10 years ago, I was a college freshman. I responded to an ad for band members. I wrote that I played piano, I played anything, had perfect pitch, had good hearing. I suppose saying stuff like that is a bit like going on a personals page and saying that you are 36-24-36. It does not guarantee that you are the perfect girlfriend, but people will sit up and take notice.
One Saturday, at the beginning of the month, I responded to a few advertisements for people who were looking for keyboardists. Until now, I am still dealing with the responses. There have been around 8 interested parties, I’m following up with around 4. That’s probably too many for me to handle. But until I meet up with a dead end on all these leads, I won’t need to look for advertisements.
When was it possible for me to do this? I think, as early as beginning 2007, around the time when Shingot was dragging me out to salsa lessons. After a while, I quit, and turned to long distance running instead. 2 half marathons and 1 marathon later, I quit. Just wanted a finisher’s medal. Finally I’m doing something that I always wanted to do since I was a teenager. How did I not know that it was so easy for me to find people to jam with? The opportunity cost is unconscionable.
The only difference between then and now is that since the beginning of 2007, I have written 20-30 songs, ever since I found out how cakewalk could let me record down my stuff.
OK, I have actually played keyboards for around 4 hours today. But not really played, because a lot of it was just gawking at people going around doing their own stuff.
First jamming session was with the band I tried out with last week. I’m still going to follow that leader because I want to see what he can teach me, and I’m also in the company of 3 guys who are even more talented than myself. But I was a little irritated that the leader’s conception of “chim” music was funky time signatures. Not that I should complain, since my last incarnation was named after a funky time signature (it is 7/8 in Spanish).
We ran through 1 or 2 of the leader’s compositions. He brought a laptop, and played his stuff. On one hand his stuff is not too bad even though he’s not as good a composer as I am (I’m not going to brag about this to him anyway, I’m perfectly happy being a sideman for now.) There was a truce between the drummer and the leader, and whereas there were some arguments about who was right or wrong during the 7/8 section he was perfectly OK to go drum along. The way that they played off each other was quite great, and I was just happy to play under the radar.
Later on, he said, I have 15 originals, and we will be playing with them. He intends to gig. And if I can still keep up with them after that, you guys might just find yourselves in a nightclub listening to the 4 of us entertaining you for the evening. He was even talking about performing at jazz festivals overseas. God, no, pls help me…
The leader is also a devout Muslim, and was undergoing voluntary fasting. He was explaining to me that it had to do with some birthday of some prophet or something. How he reconciles this with naming one of his compositions, “Withdr awal Techn ique”, I don’t really understand it.
There were 4 hours between the 2 jamming sessions. Time for a nap, and then dinner.
The second jamming session I had was a tryout for a post-rock band. A lot of bands will tell you which age group they are in in advertisements, so they don’t have generational problems. This was – take away me, and the average age of those people I played with today is around 10 years younger than me.
But they played post rock, and I liked that. In fact, it was such an obscure genre, that I was surprised that Singaporeans were doing this. I also like the fact that now, 10 years later, is when people are starting to catch up to the stuff I was listening to 10 years ago.
I was initially enthusiastic about this, because my point of contact was with a chick 10 years my junior. I got to the studio, and then found myself talking to a young 21 year old drummer. Then I found out that everybody else in the band was male. Well, no problem I guess. But surely less fun than being the only male member of an all-girl’s band. Her name was Kim, and I wonder if important indie bands have bass players named Kim. (Kim Deal from the Pixies, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.)
This gig didn’t go down very well. I sense they are unsure about adding a keyboardist to the line-up. Post rock doesn’t have a lot of keyboardist, and the stuff they played didn’t really feature keyboards. Also you could tell things from the length of time it took for any 1 of them to respond to me (1 week). But I always believe that there is an extra room in any band for a musical genius like myself. The band was putting together a composition. I didn’t know what to write because I wasn’t used to writing post-rock.
Some of them had a few smokes after the session. It’s a hazard in this line that you will come across more than your fair share of smokers. I asked if this was the only post-rock band in Singapore. They said that the genre was gaining strength in Singapore, even though it’s always been a marginal scene. One of the guitarists was a stand-in for the regular, and he was in a progressive rock band with Kim as well.
The drummer sounded like he was having a great time bashing his sticks out in the original. He asked if he was going to far, but we all felt it was fine. I talked to him about post-rock, and he told me that he hated the term. Music is music, etc. But that’s what we’re doing in the band, right? Post rock is what we’ve been doing. But we should be free to spearhead in other directions, of course.
Sample conversation in the band. "So, uh, how long you been playing keyboards?" "Since before you were born."
Seems like both the bands have much in common. Both have Malays and Chinese. With 1 exception, the Malays play the guitars and drums, the Chinese play the keyboards and bass. Both have capable guitarists and drummers. Both have members living all over the island, in Woodlands, Bukit Batok, Pasir Ris, Tampines, Thompson Rd.
I have 2 more engagements. One of them is with a former frontwoman of an all girl band who released 1 or 2 albums in the 1990s. She’s thinking of a comeback. We talked over the phone, and she sent me a demo. It’s scary, completely different from what I like. But I just have to do some arrangement for her. It will be a plus if we get our stuff recorded.
Another one is a guy who’s trying to get a band together, and he claims to have written pop songs. That’s the vehicle I have to show my compositions. But how will I balance that against what I’m doing for the other 2? Well, at least I know that I would have freed up a lot of time I used to spend on books. It’s a lot of time.
There are a few immediate tasks to do following the belated start of my music career. 1 – learn how to play jazz on the piano. 2 – learn more about how to use the synthesizer, at least make the demos more professional sounding. 3- learn a rock instrument. What will it be, the bass? The drums?
Well, guys, you know that I don’t really go out and enjoy myself for the heck of it. Everything is work. Even my hobbies are work. They aren’t even hobbies, since if you were to consider that a lot of these things are on my “things to do before you die” list, then it is work. It’s something that has to be done. Even my reading was all on the “things to do” list.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Teapot part 1
Teapot
When she joined our office I hardly took notice of her. But she was already quite distinctive looking: short, stout (for want of a better word) but with a flowing lock of hair all the way down to her waist. I still remember being squeezed with her at the back of a car on the way to the company recreation centre.
