Categories
Announcement Music Journal

This Saturday Our Band Will Perform At Bali Culture @ Orientus

This Saturday, April 24th at about 9.30 pm, our band “No Eye Candy” will perform at Bali Culture @ Orientus for a 40 minutes session.  Please drop by for a good time.  We shall have a full band playing original songs.  Expect crazy guitar licks from Jason, cool bass line from Cynthia, mad drumming from Wieke who has recently returned from Middle East (this week!), and I will take you through what inspired me to write those songs.

To get to Bali Culture @ Orientus, follow the direction in this link.  Bali Culture is a restaurant where you can chill out and enjoy your meal and drink.  We will start playing in the indoor stage once the football match ends (at about 9.30 pm in my reckoning).  If you wish to dine in Bali Culture, drop me an email and I will do my best to reserve a table for you.  Be there early and we can catch up before our show!

See you there … xoxo No Eye Candy!

Categories
Music Journal

Our Band’s Rehearsal Gig At Bali Culture

It has been a while since our band “No Eye Candy” has performed live.  And we are delighted to be invited to jam at Bali Culture @ Orientus (click here for their website), just when we were wondering if our band manager Selrol is still on top of the game … 

Our guitarist Jason has suggested that we shall have a rehearsal gig first, to get acquainted with the environment, before calling in the our troop of supporters.  I am not sure about Jason’s side.  Quite honestly, I only have my sister, my sister, and my sister.  That is if she can have an evening off from taking care of my niece.

Bali Culture @ Orientus is near Jalan Kayu, next to the highway TPE exit, and near to Seletar Camp.  Out of nowhere and there you are, an indoor restaurant and an outdoor alfresco area next to a swimming pool.  Football fans would love this place.  Flat panel televisions with live broadcast.  Good ambiance both indoor and outdoor.  You can check out their menus on their website.  We had a cheese fondue for sharing as starter and a chocolate fondue for dessert.  For main course, I had a nasi goreng.  I enjoy the food and happy to visit again.  Looking back, I could have ordered the vegetarian pasta.  It didn’t come across my mind that I could find vegatarian food there.  Now I know.

On the same evening, their band “Pick-up Band” was playing after our performance.  The guest drummer is only 9 years old (I reckon)!  And boy, he can drum.  Jaw dropping.  I mean, he can really drum, like real.  When we first stepped into the restaurant, Jason mentioned that we should recruit the little boy as our drummer.  Now I know why.  And the rest of the musicians and guests had so much fun jamming on stage, rotating their roles (now you know why the band is so named).  During their performance, our bassist Cynthia said to me, “I can imagine myself hanging out in here”.

A big thumb-up to Selrol for arranging this.  Also thanks to Bali Culture for having us.  You guys are insanely supportive.  And to my avid readers, I will put up a note here once we get a confirmation on our next slot.

PS. To our drummer Wieke who is still in Middle East: We miss you and wish you were here!

Categories
Music Journal My Music

Rumor Has It That “No Eye Candy” Is Performing Again …

Latest Update (10/3/2010) – Our band will not be performing for this event due to differences in terms.  However, please stay tuned as we shall be getting another gig some time this month or next.

And it is a rumor because our band has yet to receive a confirmation on our preferred time slot.  Tentatively, we will perform at Tiong Bahru Plaza on March xx evening.  Try to be there, please?  It’s for charity.  In the coming days, I will write more about our music, the event, and more.

About a year ago, we seem to have overdone a bit for the Music for Hope charity event, in terms of preparation.  With Wieke’s help, we had rewritten the song arrangement.  We drove all the way up to Malaysia just to add a few extra practice sessions with our band member.  We looped in quite a few of our friends from different locations for improvement pointers.  There were a few unknowns too.  Our guitarist Jason was unsure if he could be there due to national commitment, Wieke was unsure if she could be there due to work commitment; I was unsure about how performing live would be like; we were unsure if we could put together something decent in time.

But we did it.

This time is the complete opposite.  The request came in like less than 2 weeks before the event.  I picked up my guitar on the evening our band manager Selrol asked if we are interested.  Surprisingly, the songs are still in my head, both lyrics and chords, after months of inactivity.  Cynthia seems to remember her bass line too.  This Saturday three of us will get together, for one practice session.  That’s probably the only session we have before the gig.

*     *     *     *     *

Looking back, the intense preparation of the previous gig may have worn us out, worn me out.  Our band “No Eye Candy” has been in hiatus since then; I have not written many songs since then.  I wonder if these events relate.

