of good news buried in my angst-ridden soul i assure you there's some way I can be happy about it.

adam

angst!

It seems RJ has awakened a wellspring of angst in me. Maybe it's the environment, the girls, the competition and the need to impress people.

Lol. Since when did angst impress people?

Anyway, I long for days long past when I was younger, carefree-er, perhaps slightly more conflicted, and far less sane (yes 3n, you have been spared the worst. haha. ) The most surprising thing about life so far is to realise that I harbour and treasure a little part of myself, perhaps buried deeply sometimes, that is proud to be just a little mad. I think to be completely sane and well-adjusted is to give yourself up to the world and become part of another inanity.

I believe you should keep a part of yourself separate, always questioning, and always laughing, always cynical, always slightly dead to the world, and always slightly disjointed, malfunctioning, slightly disconnected and dysfunctional and slightly disillusioned. It gives me a perspective on things. I think people who are truly sane are also truly silly. Then again, people who are truly mad are also perhaps not worth being.

"I went mad for a while,' said Ford, 'did me no end of good." - Life, the Universe, and Everything by douglas adams

adam

All along the watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
This song just exploded in my head. A combination of Bob Dylan's inspired songwriting and Jimi Hendrix's furious guitar playing, it manages to be cacophonous without being heavy, and Jimi manages to capture the quiet melancholy even while playing loud and fast.

A dead simple 3-note riff behind the entire song really drives the song but never gets boring because Jimi keeps the lead part interesting with constant changes in rhythm, register and texture, jumping from a spacey, echoing phrase to a dramatic fuzz-wah and many other changes which manage not to be gimmicky.

In today's scene, with many musicians doing the hundred and two-hundred beats per minute, and many other effects made available to technology, it's easy to discount simple lyricism and musical sense. But while he may not be as fast as modern players, the genius of Jimi Hendrix is timeless.

adam

one more member

The call must go out again.
I'm looking for a vocalist for my band, tentatively referred to as No Thesis Statement. Contact me personally for samples of the kind of stuff we'll be playing.
Also, I'm looking for a keyboardist/saxophonist or blues harp (that's harmonica to the rest of you). Improvisation is necessary, and preferably you should be able to sing, especially if you're a keyboardist. [because keyboardists are cumbersome and you must be able to do something if there is a) no keyboard part or b) no keyboard]

Respond please. If you know anybody who can do the above, even if they can only sing, please tell them i'm looking for a vocalist, even a temporary one.

Current band members are Huang Lu and Jian Wei.

adam

The rest of the mosaic festival was predictably amazing. After the Blues event, it started on wednesday with the Pat Metheny concert. The man is a genius.
After starting with some light acoustic pieces, he quickly melded into serious, avant-garde jazz. Admittedly I didn't really understand the more experimental pieces, but the rest of his set list was... brilliant, to put it one way, and enlightening, to put it another way. I didn't know so much sound (and so many sounds) could come out of 3 instrumentalists. Also, the double bassist is scary. At the end of the concert he received a standing ovation and performed 2 encores - I believe the second one was entirely made up on the spot - check for a guitar lead-in, check for 12-bar-blues progression. Amazingly, by the end of the piece, the whole band was marvellously synchronised.

I am awed, impressed, and determined.

adam

(more on the other events later)

Thanks Chermaine for arising new feelings of self-doubt in me. I stopped writing because writing is a silly, facetious, sel f-indulgent thing to do and I only ever did it to impress people not because I actually enjoyed it and even if I became good at impressing people I gained nothing from it except other people's adoration which I don't need currently because my ego is swollen enough as it is and I'm trying to focus on more important things.

I needed to get that out of my system. Who the hell am I kidding?

Haiku 03

watching from my window
the quietness
of the leaves

-adam

wish list!

I'm looking for the following albums, if anyone would like to buy/lend me, that would be really, really amazing.

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - the 'beano' album. i don't know what else it's called. it's got Eric Clapton reading a copy of 'beano' on the front.
Cream - Wheels of Fire
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and other assorted love songs
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (both of these are VERY difficult to find, according to mark)
Eric Johnson - Bloom
Eric Johnson - Tones
Anything by the following artists:
B.B king
Pat metheny
Chick Corea/Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane
Yes
Pink Floyd
Stevie Ray Vaughan (anything but the 'Texas Flood' album, i have that.)
Louis Armstrong
The Electromagnets (that's Eric Johnson's band... apparently quite difficult to find too)
Alien Love Child (also Eric Johnson's band)
Wes Montgomery

the blues is a feeling

Paul Ponnudorai has restored my faith in the Singapore music scene. I went to watch the "Blues Men' event at the Mosaic Music festival yesterday. Quite stunning. He possesses a huge, fantastic stage presence that i've never before seen in an actual Singaporean, not even Winston Hodge (sorry Mr. Hodge); the audience was quite helpless other than to stand around and scream and clap. Performing is about more than good music, evidently.
All 3 performances (Tania, Paul Ponnudorai, ublues) had something to offer, musically- all excellent singers, guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and yes, harmonicas and saxophones. These are no laid-back musicians, there's plenty of screaming, hopping, just dancing about, and silly theatrical tricks. In the end though, i was very impressed, and thoroughly satisfied. Paul puts it right - 'the Blues is a feeling. It's an attitude'

adam

The RJ band concert and jazz performance at Suntec are looming. Sometimes (when it's really quiet) I think that I've really gone in the deep end and I'm going to drown in my stupidstupidstupid commitments. NO! I'm sick of being useless. I'm going to get something done, even if it kills me.