After a few fire drills, I found myself unable to keep my eyes off her. She was hardly somebody who you would call beautiful at first sight, but she had a way of growing on you. I liked that she looked so unusual – I’m usually drawn to people who dare to be different.
It probably was discomforting for her, she noticed me. I tried to chat her up, and emailed her. The initial attempts at conversation were stilted, and it was not easy to find stuff to talk about, we didn’t know that many people in common.
One Valentine’s day, I decided to be cheeky and send her a Valentine in the form of a poem. I can’t really remember much of what happened after that. She thought it was funny. I didn’t expect anything else to come out of it, other than it planting a seed in her head.
A few months passed, and soon Shingot was about to get married. At around the same time, she was transferred to another building. Shingot knew I was after her, so he invited her to his wedding (I was there too of course) and then arranged to have her sat at my table. When she asked him if there was anyone to pick her up, he forwarded the email to me. I don’t know what turn the conversation was taking, but she said that she was happy to eat anything that had meat in it, even human meat. I wrote right back to me: “you can eat my meat anytime baby.” According to LC, she choked on a drink when she wrote that.
Thereafter began our first date. At Shingot’s wedding, in full view of a lot of people from the office. She dressed in a red dress which looked really good (she said that wasn’t her best dress but I don’t believe it 100%). I brought out my new red shirt. It was a coincidence. But we did look a lot like a real couple that night, except that she barely reached up to my shoulder.
We talked for a bit, but I can’t remember much about the conversation. She laughed at my inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, but I was a novice driver, and nervous. We found that we were both music lovers (but that meant not that much, because we listened to totally different kinds of music.) She was being animated and telling me about how much she loved this or that music when it played. She had decent taste. But she thought that the Sly Stone I had on the car player was crazy music and preferred to listen to her 933. I remember her raving about Jay Chou’s “secret”. She sang in a choir. It was an OK date, neither fantastic nor disastrous.
At the end of the evening, she took pictures of us. I don’t know why, but probably to remember one time when she went out with a guy 1 foot taller than she was. We passed by some of her colleagues, who asked her if she wanted a ride. She said that she was going to her aunt’s place in Geylang to spend the weekend. I said that I stayed in Bedok, and I was going to send her home because it was on the way. She spoke the truth; I lied. But later on she told me she thought the white lie was quick thinking.
We had a follow up date a week later. It was just me and a colleague and her, we played tennis. I remember that she brought a very cute back pack. We laughed and played tennis. I didn’t have the car that day because I didn’t have the pass to drive in. After the games, though, she took a long shower. I, customarily didn’t bathe. Ghost offered to drive us to dinner after the game, but she asked to be taken home instead. I was upset at that, but later on it occurred to me that she was probably disgusted.
She did ask me for help on a few things, and we did exchange some more SMSs. I asked her out one more time for dinner, but she made an excuse at the last minute. Thus ended the first phase of my attempts to win her over.
There was some banter, and she did tell me that she liked some of my funny comments at work.
1 year later I showed her photos of my trip to the US. She liked some of the funny pictures. Also claimed to know immediately that the other chick in my photos was my sister. Then she sent me a photo of herself. Sounded like a good sign, but I never followed up on that. I didn’t think that I was ready yet.
(to be continued)
When she joined our office I hardly took notice of her. But she was already quite distinctive looking: short, stout (for want of a better word) but with a flowing lock of hair all the way down to her waist. I still remember being squeezed with her at the back of a car on the way to the company recreation centre.
After a few fire drills, I found myself unable to keep my eyes off her. She was hardly somebody who you would call beautiful at first sight, but she had a way of growing on you. I liked that she looked so unusual – I’m usually drawn to people who dare to be different.
It probably was discomforting for her, she noticed me. I tried to chat her up, and emailed her. The initial attempts at conversation were stilted, and it was not easy to find stuff to talk about, we didn’t know that many people in common.
One Valentine’s day, I decided to be cheeky and send her a Valentine in the form of a poem. I can’t really remember much of what happened after that. She thought it was funny. I didn’t expect anything else to come out of it, other than it planting a seed in her head.
A few months passed, and soon Shingot was about to get married. At around the same time, she was transferred to another building. Shingot knew I was after her, so he invited her to his wedding (I was there too of course) and then arranged to have her sat at my table. When she asked him if there was anyone to pick her up, he forwarded the email to me. I don’t know what turn the conversation was taking, but she said that she was happy to eat anything that had meat in it, even human meat. I wrote right back to me: “you can eat my meat anytime baby.” According to LC, she choked on a drink when she wrote that.
Thereafter began our first date. At Shingot’s wedding, in full view of a lot of people from the office. She dressed in a red dress which looked really good (she said that wasn’t her best dress but I don’t believe it 100%). I brought out my new red shirt. It was a coincidence. But we did look a lot like a real couple that night, except that she barely reached up to my shoulder.
We talked for a bit, but I can’t remember much about the conversation. She laughed at my inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, but I was a novice driver, and nervous. We found that we were both music lovers (but that meant not that much, because we listened to totally different kinds of music.) She was being animated and telling me about how much she loved this or that music when it played. She had decent taste. But she thought that the Sly Stone I had on the car player was crazy music and preferred to listen to her 933. I remember her raving about Jay Chou’s “secret”. She sang in a choir. It was an OK date, neither fantastic nor disastrous.
At the end of the evening, she took pictures of us. I don’t know why, but probably to remember one time when she went out with a guy 1 foot taller than she was. We passed by some of her colleagues, who asked her if she wanted a ride. She said that she was going to her aunt’s place in Geylang to spend the weekend. I said that I stayed in Bedok, and I was going to send her home because it was on the way. She spoke the truth; I lied. But later on she told me she thought the white lie was quick thinking.
We had a follow up date a week later. It was just me and a colleague and her, we played tennis. I remember that she brought a very cute back pack. We laughed and played tennis. I didn’t have the car that day because I didn’t have the pass to drive in. After the games, though, she took a long shower. I, customarily didn’t bathe. Ghost offered to drive us to dinner after the game, but she asked to be taken home instead. I was upset at that, but later on it occurred to me that she was probably disgusted.
She did ask me for help on a few things, and we did exchange some more SMSs. I asked her out one more time for dinner, but she made an excuse at the last minute. Thus ended the first phase of my attempts to win her over.
There was some banter, and she did tell me that she liked some of my funny comments at work.
1 year later I showed her photos of my trip to the US. She liked some of the funny pictures. Also claimed to know immediately that the other chick in my photos was my sister. Then she sent me a photo of herself. Sounded like a good sign, but I never followed up on that. I didn’t think that I was ready yet.
(to be continued)
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Dumbfuck bimbo MILF
This morning I was walking out to my car. (Or rather, van). I saw, a convoy of 2 cars, both of them nice big cars. The Lexus in front was driving very slowly and pissing off the one behind her, who was probably on his way to work too.
Then, in an act of either colossal stupidity or selfishness, she stopped there, and asked me how to get to a nearby school. In the back seat was her daughter, dressed in a St Nick’s uniform. I think they were preparing for the first day of the school, which was in less than 2 weeks’ time.
Would I tell her to fuck off and stop obstructing traffic in my estate? Would I hurriedly give her instructions? On one hand I didn’t want to compound her sin of being inconsiderate. On the other hand, she was an offending sight, and the earlier she was gone from my housing estate, the better. Eventually what tipped the balance was the fact that she was skimpily dressed, and not that bad looking. So I told the bimbo how to get to the school as fast as I could. (And the short answer is that you use the main road instead of looking for a short cut through my housing estate.) Wham bam thank you ma'am.
How did the daughter get into St Nick’s if the mother was so dumb? But ah, I remembered this was primary school, where you just had to have the right parents, live in the right neighbourhood, and you got into the right school. OK.
Then, in an act of either colossal stupidity or selfishness, she stopped there, and asked me how to get to a nearby school. In the back seat was her daughter, dressed in a St Nick’s uniform. I think they were preparing for the first day of the school, which was in less than 2 weeks’ time.
Would I tell her to fuck off and stop obstructing traffic in my estate? Would I hurriedly give her instructions? On one hand I didn’t want to compound her sin of being inconsiderate. On the other hand, she was an offending sight, and the earlier she was gone from my housing estate, the better. Eventually what tipped the balance was the fact that she was skimpily dressed, and not that bad looking. So I told the bimbo how to get to the school as fast as I could. (And the short answer is that you use the main road instead of looking for a short cut through my housing estate.) Wham bam thank you ma'am.
How did the daughter get into St Nick’s if the mother was so dumb? But ah, I remembered this was primary school, where you just had to have the right parents, live in the right neighbourhood, and you got into the right school. OK.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Cleaning up
Blog entries are harder to write this time around. It used to be more fun when I was just whiling time away. I never had to wonder what I was doing - just head out with a sackful of books, and then a trip to nowhere, a few hours in a cafe. Used to be so easy. How did I not realise that my decision making abilities were being impaired by this extremely predictable routine?
I could just read a book, and think about it. It's so much more fun thinking about other peoples' lives. You never have to make a difficult decision about them.
Last week I bought a book. Well I am supposed to have already given up books but this is no ordinary book, this was Eric Hobsbawm’s “Age of Capital” at less than $10. So I had to have it. It’s like, you may have given up sex, but if one day, some hot Japanese AV soft porn star / Korean race queen turns up at your door with only a towel, are you not going to make an exception?
As an aside, some of you are going to laugh, but a few nights ago I committed the cardinal sin. I surfed porn, and forgot to turn of the computer before turning in. Actually I was so tired that I thought, "I'm going to take a 5 mins nap". I woke up the next morning, and my father was already there. So he saw everything. He saw everything but said nothing. Ah well.
I got a gift from the gift exchange (conducted by the whole building, not the department). I only took part because it was a chance to get rid of one of the 200 books that need to get out of my room in order for me to have some decent living space. In exchange I got a picture frame. I said, "great! All I need to do is get a girlfriend, and I'll have a complete set."
This is not a good festive season for me. For the last 2 years, I had thrown caution to the wind, telling myself, "screw it all, I'm going to leave (current workplace) any time soon and I'm going to think about the future". Well the future hasn't happened yet, even though my days of stalling upon it are over. I am a great procrastinator but I have a limit - 1 year? 6 months? And then after that I will get off my ass and do something. But what the fuck is it going to be?
I remember something that Winston Churchill sarcastically said about the Americans: "you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing - after they have exhausted every other possibility". Am I like that as well?
And this festive season hasn't been very good for me. When at the office I'm rushing out work because I'm also clearing 1 day of leave every week. When I'm on leave, I can't do much other then sleep. I'm tired much of the time. I don't know why, maybe I'm just tired (I'm down with flu.) This is the time of the year you're most susceptible to the flu, and also the time of the year it's the most difficult to recover from it, because every where you go there's always a draft blowing.
I’ve cleaned up my desk. I’m working on my room as well. I suppose that cleaning up was long overdue. For too long I have turned up at work and looked around, and there’s a fog of despondency hanging over my cubicle because there’re papers everywhere.
I suppose this is part of the cycle of life. For every birth, there is a death. In stochastic processes, there is a birth and death process. In computer science, we call garbage collection. This concept is also prevalent in eastern mythology (in fact one of the computer science courses I attended at the uni used the yin-yang symbol as its logo.) The hindus have their god of creation, and another one for destruction. It's all supposed to be all neutral, nothing is better than the other, all part of life. (As opposed to the Christian view where birth is a good thing and death an extremely terrible thing.)
So I'll go through all the papers piled on my desks, the one at home and the one in the office. I'll sift through all that email that I have not filed away for years. (My home account. I normally am quite good about my office mail.) I'll read and throw away bills. Balance my accounts. Sell away my books. Give away my old clothes. My home was renovated while I was in the states - I had an almost empty room when I started work. I'm still wondering how on earth it got entirely filled up with junk over just a couple of years.
All the old files with useless stuff - I'm going to throw them out. I suppose all of this is a start - do something mindless for a while that actually makes my life better. Do it when the weather is cold enough that I won't automatically get drenched in sweat just by standing in my room for 5 minutes. Do it before Chinese New Year.
And then after that, on to the more difficult questions - how do I convince members of the opposite sex that I am not a boring person, how do I convince people that I'm a great songwriter, a great scientist, etc etc etc.
I could just read a book, and think about it. It's so much more fun thinking about other peoples' lives. You never have to make a difficult decision about them.
Last week I bought a book. Well I am supposed to have already given up books but this is no ordinary book, this was Eric Hobsbawm’s “Age of Capital” at less than $10. So I had to have it. It’s like, you may have given up sex, but if one day, some hot Japanese AV soft porn star / Korean race queen turns up at your door with only a towel, are you not going to make an exception?
As an aside, some of you are going to laugh, but a few nights ago I committed the cardinal sin. I surfed porn, and forgot to turn of the computer before turning in. Actually I was so tired that I thought, "I'm going to take a 5 mins nap". I woke up the next morning, and my father was already there. So he saw everything. He saw everything but said nothing. Ah well.
I got a gift from the gift exchange (conducted by the whole building, not the department). I only took part because it was a chance to get rid of one of the 200 books that need to get out of my room in order for me to have some decent living space. In exchange I got a picture frame. I said, "great! All I need to do is get a girlfriend, and I'll have a complete set."
This is not a good festive season for me. For the last 2 years, I had thrown caution to the wind, telling myself, "screw it all, I'm going to leave (current workplace) any time soon and I'm going to think about the future". Well the future hasn't happened yet, even though my days of stalling upon it are over. I am a great procrastinator but I have a limit - 1 year? 6 months? And then after that I will get off my ass and do something. But what the fuck is it going to be?
I remember something that Winston Churchill sarcastically said about the Americans: "you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing - after they have exhausted every other possibility". Am I like that as well?
And this festive season hasn't been very good for me. When at the office I'm rushing out work because I'm also clearing 1 day of leave every week. When I'm on leave, I can't do much other then sleep. I'm tired much of the time. I don't know why, maybe I'm just tired (I'm down with flu.) This is the time of the year you're most susceptible to the flu, and also the time of the year it's the most difficult to recover from it, because every where you go there's always a draft blowing.
I’ve cleaned up my desk. I’m working on my room as well. I suppose that cleaning up was long overdue. For too long I have turned up at work and looked around, and there’s a fog of despondency hanging over my cubicle because there’re papers everywhere.
I suppose this is part of the cycle of life. For every birth, there is a death. In stochastic processes, there is a birth and death process. In computer science, we call garbage collection. This concept is also prevalent in eastern mythology (in fact one of the computer science courses I attended at the uni used the yin-yang symbol as its logo.) The hindus have their god of creation, and another one for destruction. It's all supposed to be all neutral, nothing is better than the other, all part of life. (As opposed to the Christian view where birth is a good thing and death an extremely terrible thing.)
So I'll go through all the papers piled on my desks, the one at home and the one in the office. I'll sift through all that email that I have not filed away for years. (My home account. I normally am quite good about my office mail.) I'll read and throw away bills. Balance my accounts. Sell away my books. Give away my old clothes. My home was renovated while I was in the states - I had an almost empty room when I started work. I'm still wondering how on earth it got entirely filled up with junk over just a couple of years.
All the old files with useless stuff - I'm going to throw them out. I suppose all of this is a start - do something mindless for a while that actually makes my life better. Do it when the weather is cold enough that I won't automatically get drenched in sweat just by standing in my room for 5 minutes. Do it before Chinese New Year.
And then after that, on to the more difficult questions - how do I convince members of the opposite sex that I am not a boring person, how do I convince people that I'm a great songwriter, a great scientist, etc etc etc.
Tryout - Fusion band
During my 2nd time going to the studio to practice my drums, I found the practicing to have some diminishing returns. Well, I was to find that the “You Can’t Hurry Love” / “Lust For Life” drum pattern was really easy and didn’t really involve the pedals. I found myself being able to do one or two fancy tricks, but still struggling to maintain a steady beat for more than 1 minute at a time. (Well if you have to drum for an 8 minute song then you’re screwed. No “Stairway To Heaven” for you.)
After it was over, the guy behind the counter came and told me that time’s up. Then to my surprise, he gave me an impromptu lesson. Turns out that he’s quite a nifty drummer himself. He taught me a few things:
1. First and last thing about drumming – learn to maintain a steady beat. Nothing much else matters. This is true. Moe Tucker is famous for not doing anything interesting with the drums other than holding a steady beat.
2. Practice with your pedals. You can do this anywhere. His mother used to ask him why he was tapping his feet under the dinner table.
3. Practice your trills with the snare drum. Once you got those basics right, then you can do all your fancy tricks with the other drums.
4. The centre of a cymbal sounds a bit like a cowbell when hit
5. This is not tennis where you have to keep a stiff wrist. Most of the flexibility from drum movements revolves around the wrist. (No wonder Max Weinberg kenna RSI when he was drumming for Bruce Springsteen.)
The other thing is, how do drummers practice in Singapore? The hardest thing when living in a country with no garages is to find a place for drummers to practice. Fortunately he said, just use your pillow. That’s great. So I have an inexpensive way of practicing the drums without blowing $13 per hour.
That week I went on www.soft.com.sg, which is one of the biggest musician’s forums in Singapore. I advertised myself as a keyboard player who has a grade 8 (this is true) who has perfect pitch (true) and who’s a nifty songwriter (also true). I also said that I have 20 years’ experience but that’s misleading – I learnt piano while young, did not very much, and just let 20 years elapse. I have been writing songs on and off for 20 years so I suppose you could count that.
I also looked up advertisements of people looking around for a keyboardist. There weren’t many around. I thought I had better learn how to play the drums or the bass, that way I could have a chance at being in a proper band.
The first tryout was with a guy who, I could tell, was rather proud of his guitar playing skills. He was also giving lessons to people, and I found out that he was a Berklee graduate. (I’m talking about the famous music school, not the famous Bay Area university.) I asked him what sort of stuff to expect to play. Then he gave me the name of 2 Chick Corea and 2 Charlie Parker pieces. I gagged. But I still went out and tried anyway, figuring out that if I screwed it all up (and I believed that I was going to screw it up) at least I took a shot at it.
When I entered the studio, at least it was a familiar area. It was the exact same studio where I twice went down to try out the drum kit. Seated at the drum kit was a portly Malay guy who admitted to having eaten 3 ice creams over the course of 1 afternoon. The guitarist who contacted me was an intense looking Malay, and the bassist was a skinny Chinese whose mannerisms reminded me of Honest Face (so I’ll call him Honest Face 2).
They started out with Chick Corea’s “Spain”. I wasn’t familiar with the chords, and I was desperately trying to keep up, splashing and sinking like a cat in water. The guitarist turned to me and said, “play a solo”, and I couldn’t play. In fact, no matter how much I like jazz, I can’t play it. At least not yet. The second piece was not much better. I was reduced to just playing chords and letting them jam on. Later on the guitarist made it easy for me and played stuff I knew, like “Superstition” and “Autumn Leaves”. Then the guitarist turned to me and said, “play me one of your songs”. I played them the song I wrote for teapot (Maybe I’ll blog about teapot soon) 1 week ago. I didn’t like everything they did to the song, but they caught on and jammed to it. I was a little amazed. Well it’s nice when you hear something you wrote played properly.
Then they moved on to the original compositions. Naturally they aren’t as good as mine, or at least they didn’t perform it properly. I can’t play well but I am after all a really good songwriter.
Incidently, the drummer here knows the nice dude behind the counter who gave me that impromptu drum instruction.
Later on, when we met for prata, I got to know the politics of the band better. The core of the band was the guitarist and the bass player. They knew each other for 10 years, and they were also part of an ensemble that both of them left at the same time. The guitarist was the nominal leader of the pair (and therefore this group). And he was the best musician among us, technically. But I had a premonition about his character when he posted a message on the message board, scolding another electric guitar teacher for undercharging and spoiling the market. Why be so nasty about this in public?
The guitarist was in full flow, gleefully documenting his exit from the Previous Ensemble. They had a simmering tensions with the leader of the group, who had given a radio interview earlier that day, in the afternoon. Then the guitarist complained that the rest of the band didn’t get paid their fair share, and that their previous frontman did not have much stage presence. Eventually, on that night, and in the same prata store where we set, the Previous Ensemble broke up.
After that, I remember that the guitarist talked a few things about jazz, probably assuming that I didn’t know that much about it. In a way, I didn’t know the theory but I have listened enough to have a feel for it. OK, I was willing to let him talk. He said some things that were useful (like how important it was to have a mentor, how important it was to keep on exploring and learning new things) and a lot of things that were not.
Like how he used to have a mentor who was the keyboardist of an R+B singer. Or like how he insinuated himself into a band so successfully that they fired the old guitarist and replaced the incumbent with him instead. Or like how a lot of people from Berklee can’t play very well, or like how he passed the audition to get his Berklee scholarship.
Throughout the whole conversation, the other two were comparatively quiet. It was only after the guitarist left that things started getting really interesting. The drummer was a session musician, and hired to play with them. He was a drumming teacher in real life. He started bitching about the guitar player, being too caught up with himself and his ego. The bass player, honest face 2, didn’t mind the guy that much, but he conceded that there were character defects. Then the drummer complained about the original piece that he wrote, said there was a weird time signature. I had to agree with that. I don’t mind listening to difficult pieces if there’s a soul in there, something worth listening to. What I can’t stand up for are technical difficulty for the sake of technical difficulty. In other words, musical masturbation. Well that guy was dangerously close to being a musical masturbator.
Drummer pointed out that this ensemble was dangerously close to being just a vehicle for guitarist’s superior skills. Which would be pretty annoying. I said that players in the band must think about the bigger picture, and they should think about how the whole band works, rather than just accompanying a virtuoso. We agreed on that much.
But then the drummer said something else I wasn’t sure I agreed with. He said that you had to connect with the audience and play what they want. I always believed in being 1 or 2 steps ahead of the audience. But maybe he was a professional musician and he always believed in that. Whereas me, I’m a person with adventurous tastes, and I go for just about anything except for heavy metal. I’m more of a pushing the boundaries kind of thing. I’m more for that “you follow your heart, and the audience follows you”. But in a way we both agreed that maybe the guitarist wasn’t always following his heart.
Apparently I had passed the audition, but I shudder to think what lies in wait for me. Maybe I did OK, and would do fine just being very unspectacular while he did all the soloing. In the event, Guitar player did ask for my contact thereafter.
All of a sudden, though, 2 more people whose ads I replied to showed up in my email inbox. One of them is a post-rock (think Tortoise, Mogwai) band and another one is a Britpop band. Both look interesting propositions, so I guess there are more tryouts ahead. I think I should remember one thing: I don't know where I came across this saying before, responding to band ads is not like ordering pizza, it's not like you send a private message on a forum, and suddenly a band appears before you for you to audition for. I suppose the band members all have to look at the responses and decide who to talk to.
I suppose I am making a bit of headway now.
You see, I have options. I can either hang around matchmaking web sites, and write to women one by one begging to have dates with them so that I can pay the bills at expensive restaurants, or I can become a rock star and have them line up in front of me for the opportunity to suck my dick. I'd very much prefer the latter.
After it was over, the guy behind the counter came and told me that time’s up. Then to my surprise, he gave me an impromptu lesson. Turns out that he’s quite a nifty drummer himself. He taught me a few things:
1. First and last thing about drumming – learn to maintain a steady beat. Nothing much else matters. This is true. Moe Tucker is famous for not doing anything interesting with the drums other than holding a steady beat.
2. Practice with your pedals. You can do this anywhere. His mother used to ask him why he was tapping his feet under the dinner table.
3. Practice your trills with the snare drum. Once you got those basics right, then you can do all your fancy tricks with the other drums.
4. The centre of a cymbal sounds a bit like a cowbell when hit
5. This is not tennis where you have to keep a stiff wrist. Most of the flexibility from drum movements revolves around the wrist. (No wonder Max Weinberg kenna RSI when he was drumming for Bruce Springsteen.)
The other thing is, how do drummers practice in Singapore? The hardest thing when living in a country with no garages is to find a place for drummers to practice. Fortunately he said, just use your pillow. That’s great. So I have an inexpensive way of practicing the drums without blowing $13 per hour.
That week I went on www.soft.com.sg, which is one of the biggest musician’s forums in Singapore. I advertised myself as a keyboard player who has a grade 8 (this is true) who has perfect pitch (true) and who’s a nifty songwriter (also true). I also said that I have 20 years’ experience but that’s misleading – I learnt piano while young, did not very much, and just let 20 years elapse. I have been writing songs on and off for 20 years so I suppose you could count that.
I also looked up advertisements of people looking around for a keyboardist. There weren’t many around. I thought I had better learn how to play the drums or the bass, that way I could have a chance at being in a proper band.
The first tryout was with a guy who, I could tell, was rather proud of his guitar playing skills. He was also giving lessons to people, and I found out that he was a Berklee graduate. (I’m talking about the famous music school, not the famous Bay Area university.) I asked him what sort of stuff to expect to play. Then he gave me the name of 2 Chick Corea and 2 Charlie Parker pieces. I gagged. But I still went out and tried anyway, figuring out that if I screwed it all up (and I believed that I was going to screw it up) at least I took a shot at it.
When I entered the studio, at least it was a familiar area. It was the exact same studio where I twice went down to try out the drum kit. Seated at the drum kit was a portly Malay guy who admitted to having eaten 3 ice creams over the course of 1 afternoon. The guitarist who contacted me was an intense looking Malay, and the bassist was a skinny Chinese whose mannerisms reminded me of Honest Face (so I’ll call him Honest Face 2).
They started out with Chick Corea’s “Spain”. I wasn’t familiar with the chords, and I was desperately trying to keep up, splashing and sinking like a cat in water. The guitarist turned to me and said, “play a solo”, and I couldn’t play. In fact, no matter how much I like jazz, I can’t play it. At least not yet. The second piece was not much better. I was reduced to just playing chords and letting them jam on. Later on the guitarist made it easy for me and played stuff I knew, like “Superstition” and “Autumn Leaves”. Then the guitarist turned to me and said, “play me one of your songs”. I played them the song I wrote for teapot (Maybe I’ll blog about teapot soon) 1 week ago. I didn’t like everything they did to the song, but they caught on and jammed to it. I was a little amazed. Well it’s nice when you hear something you wrote played properly.
Then they moved on to the original compositions. Naturally they aren’t as good as mine, or at least they didn’t perform it properly. I can’t play well but I am after all a really good songwriter.
Incidently, the drummer here knows the nice dude behind the counter who gave me that impromptu drum instruction.
Later on, when we met for prata, I got to know the politics of the band better. The core of the band was the guitarist and the bass player. They knew each other for 10 years, and they were also part of an ensemble that both of them left at the same time. The guitarist was the nominal leader of the pair (and therefore this group). And he was the best musician among us, technically. But I had a premonition about his character when he posted a message on the message board, scolding another electric guitar teacher for undercharging and spoiling the market. Why be so nasty about this in public?
The guitarist was in full flow, gleefully documenting his exit from the Previous Ensemble. They had a simmering tensions with the leader of the group, who had given a radio interview earlier that day, in the afternoon. Then the guitarist complained that the rest of the band didn’t get paid their fair share, and that their previous frontman did not have much stage presence. Eventually, on that night, and in the same prata store where we set, the Previous Ensemble broke up.
After that, I remember that the guitarist talked a few things about jazz, probably assuming that I didn’t know that much about it. In a way, I didn’t know the theory but I have listened enough to have a feel for it. OK, I was willing to let him talk. He said some things that were useful (like how important it was to have a mentor, how important it was to keep on exploring and learning new things) and a lot of things that were not.
Like how he used to have a mentor who was the keyboardist of an R+B singer. Or like how he insinuated himself into a band so successfully that they fired the old guitarist and replaced the incumbent with him instead. Or like how a lot of people from Berklee can’t play very well, or like how he passed the audition to get his Berklee scholarship.
Throughout the whole conversation, the other two were comparatively quiet. It was only after the guitarist left that things started getting really interesting. The drummer was a session musician, and hired to play with them. He was a drumming teacher in real life. He started bitching about the guitar player, being too caught up with himself and his ego. The bass player, honest face 2, didn’t mind the guy that much, but he conceded that there were character defects. Then the drummer complained about the original piece that he wrote, said there was a weird time signature. I had to agree with that. I don’t mind listening to difficult pieces if there’s a soul in there, something worth listening to. What I can’t stand up for are technical difficulty for the sake of technical difficulty. In other words, musical masturbation. Well that guy was dangerously close to being a musical masturbator.
Drummer pointed out that this ensemble was dangerously close to being just a vehicle for guitarist’s superior skills. Which would be pretty annoying. I said that players in the band must think about the bigger picture, and they should think about how the whole band works, rather than just accompanying a virtuoso. We agreed on that much.
But then the drummer said something else I wasn’t sure I agreed with. He said that you had to connect with the audience and play what they want. I always believed in being 1 or 2 steps ahead of the audience. But maybe he was a professional musician and he always believed in that. Whereas me, I’m a person with adventurous tastes, and I go for just about anything except for heavy metal. I’m more of a pushing the boundaries kind of thing. I’m more for that “you follow your heart, and the audience follows you”. But in a way we both agreed that maybe the guitarist wasn’t always following his heart.
Apparently I had passed the audition, but I shudder to think what lies in wait for me. Maybe I did OK, and would do fine just being very unspectacular while he did all the soloing. In the event, Guitar player did ask for my contact thereafter.
All of a sudden, though, 2 more people whose ads I replied to showed up in my email inbox. One of them is a post-rock (think Tortoise, Mogwai) band and another one is a Britpop band. Both look interesting propositions, so I guess there are more tryouts ahead. I think I should remember one thing: I don't know where I came across this saying before, responding to band ads is not like ordering pizza, it's not like you send a private message on a forum, and suddenly a band appears before you for you to audition for. I suppose the band members all have to look at the responses and decide who to talk to.
I suppose I am making a bit of headway now.
You see, I have options. I can either hang around matchmaking web sites, and write to women one by one begging to have dates with them so that I can pay the bills at expensive restaurants, or I can become a rock star and have them line up in front of me for the opportunity to suck my dick. I'd very much prefer the latter.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Kennedy Brothers
This is one of the most famous pictures of Barack Obama, immortalised into a poster. But why did this poster look so familiar when I first saw it? Did it remind me of anybody?
Interesting, eh?
The last of the Kennedy brothers has died. Let’s look at the other Kennedys.
Joseph Kennedy, the father
He was always an ambitious person, who wanted his sons to succeed in politics. He himself was the US ambassador to the UK until just before WWII, although he made the fatal mistake of supporting Adolf Hitler.
Joe Kennedy Jr
He was the star of the family since he was young. Always more hardworking and driven by his brothers. He was the family’s best hope to become the president of the United States. Unfortunately during WWII, he was shot down and he died.
John F Kennedy
He was a very charismatic character. Even though he was an indifferent student at Harvard, and he didn’t pass many bills when he was a congressman or senator, there was no doubting that he was very intelligent and hungry for knowledge. He ran for president against Nixon, and won a very narrow victory. As with the victory of Bush 2 40 years later, it was achieved by some voting impropriety, although this wasn’t revealed until much later.
He had his flaws, as is revealed later: he was a serial womaniser, and he also had a whole list of health problems which suggested that even if he wasn’t shot, he would have died young. The fact that he was able to conceal these flaws from the public indicates that the US presidency is very different today from what it used to be like in the past.
But at that time he was a shining hope to millions. He lived in a moment where a lot of Americans were very idealistic about the future. A big generation of baby boomers were young people then, and they identified with the president.
His performance as a president was decidedly mixed: there are people who blamed him for the failure of his attempt to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The USSR leader, Khrushchev thought he was a weakling and put up the Berlin wall. During the Cuban missile crisis, rash Soviet leaders lead the US and the USSR closer to World War III than any point before or since. But he managed to lead the US out of the crisis, and further moved to improve the relationship with the USSR.
Kennedy was known to have fought for the rights of black people, although it was Johnson who signed the Civil Rights act after the death of JFK.
It’s impossible to tell what he would have done with the Vietnam War. He was president when it could have gone any way. He promised to support the South Vietnam leader, but did not follow through enough on his promise, and the South Vietnam leader was murdered. As it turned out, Johnson, who took over for him, was instrumental in escalating the conflict into a full blown war. But some people suggest that if Kennedy had lived, he might have found some better way to deal with Vietnam.
His death is one of the great unsolved mysteries in the USA. The official explanation, that he was killed by a lone gunman operating alone, is not believed by most people. There were reports that people heard gunshots from a few different places. They caught the only gunman caught, Lee Harvey Ostwald, but soon after that, and live on national television a policeman, purportedly angry about JFK being killed, shot Lee Harvey Ostwald. They never got the chance to question Ostwald about his motives, or who, if anybody, set him up.
JFK had enemies. His brother, Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General, and a great enemy of the mafia. Even more so, since they actually enlisted the help of the mafia
There also exists great controversy about Kennedy about his attitude towards the Cold War, because there is no consensus about whether he is a hawk or a dove. There are some who said that Lee Harvey Ostwald was pro-Castro, and he was shooting JFK to pay back for the Bay of Pigs. There are others who said that JFK was making a tentative rapproachment with other countries in South America, and was planning to seek warmer ties with Castro. The CIA didn’t like that, and they got involved in a conspiracy to have JFK murdered.
The fact that there is no one convincing explanation for JFK’s murder left a sour taste in the mouths of a generation of Americans. They said that the 1960s began with a lot of hope, but for them the death of a leader they loved was the beginning of the disappointment of these hopes.
It was generally felt that Kennedy was still in the phase where he was learning how to become a good president. He did not have very clear objectives, but he had the political skill to overcome a lot of his opponents. But not a sniper’s bullet.
Robert F Kennedy
He was a very strange person. He had two sides, one of them was the angel, who was very idealistic about destroying the mafia. He was one of the toughest prosecutors around. But he was also very vengeful towards his enemies, and for some reason, one of his enemies was LBJ, the vice president and next president of the US.
I had just read the story of Bobby. There are plenty of people out there who believe that there was a conspiracy out there who murdered JFK, and in that book, Bobby was one of them. But he was going to keep quiet about his beliefs until he got elected president, and then he got all the power to do whatever he wanted to do.
He was close to being elected president. He more or less secured the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president by the time he was murdered. If he ran against Nixon, he might have defeated him, instead of Nixon defeating Humphrey. A lot of things could have been different. Nixon was president because RFK died, and Johnson was president because JFK died. Both of them were responsible, more than anybody else, for the Vietnam war being what it was.
If you believe some accounts, he was reaching out to the communist countries. He wanted to make peace with Castro, and with the Soviet Union. After all, his brother had almost stumbled onto nuclear war with the Soviets. You just wonder if the world would have been very much different, and the cold war ended very differently, if he got to be president.
Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy, the one who died recently, was probably somebody they thought could become a president. But there was a scandal which put an end to all that: he drove somebody home late at night, while drunk, and killed her in a road accident.
Still, he managed to be a long-serving member of the Senate, and managed to make a big impact. There were even some people who proclaimed him to be the most important of the Kennedys. I don’t know about that.
Well, that’s the end of them brothers, I suppose. It’s been a great ride.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Noughties
The noughties are over, but this is the first time I’ve come across an instance where there was so much apathy towards the end of the decade. I’m not old enough to remember the end of the 70s.
At the end of the 80s, there was a lot of excitement in the air, because the Berlin Wall had just fallen, and everybody felt that the world was never going to be the same again (they were right) but they just didn’t know how. Plenty of social theories about how the Western liberal democratic system had triumph, and how communism was on the ash heap of history, were bandied about.
At the end of the 90s, there was another mood of excitement. This time it was because it was the dawn of the internet age. (OK, it was 5 years after 1995, which was the year that most people had first heard of the internet.) The tech stock bubble was at its height – it would burst shortly after. We looked back at the end of a century, indeed the end of a millennium. Although nobody really talked very much about what the year 1000 was like.
Now? I saw an article from Time magazine, proclaiming the noughties to be one of the worst decades in recent memory. It probably is, from a western perspective. At the beginning of the decade, the US was the undisputed masters of the world. At the end, they are still the strongest country in the world, but it’s become inevitable that other countries will catch up. They’ve had 9/11, and then they blundered into Afghanistan and Iraq. Closer to home, they’ve had plenty of job losses and layoffs (these started in the 90s, but they continued on). China was either stealing everybody’s jobs or driving down the price of unskilled labour in the world. They had their Hurricane Katrina, and the trauma of seeing one of their most culturally significant cities become a third world disaster zone.
World wide, it was not a great place to be. We had the threat of terrorist attacks, although the threat is more overstated than real. I think you don’t really have to be worried about terrorist attacks unless you’re in the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent or Xinjiang. Most of the developed world is safe. (A few attacks on London, Madrid or even Moscow doesn’t change this.)
There were plenty of natural disasters. We had that Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004, which more or less wiped out Aceh. We had earthquakes in Sichuan and several in Indonesia.
We didn't have a lot of the financial crises that had taken place during the late 90s - Mexico, then Asia, then Russia, then Argentina then Brazil. But in 2008, we had one big blow-up, in the US and in Europe. That was serious.
Musically this was not a great decade. I had regarded 80s pop as a low point in music, and this is a decade which looks back favourably at 80s synth pop. There was the death of the album, courtesy of the MP3 / iPod revolution. I’m sure there’s some great stuff out there but it’s not getting out to the masses.
The fact that there were so many band reunions in the 00s just serves to show that a lot of older bands sensed that there was a vacuum to fill. A Guardian writer opined that he didn’t know what was more depressing, seeing the Pixies reform, and being a shadow of their former days (this is an exaggeration, but you probably understand that punk musicians are not at their best in their 40s and 50s), or seeing that they’re still better than all the new bands out there.
This hasn't been terrible for everybody. There are a lot of things happening in Asia - it was a pretty good time to be in Asia - rising standard of living and everything. But still...
The future? We more or less know the score. There's a combination of rising middle class, hungry for resources. Running out of food, running out of water, running out of oil. Climate change. Ecological disasters. Islands disappearing. Temperature's rising. Nuclear bombs in the hands of terrorists. Liberal democracy on the wane.
They've all talked about how they hoped that the next decade was going to be better - we'll see...
At the end of the 80s, there was a lot of excitement in the air, because the Berlin Wall had just fallen, and everybody felt that the world was never going to be the same again (they were right) but they just didn’t know how. Plenty of social theories about how the Western liberal democratic system had triumph, and how communism was on the ash heap of history, were bandied about.
At the end of the 90s, there was another mood of excitement. This time it was because it was the dawn of the internet age. (OK, it was 5 years after 1995, which was the year that most people had first heard of the internet.) The tech stock bubble was at its height – it would burst shortly after. We looked back at the end of a century, indeed the end of a millennium. Although nobody really talked very much about what the year 1000 was like.
Now? I saw an article from Time magazine, proclaiming the noughties to be one of the worst decades in recent memory. It probably is, from a western perspective. At the beginning of the decade, the US was the undisputed masters of the world. At the end, they are still the strongest country in the world, but it’s become inevitable that other countries will catch up. They’ve had 9/11, and then they blundered into Afghanistan and Iraq. Closer to home, they’ve had plenty of job losses and layoffs (these started in the 90s, but they continued on). China was either stealing everybody’s jobs or driving down the price of unskilled labour in the world. They had their Hurricane Katrina, and the trauma of seeing one of their most culturally significant cities become a third world disaster zone.
World wide, it was not a great place to be. We had the threat of terrorist attacks, although the threat is more overstated than real. I think you don’t really have to be worried about terrorist attacks unless you’re in the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent or Xinjiang. Most of the developed world is safe. (A few attacks on London, Madrid or even Moscow doesn’t change this.)
There were plenty of natural disasters. We had that Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004, which more or less wiped out Aceh. We had earthquakes in Sichuan and several in Indonesia.
We didn't have a lot of the financial crises that had taken place during the late 90s - Mexico, then Asia, then Russia, then Argentina then Brazil. But in 2008, we had one big blow-up, in the US and in Europe. That was serious.
Musically this was not a great decade. I had regarded 80s pop as a low point in music, and this is a decade which looks back favourably at 80s synth pop. There was the death of the album, courtesy of the MP3 / iPod revolution. I’m sure there’s some great stuff out there but it’s not getting out to the masses.
The fact that there were so many band reunions in the 00s just serves to show that a lot of older bands sensed that there was a vacuum to fill. A Guardian writer opined that he didn’t know what was more depressing, seeing the Pixies reform, and being a shadow of their former days (this is an exaggeration, but you probably understand that punk musicians are not at their best in their 40s and 50s), or seeing that they’re still better than all the new bands out there.
This hasn't been terrible for everybody. There are a lot of things happening in Asia - it was a pretty good time to be in Asia - rising standard of living and everything. But still...
The future? We more or less know the score. There's a combination of rising middle class, hungry for resources. Running out of food, running out of water, running out of oil. Climate change. Ecological disasters. Islands disappearing. Temperature's rising. Nuclear bombs in the hands of terrorists. Liberal democracy on the wane.
They've all talked about how they hoped that the next decade was going to be better - we'll see...
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