Latest update?  Our drummer Wieke has left Singapore for good.  Left our band for now, I would say?  Knowing what she pursues, I am happy for Wieke.  And here we are, back to a 3-piece band.  Jason, Cynthia, and I.  More than 6 years we have been jamming together.  Hope to see more years to come.  As for now, my eyes are on the March 13.

*     *     *     *     *

Calling volunteers for band tour bus, photography team, videography team, and groupie “logistic” handling team.

Categories
Music Journal

Under the Dreamy Orange Light I Restrung My Guitar

My Classical Guitar

Repetitive tasks don’t bother me, like the restringing of my guitar.  Like jogging, cooking dishes, driving from A to B, even the ripping of hundreds of compact disks that I am still doing.  Therapeutic activities open up space in my mind allowing me to think quietly, in the absence of the constant distractions.  Just me and the activities that only I am doing.  Same goes to blogging and reading my friends’ blogs.

Professional musicians restring their guitars at least once a month, to maintain the brightness of the sound quality.  I wish I am at that level to spend S$10 a month buying the strings.  To be frank, I don’t enjoy restringing guitar that much and I always end up with a good sweating.  Some people can do it really well, like a piece of art.  All the strings tugged nicely as though there is an aura of musical professionalism by merely holding the instrument.  I don’t have that skill.  I am a pragmatic artist.  Handicap in a sense that I focus my limited talent to the heart, and not the form.  As you can see in everything thing I do or create.

I wouldn’t even notice that there was a broken string had there be no jamming session this Sunday.  My 5 years old Alhambra classical Spanish guitar occupies one sofa seat space (one good thing about having a blog site is that my life is digitally stored and I can recall the dates quite easily provided that I can find the entry).  Whether it is a less than hundred buck guitar or a S$1,500 Alhambra guitar, I leave it outside the case and within reach.  My band‘s guitarist would flip if he was to know that I so harshly treat my Alhambra guitar – under direct sunlight from my windows and the daily change of humidity as I turn on and off my air conditioner.  The hassle of taking my guitar in and out of the case will certainly dampen any desire to practice or write my music.

Life as a blogger as such.  This morning I woke up having a strong urge to write something along the topic of “practice as though you are performing and perform as you are practicing”.  I remember I have read it somewhere.  In no way I am that smart to figure that out.   It is either from a book that I have read long time ago, re-read as I worked overseas, or from one of the business books that I have read.  These days, as a humble McGraw-Hill book reviewer, I do have access to more business books than usual.  After internalizing the idea, I find it hard to remember the source.

So I nearly hurt my back trying to find that one book, which inspired me as an amateur artist, which I intend to share the title with my readers.  I have so many books but they are all piled inside the wardrobe of the common bedroom.  There is a need to build my dream bookshelf, I know.  “Breakfast is ready!” shouted Cynthia from the living room.  Just give me a moment, I know it has got to be somewhere.  I just know.

The title is “The Art of Practicing – A Guide to Making Music from the Heart” by Madeline Bruser.  I am not sure if you can still find it in your favorite bookstores.  But Amazon.com is still selling it.  By the time I found the book, excitedly satisfied as I was, I forgot what I was trying to write.  I guess I wanted to confess that I have not been writing or practicing music as much as I wish to.  Disappointment with myself?  Certainly.  Maybe my band has not been progressing much, maybe my abstinent to alcohol for close to 18 months has rid all my creativity away, maybe the increased number of hours of joint activities Cynthia and I have limited my practising opportunities.

Or maybe my current job does not give me the same level of pain as my previous one.  I still take pride of writing that song “I Erase Your Face” at the tail end of my career with my previous company.  I miss songwriting.  And I hope to write at least one song in the year 2009.  Now that my guitar is reborn with awesomely bright and shiny new strings, there is a strong magical attraction between its space within ready to be filled with some good sound vibration and my urge that needs to be musically articulated.

But first, I need to sort out the day 1 of the photos taken in our Spain holiday trip for tomorrow’s publication.  Life as a blogger as such.

Categories
Jamming Session Music Journal

Parallelism Between the Various Art Forms – And My Band Resumes Our Practice

My beloved Gibson guitar and I, in the comfort of my home, a photo taken by Cynthia

My life as such: our public performance in The Heeren – or rather the practice sessions leading to that one event – must have been draining to our band members.  Three months we were in hiatus.  It was the Christmas, the New Year, the Chinese New Year, and for me, much of my time has been devoted to photography.

As I was leaving the jamming studio Stone Jamz on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon carrying 20 kg worth of band gear, the band next door was playing the exact same bass line as what Cynthia has been playing in one of our songs.  Down to the exact same set of chords.  Either our drummer Wieke or guitarist Jason commented that we shall start to copyright our music.  I laughed heartily.  Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was not; maybe it was influence, maybe it was not.