In other news, jazz today didn't happen, because the J2s had some surprise GP common test (just how do you achieve that?) but I showed up anyway with my guitar and jammed a bit with huang lu and kelly. I think (despite what he says) huanglu's picking up the bass pretty quickly - I've asked him to join my band already since terence is giving up. So far the lineup is
Jian Wei - drums
Huang lu - bass
Myself - guitar
- making for a nice power trio. Now we just need to round off with a vocalist... i'm not necessarily looking for quality of voice here. RJC has plenty of good singers, but scarce few frontmen. I need a frontman. Charisma, personality, and if you can scream like Kurt Cobain, that's a bonus too. We're playing mostly blues, maybe a bit of early rock, but I want music to stay focused on one thing at a time.
All of the above is subject to change. If anyone is interested in fronting for my band, you can tag here or email me.

adam

product placement

Franz Ferdinand is so horribly, unforgiveably infectious, that they should be made illegal.

--

Dear Diary,
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the harder I try to put something wonderful and profound and philosophical here, the more and more of an idiot i'm going to look like - and maybe I can't think at all, but I'm just pretending. Do you think that if I try too hard I ruin the art or the flair or just that magic of it... or am I trying too hard already?
The irony of it is, the more and more I try to tell you about it coherently the less and less I know what I'm talking about - have you felt that before? Sometimes I think that the world is too caught up creating profundity to stop and listen to themselves blither in a horribly, beweaponedly silly manner.
Dear diary, sometimes it's tempting to think that there's no such thing as honesty- only different degrees of fabrication and contrivance. But that's a horrid thing to think - let me tell you something. You know, sometimes, you can look at the world and what a terrible time other people are having because they're so forsakenly blind and then you think, 'wow, that's terribly silly', and then - you suddenly realise, wow, that's ok. I can still live on. Sometimes being the most profound doesn't matter. And that's the most wonderful feeling.

adam

Talentime's over. The results came as a massive surprise, especially since the judges gave us one of the lowest scores (if not THE lowest). Okay, let's not fool ourselves- i think we screwed up quite badly, and the good results could be due to any number of things quite rather unrelated to how well we played.

I think that a musician's ability falls under two important spheres: technical ability with the instrument, and ensemble ability to work with other musicians - and for last night I quite feel that we somehow didn't manage to click together like during rehearsals. The judges said it quite well- we looked like 5 individuals on stage. Gah.

Anyway, immense respect for the other performances, especially the other 2 bands who I think are MUCH more deserving (esp. the first one), and will definitely have to tighten up for the next gig.


adam

EDIT: 7 good things about this week.
Standard tuning is good.
Listening to the blues is good (die rockers!)
Single-coil pickups are good.
Working cable jacks are good.
Colours which aren't black are good.
Gain set to anything less than 9 is good.
Best of all, not having to play the bloooooody riff from 'slither' is good. I have no idea Dave Kushner does it all the time and doesn't go completely barmy.

Metheny vs G

http://www.carrothers.com/pat_metheny_vs_kenny_g.htm

This is hilarious. Pat Metheny slams 'smooth jazz' and their sax-blowing head honcho, Kenny G. Okay, it was a little shocking to hear this sort of comments from a professional musician, but it WAS on a relatively personal forum, and I completely agree, so Pat is forgiven.

Apparently, Pat was majorly pissed off when Kenny G overdubbed himself over a louis armstrong track. He calls it 'defilement', and "spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over" all of which I agree with.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is (as Metheny mentions) immensely frustrating to musicians as a whole to see people with the fewest bits of talent making it successful. No, I wouldn't exactly hold it against them for being successful, but if the world has come to this state then perhaps musicians (and other people) should take a couple steps back and see where exactly our entire culture is headed - and I can assure you that it's a fairly ugly place.

Simple Plan is like the Kenny G of our generation. Again, nothing against them for making money - after all, there are PEOPLE who buy their records. However, it's kind of sad to see grown men still making music for 13-year olds, and perhaps even sadder to see people of MY generation listening to it. It's kind of frustrating, as a budding musician and writer, to see that this kind of standard is given even the tiniest iota of professional credit.
I honestly hope Simple Plan stays well within their teeny-bopper circuit, because if they trample on the long and noble roots of contemporary and classical music like Kenny G did to Louis Armstrong, there will be an uproar.
Please, sell your records, but don't step on my music.

adam

I only write this because the pain on my fingertips has rendered me incapable of practicing.

I was doing my daily practice, having finished the scales and the finger exercises and the playing of the 'crazy little thing called love' solo over and over and over again. I turned up something by Clapton, I think it was 'Crossroads' or something. It is, if you don't know, a pretty trepidating song as in the past I've found myself pretty much unable to get my fingers round the fast bits, so I was feeling a bit trepidated. I figured, what the heck, screw Clapton's solo, I'll improvise something. That wasn't out of the ordinary. The track started.

It was a full half a minute into the song before it occured to me that I was already playing. The notes just flowed out. I wasn't looking at the fretboard, I wasn't squinting at a tab, or trying to figure what to play next. I escalated, moving up the fretboard to higher notes.

Of course, at this point, the surprise pretty much ruined the rest of the song, but it was really... odd. The most surprising thing was that it sounded good. I wasn't shredding or playing faster than my normal or anything, but every phrase suddenly seemed new and inventive, I was making intervals and licks that I'd never really done before.

I guess as a guitarist the hardest bit is to forget that you're playing a guitar in the first place, and get the music out. Everybody's got music in their head, but when it comes out that's a really great thing. Anyway, I didn't get the feeling back for the next hour or so, so obviously trying doesn't help.

My fingers didn't start hurting until after I took a bath. Now they feel like they've been sanded flat.

adam

I can't help wondering if I've already given up on writing. It used to be something I did so often, for so many reasons, but somehow I don't enjoy it anymore, and, well, recreationally anyway, I can't bring myself to do anything I don't enjoy anymore.
I'd like to believe that writing requires a certain breed of anal-retentiveness which I somehow no longer possess, but that's bunk, even if it's quite amusing to think about.
In any case, i read some of my old blog posts and (gasp) some of my old poetry a few days back. It isn't as bad as I thought it would be, so I guess I really was kind of good for something in the last few years.

Gay music!

I've realised something -

Many of my favourite composers, writers and musicians are/were all gay. Gay as in homosexual. Let's list them out...
Tchaikovsky
Francis Poulenc
Oscar Wilde
Freddie Mercury (who was also Indian, and in fact one of the first famous rock stars with Asian descent)

In fact, many of their works strike me as hauntingly familiar, but until I've completed my degree in Sociology i shall remain unable to qualify this strange similarity.

It's like they share some strange, iconoclastic, outsider perspective which is lighthearted and somehow angst-free. Perhaps it has to do with the ostracism and prejudice experienced by gays historically. Then again, many traditionally ostracised and prejudiced-against groups have also contributed notably to the arts, and a shocking lot of them write incomprehensible angsty rubbish. What makes this set of homosexuals different?

Ideas pls.
and I am NOT GAY.

adam

Just had meetings for my 3 different CCAs on thursday and friday.

Writers Inc meeting on thursday. We played some ice-breaker games. There was this interesting game called 'name mix-up' which is sort of like Whacko (you have to call out someone else's name when your name is called) but you have to respond to the name on a piece of paper which you find on your chair. It's more confusing than it sounds. We were all so lifeless! Maybe we were just tired or something.

On Friday, Raffles rock auditions at 3.45. I of course didn't prepare anything, and scrapped my last-minutep plans to play 'smoke on the water' when I discovered somebody else (Edmund) was auditioning with Van Halen's 'Eruption' and some piece by Joe Satriani. Clearly, my technique loses here. So I grabbed some other guy named Boyle (sp?) and we jammed 2 minutes of improvised electric blues. ><. I think I panicked halfway through and my soloing kind of lost its feel. Oh well, they seemed impressed.
Overall i've seen a few Raffles Rock performances: not entirely impressive to be honest, but I'm in it for the CIP. We were told that we'd go once a week or once a fortnight to teach people about music, and I'm all for that.

Jazz workshop at 5.00 on the same day. I went early and we jammed for a bit - it turns out there's 2 different versions of 'the girl from ipanema' with completely different chord progressions, so there was quite a bit of confusion. The workshop opened with the J2s performing a brilliant rendition of 'the way you look tonight' in various styles (I think I still like the Bossa Nova best), following which we split up according to our instruments for more detailed lessons.
I just want to register how impressed I am with this club. They're a bunch that really knows what they're doing and what they don't, they're committed to learning. It's almost scary to conceive that the J2s will be gone in a year, and that's the amount of time we juniors have to replace them.
Anyway, auditions are next week. Will be practicing like a madman, and Wang had better follow suit.

-adam

I have a group on my msn messenger labeled "Raffles". Today that list has a female contact on it, in fact, several. I'm not trying to be misogynistic or anything, but for so long 'raffles' was just a guy affair, and now having both genders included feels a little weird.
Then again, I've been in a guy's school for so long... maybe I'm the weird one, not the circumstances.

Food for thought, haha.

by the way, orientation was great.



adam