Recently, I have been hit with a revelation that I can pick on the things that I have learned while mastering on one art form and apply them to another.  It is efficiency, it is synergy, depending on how you see it.  It does not make the pain of hard work and frustration goes away.  But cross-discipline pollination of concepts and ideas and techniques seem to have by chance or by design invoked an out-of-the-box experience when I am stuck staring at the same art form for too long (see Medici Effect on innovation by cross-discipline interaction).

So what do I mean?

The concepts of subject standing out from the background (photography), every piece of work begins with a title (music and writing), a common theme and consistency across an album (photography and music), interesting variation in details (painting), mood (music), and technical skill (all).  Maybe next time before I take a photo, I shall have a title in mind, enter into a certain mood.  Maybe next time I write a piece of music, I shall consciously think of what my subject is going to be, what should be in the background.  Maybe next time I paint a picture, I shall apply the technical skill of the photography.  Maybe next time I write, I shall add a lot of interesting variations on not only what is in focus, but out of focus like what I would be doing when I paint.

After each photo session, I would have to sit down and go through hundreds if not more than a thousand pictures and see which ones are the keepers and what need to be done at my computer.  After each jamming session, I would have to do the same for the hours of recorded materials.  It is hard work, it can be frustrating.  Instead of looking at the color histogram, I look at the waveform of sound.  Unlike photos that I can make a decision to keep or to reject, what to work on at one glance, tidying up recording music materials take lots of patience in listening to each track from beginning to end, comparing to one track to another of the same song.  Instead of the highlight and shadow protection that I usually observe when I work on my photos, I apply sound compression to my recorded materials.  Same concept of bring out the details of the submerged creating a more balanced outcome.

My life as such: I still want my band to audition for Baybeats Singapore, a music festival.  Maybe for the year 201x, whatever x is going to be.

Related Entry: In Search for Styles – Of Photography, Oil Painting, Music Creation, and Writing

Categories
Memorable Events Music Journal My Favorite

Our Band Photos of Music for Hope 2008 Are Out!

Our band photographer Mark Lim has just broadcast the photos taken during our band No Eye Candy’s 30 minutes live performance at Hereen last evening.  It was his first concert shot and you have got to agree with me that these are great shots capturing the essence of our gig as well as the audience.  Good job Mark!  No Eye Candy loves you!  You have secured yourself a 5 years contract with the band with payment in the form of free access to our concerts and behind-the-scene shots!  What saying you?!

For those who wish to read our journey of this Music for Hope gig, feel free to follow the link to this tag.  It is one helluva journey and who knows what 2009 will bring?  And if you like the band photos, please drop by Mark’s website and give him a pat on his shoulder.  Thank you.

Click here for the photos taken during our little celebration after the gig.

Categories
Memorable Events Music Journal

The Hereen After – A Thank You Note

Yes!  Our band finally did it at The Hereen, a 30 minutes slot playing our own original music.  I have practically put all my other plans on hold for this Nov 29 event.  Being introduced as a local Singaporean band means a lot to me, though Jason the guitarist joked that my accent is not very Singaporean.  Ha!  (Note: The PJ Harvey shirt was a gift from Jason during one of his Australia trips as he knows that PJ Harvey has been a great influence to my music and I have been waiting for an appropriate occasion to wear it!) 

Click here for the photos shot during the performance.

Time now is close to two in the morning and I have no idea how long this post will be.  My intent is to write a simple thank you note, to take you through some of the behind-the-scene thoughts, and to share with you some of the pictures taken during the ‘celebration’ party.  Life as an artist as such.  One moment I was jumping up and down at the stage as a musician; another moment I was moving around the crowd with my rather gigantic camera.  But I am not complaining.  I enjoy art more than anything in the world.

Thank You Note

In no particular order, here we go.

  • I would like to give thanks to the Lord who give us humans the ability to create something so beautiful called music, and to give us the ability to appreciate music that transcends all barriers.
  • Thank you B Well for organizing “Music for Hope”.  I hope you do meet your fund raising target.
  • A big, huge, gigantic, enormous THANK YOU to all of you who took time out and be there.  You have no idea what it means to me (and us) to see familiar faces.  And your engagement is fantastic!  You guys have kept me going especially in the rather uncertain situation (see behind-the-scene).
  • To my friends who send in text messages / blog comments / Facebook comments / emails right before our gig, thank you for your warm wishes.  Not to worry if you were unable to turn up, I am sure No Eye Candy will play again.  Another place, another gig.
  • To the new faces of the crowd, thank you for being there.  I hope to see you again.  And I would like to hear from you too!  Do write to us or catch us for a face-to-face next time we meet.
  • To Tong Kiat, our band crew, Mark Lim, our band photographer, and Jason Seet my vocal coach, thank you for helping out.  You guys are the best!
  • I would like to thank my band – Cynthia, Jason, Selrol, and Wieke – in making my dream comes true, in making our dream comes true.  Nothing is more humbling than finally hatching this 14 years of songwriting hobby into a public performance.  I love you all!
  • Finally, I thank the Lord for the music talent bestowed onto me, the music talents of those surrounding me, and the lovely friends and families I have.  What more could I have asked for … perhaps good health, long life, and more gigs?

Behind-the-Scene Thoughts

1. On New Year Resolutions

Some people believe in New Year resolutions, some don’t.  In 2007, I have set a personal scorecard aimed to do a few things and one of which was to perform live.  In retrospect, it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.  Maybe my targets were a bit too high.  One third of what I set to do, I achieved in the same year.  Some of which, I have achieved in 2008 instead.  The learning point for me is that I may not have control over the timeline of when what I set to do will come true.  But if I set my heart to it, it will happen when opportunity meets preparation.

That brings forth the second point.  In 2008, I set a theme of “Do It”.  And it works wonder.  I think year 2008 must have been the busiest year as far as I can remember.  I hate to look back ten years later and say to myself: how I wish I could have done more.

2. On Beyond Practice

We have practiced hard for this gig.  At times I wonder if my band would ever get bored playing the same set of songs over and over again week after week.  Personally, I miss playing other songs of ours, with the drums.

We didn’t have high expectation on the sound system.  First, it is a charity event.  And second, we don’t have our own amplifiers like other bands do.  So we have to rely on what was available.

Turns out that although we have given our precise requirement months ago, Jason and I have to share the same guitar amplifier and that makes our guitars sounded pretty harsh and noisy.  And there were supposed to be two monitor speakers on stage that project our music back to the performers on stage – those didn’t work.  So I have to rely on that rather echo-ish faraway sound of my voice in attempting to hold the key.  Nothing beats a supportive crowd in a situation like this.

Overall I think we did OK.  Not stellar, but OK.  And certainly we will be back on stage one day, with better sound quality and delivery.  Stay tuned!

After Gig Celebration

Ahead of the pictures taken during our performance by Mark our band photographer that I will link to later, here are some of the pictures I took after our gig.

PS. That pretty necklace Cynthia wore for the gig was from Brüttal – don’t miss an upcoming entry on our Brüttal shopping experience when we last visited PJ Malaysia!

Categories
Music Journal Whacky Thoughts

Yet Another Road Trip, Yet Another Small Step Towards Our Goal

By the time you read this, Cynthia and I may have reached PJ Malaysia to meet up with Wieke for a band practice.  Nothing is going to slow us down for our November performance at the Heeren, Singapore.  Not even the temporary relocation of Wieke.

I have a theory I concocted decades ago and it has been recently supported by a research publication (look out for my upcoming book review).  It is not a complicated theory really.  More like an observation; a theory that I keep on verifying all these years.  In general, we need 12 years to master a skill by practicing it regularly and be good at it.  Depending on whether you are the half-filled or half-empty type of person, you either envy that someone who is what he or she is today and you are not.  Or if you pick up that skill today, at this very moment, 12 years later, you will get to somewhere you want to be now.  Because 12 years is usually what it takes from novice to adept.  And if you have the talent, the right guidance, and the right opportunity, you may become the innovator, define your own genre or domain of knowledge, and inspire the next generation leaving a legacy behind.

Why 12 years (the research result suggests a 10 years duration instead, which is close enough)?  I love to play music since young.  Having to put aside my (self-taught) passion with the piano due to my moving to UK for study, I picked up the guitar as my new hobby.  One day in UK, my good Malay friend played the lead guitar solo of “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” from beginning to end.  I was thoroughly impressed.  I asked how long he has been playing the electric guitar and he said 12 years.  At that very moment, I knew that if I was to start back then, I would be some sort of guitar hero 12 years later.  OK, I did try but didn’t quite get there.  I discovered my passion as a songwriter composing music via my guitar instead with close to 160 songs written today.  Since that day of “Sweet Child ‘O Mine”, 12 years of acquiring, refining, and mastering any given skillset sticks in my mind.

Some say life is a journey, not a destination.  But then, to me, there is not much of a journey other than aimless wandering if we don’t have a destination in some forms and shapes, is there?  I wish to continuously share the music that I create, music that I create with others.  That is my end game.  And this journey has its ups and its downs.  Perhaps all of us in the band are consultants by day, we have tons of healthy debates, high level brainstorming and visioning, and our never ending gap analysis.  No, we can’t do that.  That is beyond us.  Yes, we can try that next time.  That will sound good.  And in the mist of all these progress tracking, ad-hoc practicing, we go around doing our own things, busy with our other hobbies and commitments.  At times I would ask myself: Where are we heading?

I think the answer oscillates from online broadcast to live performance to just having a good time.  And for now, we have lined up three practice sessions for a weekend visit to Malaysia.  It should be fun.  As a bonus, I am meeting one of my long lost best friends whom I met in UK.  Gosh, he and I have been through so much.  He was there when my heart was shattered into million of pieces time after time.  I was there tried taking care of him whenever I can, even if I have to experience my first time being inside an ambulance on siren.  Thank you Facebook.

Unlike many things in life, you always have 24 hours in a day.  And baring any unforeseeable divine intervention, 12 years will lapse and one day you will look back and say: Had I started 12 years ago …

Categories
Music Journal My YouTube

Hella Good Is Hella Tough! Here Is Our Voodoo Mix

I did not wake up this morning and went, “Ah, I am going to make a video blog today”.  Our new drummer Wieke has made a request to play No Doubt’s “Hella Good” as she wishes to – in her own words – implement some of the ideas or techniques into our band’s materials.  So I spent some time last week to learn the song.  Boy, I am really not good at playing cover songs at all.  But I guess it is one for all, all for one.

Cynthia, our talented bassist, has decided to put aside part of her Sunday to figure out how Tony Kanal plays the bass line.  And I said to myself, why not make a video out of this little insignificant day of ours?  And we did jam on the National Day holiday after all – though it was just the two of us.

OK.  This version you see is just a rough demo.  The original intend is to record our interpretation of “Hella Good”, shoot it over to Wieke and Jason to do their parts.  On a side note, recording the acoustic sound of the Indonesian Gendang was not easy.  I think it turns out OK.  We joke that this version should be named as the “Voodoo Mix”.  The sound is so tribal!

Categories
Music Journal

Stripping My Own Song into Just Four Lines and an Orange Lit Valve That Glows Within – My First V-blog (Prelude) Episode 6

If you still don’t get it, don’t be concerned.  Most don’t.  I am terrible in communication.  Next week the video should be out – baring any unexpected exciting events that may appear from nowhere, that I am compelled to blog about, that push my most-don’t-get-it mini-series schedule to yet another week.

After I finished working on the 3 minutes video, I wanted to make a small video clip of simple end credits that is completely different from the video itself.  And I found just what I wanted – an old song of mine written back in 2004 called “Mind Control”.

You know how it is like when you pour your heart and soul and hundreds of hours into making something – ironically may well be applicable to this mini-series – and you think out loud: This is a genius piece of work!  I picked up my electric guitar one day, trashed out some heavy, raw, original power chords, and I was screaming my heart out, screaming my brain out.  I really thought I was the next Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd.  So full of explosive randomness, so full of chaos, so full of madness.  Did my fingers bleed on that one day recording while home alone?  You bet.

Clicked send and the demo song was digitally finding its way to my lead guitarist’s mailbox.  Holding my breath I was, dying for some form of acknowledgement, and his reply was …

“It’s too intense.”

I don’t think my bassist got it either.

4 years have passed and I am supposed to be wiser.  “Fit for Public Consumption?” should now be part of my vocabulary.  But yet I still have this nostalgic affection towards “Mind Control”.  The Boss Metal Zone pedal sound is out and the sweet sound of my Les Paul guitar is in.  Most of the song is out and the excerpt is left with what I love most – 4 lines.

We want the truth, we want the fact
Overrule the media, destroy the rats
It’s mind control, stripping our rights
It’s mind control, running our lives

I had so much fun recording it.  OK, pain too.  You would have thought how tough it is to record a 1 minute excerpt of just 4 lines?  I spent the first entire night trying to get my 10 years old drums programming equipment to work; I spent the second entire night recording in the wrong key; I spent the third trying to get my new toy working (see picture above … and yes, there is a valve inside my new guitar and amp effect processor); I spent the fourth trying to remember the lyrics (I know, just 4 lines right?).  By the time I got a rather decent take, I couldn’t be bothered any more.

“Fit for Public Consumption?” should now be part of my vocabulary.  But yet I am releasing my video next week.  How ironic that some good things don’t change over time.

Neither are the bad ones.

My 1st v-Blog Mini-Series: