Sing, City!'s first appearance on YouTube!
Apologies to the cast and crew who have been waiting a long time for this video, but it's been a long and arduous process digitizing the footage from 3 cameras, converting PAL to NTSC video, syncing the three angles, adding lyrics, etc... not going to inundate you with the technical details, but enjoy! We'll have more coming up in the next few days, so keep watching!
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Another mention!
The Sunday Times - Lifestyle
No easy feat talking to Generation Why
By Colin Goh
8th April 2007
EVERY Spring, the Wife and I get invited to speak by Singaporean undergraduates in various American colleges, and overall, it's usually a delightful experience. The only downside with hanging out with so many youngsters is feeling older and older with each passing year.
No easy feat talking to Generation Why
By Colin Goh
8th April 2007
EVERY Spring, the Wife and I get invited to speak by Singaporean undergraduates in various American colleges, and overall, it's usually a delightful experience. The only downside with hanging out with so many youngsters is feeling older and older with each passing year.
'Do you realise,' I whispered to the Wife during a recent engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, 'that we're one of the few people in the room who grew up in the age before mobile phones? And I may be the only one here who has ever sent out a telex.'
This year, the feeling was especially pronounced with their incessant chatter about Facebook, MySpace and the various virtual spaces that they occupy, often simultaneously. When I was the same age, existing in one dimension was difficult enough. At best, I could occupy two: the 'real world' and the Land of Nod.
To rub their virtuosity further in our faces, the kids at Penn also found the time, amid their studies (assuming they're studying, lah), to mount a two-hour musical about life as an overseas Singaporean undergrad.
Despite the pop-py score and the witty, sometimes gleefully cynical libretto, the single line that stayed with me the longest was in a scene involving the break-up of two long-time college sweethearts.
'Admit it,' said an intermediary to the ex-couple, 'you've still been reading each other's blogs, haven't you?'
Now that really brought home to me how different youth have become: the casual indifference to the divide between public and private, the ubiquity of confidences and the incessant voyeurism.
And friends! Thanks to online social networking sites, this is the generation with the most friends ever, especially ones they've never met physically. When I was a kid, you were seen as a few taupok short of a rojak to have imaginary friends. Now it's compulsory to have as many as possible.
Glimpsing a generation gap has come as a bit of a surprise to me. As a dabbler in pop culture, I'm exposed to more youth trends than most, and I guess I didn't expect to feel one so soon.
Sociologically, I was labelled Generation X, which was already perceived as a deviant from my parents' generation. But how quickly my demographic has become the mainstream. It's like hearing the song you used to play to annoy your parents as piped-in lift muzak - think the Sex Pistols' Anarchy In The UK played by Richard Clayderman.
Perhaps the speed is because generations are increasingly pegged to technological shifts, which happen faster and faster - e-mail, the Web - I don't know what's next. At this rate, probably teleportation.
Or maybe my discomfort is just my refusal to accept I'm actually growing old. It certainly made me wince when the emcee introduced me to the audience as someone who's been active in the arts for 'over a decade'. At least, he didn't call me 'Uncle'.
But should generation gaps be accepted or bridged? I've always been leery of the older dude trying too hard to be part of the younger crowd.
You've encountered the type, I'm sure - the balding guy in the tight-tight T-shirt and trendy sneakers trying to impress young chicks in the club with his hip-hop moves. Still, is he any worse than the old coot in his pyjamas, sitting in the kopitiam, one foot on a chair, slurping kopi from a saucer while complaining toothlessly about the 'chewren nowsaday'?
Maybe we're all doomed to be middle-aged Homer Simpsons, blundering away cluelessly through life, never truly able to know how others think.
Some youth behaviour seems especially far out - the tattoos and body piercings, the cutting, the culture of 'hooking up', the appeal of Bratz dolls - that it might be tempting just to dismiss them all as youthful stupidity that one will soon grow up to regret, or rashness that must be eradicated before it undermines society as we know it.
But some form of good faith in attempting to understand the variance is a must, so that we don't impose our experiences and prejudices on our successors.
This may seem trite, but our wilful blindness to social change is evident in so many places, from the regular hand-wringing in the Forum pages to even seemingly well-intentioned policies. It would be a shame if the one thing our heirs learn from their forebears is to be presumptuous or cynical about their descendants.
We've been invited to speak at a couple more colleges this spring, but I hope to do just as much listening.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Sing, City: The Soundtrack Part Four
I'm pleased to announce that the soundtrack is completed, and bulk of the songs are available online at http://www.freewebs.com/calebyap. Just click on the Sing, City! tab to find out more information regarding the show and download the music, 17 out of the 20 tracks, free of charge!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sing, City: The Soundtrack Parts Two and Three
Part Two:
Recording was tiring. 20 songs is no joke. But special thanks to Terence and www.snami8.com, for his tripod, mic and techy stuff. Thanks also to musicians and cast for being splendid on tape!
I was really pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music, and thanks to garageband and audacity, it's quite well balanced. I can't get rid of the hissing sound, simply because we didn't record in a studio, but it's decent, for what it is. I'm excited!
Part Three:
But we're finally done! We should have it out by this week! Email me at calebyap@gmail.com for inquiries! And the dilemma of the week is: should it be produced on CD, or simply hosted on a website and sold for rights to download. Hmm...
Also, thank you Filip for Noodle Night! Sweet Potato Porridge!
Recording was tiring. 20 songs is no joke. But special thanks to Terence and www.snami8.com, for his tripod, mic and techy stuff. Thanks also to musicians and cast for being splendid on tape!
I was really pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music, and thanks to garageband and audacity, it's quite well balanced. I can't get rid of the hissing sound, simply because we didn't record in a studio, but it's decent, for what it is. I'm excited!
Part Three:
But we're finally done! We should have it out by this week! Email me at calebyap@gmail.com for inquiries! And the dilemma of the week is: should it be produced on CD, or simply hosted on a website and sold for rights to download. Hmm...
Also, thank you Filip for Noodle Night! Sweet Potato Porridge!
Saturday, March 31, 2007
making of the musical - part ii
ok, so the immediate aftermath of the musical madness was - wake up next day, alcohol still burbling in system, and arrange songs for pennyo. and that has been the theme for most of the week past, with the pennyo retreat and the preparation for it (arrangements!! arrangements!!) eating up most of my life, along with a sizable backload of overdue work. hence i really haven't had the time to carry out that period of reflection that often occurs after a massive life-rending production such as the musical.
a week's passed, pennyo retreat's over, the concert's next week but at least most of the songs are out, and there's a lot less admin and a lot more of an established system as opposed to the musical, so i have the time to sit down here and think, and write a bit more about what happened seven days ago.
yellow people
this song is apparently controversial though i really don't see what's the big deal. this is another of those early songs that existed as a scrap for a really, really long time and never really evolved past that for an equally really, really long time. when i first sat down to bash songs out with caleb, i just kept singing - 'yellow people sit together, black people sit together, that's what we call diversity..." and many iterations with many different colors... and then i was convinced to add in a politically correct ending to avoid getting lynched by a multicolored mob.
personal favorite line - "i'm not in the US/to feel like N-U-S..." (it was just too easy. i'm sorry all NUS people. note that i expressly tried to avoid anti-schools-other-than-penn jokes in the musical, even though it can be sooo tempting. this one slipped through the cracks.)
most hated line - "just a bit of effort and little care/take a while you'll see"..."have an open mind/be color blind"(i hate preaching by music, especially the obvious.)
university of pennsylvania
another early scrap! at least "yellow people" existed as three lines. this one.. was only three words. "u-n-i-ver-si-ty-of-penn-syl-va-ni-a". it didnt even have the catchy little pause at the end (university of pennsyl - PAUSE - vania). it was all 12 syllables of equal lengths, sung in choral warmup style... and it would just keep going up! and up! and up! with no direction, rhyme or reason! i think i was reading about modal jazz at the time. obviously i was reading wrongly.
as expected, caleb hated this song in its earliest form. after i added the pause, and corny lyrics, he grudgingly accepted it - this was after yellow people, and i think random school facility as well, and then he nagged me about writing too many 'theme' songs and not too many 'character' songs. bah. theme songs are more fun. character songs are for emo whiners like my brother. (this is a test to see if caleb actually reads this blog).
trivia - there used to be a missing extra chorus that went (hurrah (8x) - fair harvard has her crimson, and yale her colors toooo... at the university of pennsylvania). we both laughed a lot about it when we wrote it, but i think we realised that it didn't make very much sense, and i wrote it out when i fit the song into the script. one more of those calls about school-specific jokes.
personal favorite line: "you waant much more than this pro-vin-cial liife" (everyone loves disney); or.. "your country needs more graduates... to marry other graduates... and when they finally copulate... their children will be smart" (old joke, but good one. with mild personal resonance, too, having passed through jeep-land.)
most hated line: the chorus that got cut.
random school facility
at this point i must throw out a random accolade to the lovely jennifer setiawan, who stepped in one week for the musical for a special guest cameo. we had a cast member pull out a month before the show, and though it didn't seem like a big deal at the time (we had enough ensemble members to fill in), there was a minor logistical issue created - may, who took over the role of mrs heng, had to cover also as a random school girl to fall in love with martin. this was ok, but suboptimal. thankfully jen appeared to cover things, and she took it a step even further by volunteering to choreograph the whole dance! (or rather, i met her at some intoxicated gathering, told her 'eh, go choreograph it', we both laughed it off, i woke up the next day, saw her at rehearsal, and told her 'eh. i'm serious.' this was a week before the show.) weaker human beings would have told me to go do bad things to myself. jen sang, danced, choreographed, and turned up for a hell week though she only appeared for one song... my undying gratitude goes out to her.
this song (being one of the 'theme' songs that caleb so detests) was rather easy to write. looping enough boyz ii men and other generic poppy swoony love ballads in triple time made it simple - i have been sufficiently culturally schooled in the grand and august pop music tradition to well, follow the formula. add in enough random love overkill cliches (girl and boy in library, girl and boy sharing study room, girl and boy bumping and swopping notes accidentally...) and tada instant funny love song. i was actually tossing a few more tried and tested scenes around, e.g. girl in elevator, boy rushes in last minute... and then elevator spoil etc etc.
favorite line: "i was surprised/ to find/ his/her notes are much better than mine..." (musical corny fun songs are one of the few places where my over-rhyming habits are tolerable)
most hated line: the entire chorus, really. the whole "love of a lifetime" thing? and "so specially special" (oh so special)? quite a lyrical copout. i was trying to fit in something more funny but there were deadline issues. "so specially special" may be the worst phrase in any of the songs in the whole musical... i'm almost ashamed i wrote it.
hello my dear/oh no my dear/you know my dear
my brother's cameo song. about two months before the musical we were experiencing a strange reversal of roles. my brother has written probably ten times as many original songs as i have (find them on his website), and i have done probably ten times as many music arrangements as he has (due to being part of pennyo, penn's only chinese a cappella group - concert next week! shameless plug!) - albeit only for a cappella. back then, i was writing all the tunes and lyrics - and then he was exclusively doing all the arrangements. this was sort of necessary because - i was writing the book, and not really telling him very much about it, and hence had to integrate the songs into the book - and he's the music genius, so he can pick out the chords and accompany whatever tune i sing at him in <15 minutes (which happens to be the average time he appears at my room before each musical practice).
naturally, he complained about this situation - because he wanted to write some songs. i told him, ok, go write a corny mock emo love song by a long distance boyfriend. make sure to include corny mock emo tropes. i raised the example of white plastic bags swirling in the wind (a la american beauty). and this song evidently was the result - music all by him, lyrics mostly by him. (i tweaked a few lines here and there, and i added in the whole 'oh no my dear' segment (to his chagrin) for structural purposes in act ii)
favorite line: "it says that if you love someone then you must set them fweeeee"(actually, i just like the 'fweeeee'. in an earlier iteration, he was supposed to sing 'for youuu... and meeeee', with the mee in falsetto and in the sesame st ernie voice. he toned down the ernie-ness for the recordings. i was sad.)
most hated lines: i dislike most of the end bits of 'you know my dear', actually- it was supposed to be a mock emo song. and then suddenly it became the very thing it was supposed to mock - an emo song!! noooo!!! ah well. you can't always have it your way.
midnight
a lot of people like this song - it's lovingly rendered by two of our best (if not the best) singers, val and kenny, (lame trivia only comprehensible to cast- after coining 'GGV'(gingivitis), i wanted to address our two lovers as 'valkenny', which reminds me of vulcanicity, but i digress) and they hit this one out of the park. i personally like it a lot, though not as much as 'you are here' - for a few reasons.
a few flaws in construction bug it for me - the verse is not really connected to the chorus, musically (i think it has to go into double or something), and just the general feel of both parts - both of which i like separately but perhaps not that much together?; lyrically the whole 'midnight' and 'light' and 'right' think was a bit overkill in the first chorus - 'daylight' seemed a better fit in the second; the chorus is soaring when they hit it well... but also hard to sing with this bizarre jump/shift thingy in the middle; and just this general... incoherence? i was trying to achieve a feeling of tentativeness, uncertainty (could you be thinking my name/ wondering/ if i /should i feel the same); but then i had to effect this transition from midnight to daylight and the following movement towards some kind of triumphant certainty/stability (daylight! - cue lights on, kevin pang! one of my favorite moments)... all a bit iffy.
what makes it good for me still - caleb and the musicians covered my ass for this one, gliding over the long held notes in the verse and the necessary transition to the chorus with some very nice guitar/piano sequences that still lift the hair on my neck when i remember them; kevin pang and lights (already mentioned); tremendous soloists (already mentioned); a very simple rising line in the chorus ('we'll- just - wait - and -seee); and a couple of lines in the verse that i was very pleased with.
favorite lines: "children should be sleeping/lovers should be keeping time/heart to heart". ah, two feminine rhymes in a row, and with four to five word line lengths at that. it's gotta be lame. but that additional -time tagged on... saves. the. day. and then it runs on to the next sentence and then the second line gains an extra glisten... bam! (the best thing about an english major education is that it gives you the analytical resources to better blow your own trumpet.)
most hated lines: "when i wake i hear you snoring/we'll do breakfast in the morning" i was going for gritty/affectionate realism, and uh, fell very far short. caleb called me up to complain about them a couple of times - and i agreed... but i couldnt think of anything better. sometimes bad lines just stick in your head and every time you run the musical tune over to think of new, better lines - the bad ones just sit there, defying any attempt to put new words in their place.
sweet potato porridge/priorities
anybody else notice how these two songs sound a bit alike? (that's why we put them apart... in act i and act ii... and kept different singers on them... and different arrangements/moods... the scam succeeded!) even worse, i wrote them virtually back to back, without realising it, after becoming mentally stuck in a mode. caleb shouted at me after i sang 'sweet potato porridge' to him... EH! THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE LAST SONG LAH!!! he is pretty consistent about scolding me when i produce similar sounding songs (e.g. prayer for my daughter - random school).
if i had to pick a least favorite, it would be one of these two - possibly priorities. caleb likes it, and his dong-ching-dong-ching arrangement, but gosh do i find that piano raggy thing annoying. you could think of it as an exercise in super-feminine rhymes... or basically, things that rhyme with 'priorities'. the lyrics are contrived, and due to the multisyllable madness the song is nearly unsingable, but our talented singers soldiered through it anyway. i came up with it while walking home past cav's one day - i recall humming to myself "so i've got priorities/ affirmative action for minorities/ like youuu". though eventually that line got cut.
favorite line: "looks for 'whatever he can get' " (re: facebook) - potentially the only line with any subtlety in this song.
most hated line: oh, lots.
sweet potato porridge will eternally be associated with swinging hands/elbows left to right. it's a very infectious hand action. this is also the only song that i (badly) choreographed. (70% of the actions consist of swinging hands/elbows left-right in front of body). the cast may have noticed me carrying out this hand action during virtually every song with a dong-cheng-dong-cheng beat, e.g. priorities, university of pennsylvania, yellow people...
this song is also notable for being inspired by filip kor - some random joke in conversation of his from freshman year, re: parents sending him to school and hence must eat sweet potato porridge every day. caleb wrote the bridge (soy sauce, chye sim etc) and ending (no morrrre - guorui), lyrics and music both, and i wrote the rest. its a "theme" or concept song... and basically was written largely because "porridge" and "college" apparently rhyme. (yes, more feminine rhymes. sorry.)
favorite line: "doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo." (who needs lyrics!) or.. the entire ah ma chorus.
most hated lines: "work for part time at cold storage... have to take a mortgage..." just a little bit too over the top on the rhyming... i also considered "they're bringing back the knowledge.. education we encourage... " and other bad lines before deciding to keep it at two.
a week's passed, pennyo retreat's over, the concert's next week but at least most of the songs are out, and there's a lot less admin and a lot more of an established system as opposed to the musical, so i have the time to sit down here and think, and write a bit more about what happened seven days ago.
yellow people
this song is apparently controversial though i really don't see what's the big deal. this is another of those early songs that existed as a scrap for a really, really long time and never really evolved past that for an equally really, really long time. when i first sat down to bash songs out with caleb, i just kept singing - 'yellow people sit together, black people sit together, that's what we call diversity..." and many iterations with many different colors... and then i was convinced to add in a politically correct ending to avoid getting lynched by a multicolored mob.
personal favorite line - "i'm not in the US/to feel like N-U-S..." (it was just too easy. i'm sorry all NUS people. note that i expressly tried to avoid anti-schools-other-than-penn jokes in the musical, even though it can be sooo tempting. this one slipped through the cracks.)
most hated line - "just a bit of effort and little care/take a while you'll see"..."have an open mind/be color blind"(i hate preaching by music, especially the obvious.)
university of pennsylvania
another early scrap! at least "yellow people" existed as three lines. this one.. was only three words. "u-n-i-ver-si-ty-of-penn-syl-va-ni-a". it didnt even have the catchy little pause at the end (university of pennsyl - PAUSE - vania). it was all 12 syllables of equal lengths, sung in choral warmup style... and it would just keep going up! and up! and up! with no direction, rhyme or reason! i think i was reading about modal jazz at the time. obviously i was reading wrongly.
as expected, caleb hated this song in its earliest form. after i added the pause, and corny lyrics, he grudgingly accepted it - this was after yellow people, and i think random school facility as well, and then he nagged me about writing too many 'theme' songs and not too many 'character' songs. bah. theme songs are more fun. character songs are for emo whiners like my brother. (this is a test to see if caleb actually reads this blog).
trivia - there used to be a missing extra chorus that went (hurrah (8x) - fair harvard has her crimson, and yale her colors toooo... at the university of pennsylvania). we both laughed a lot about it when we wrote it, but i think we realised that it didn't make very much sense, and i wrote it out when i fit the song into the script. one more of those calls about school-specific jokes.
personal favorite line: "you waant much more than this pro-vin-cial liife" (everyone loves disney); or.. "your country needs more graduates... to marry other graduates... and when they finally copulate... their children will be smart" (old joke, but good one. with mild personal resonance, too, having passed through jeep-land.)
most hated line: the chorus that got cut.
random school facility
at this point i must throw out a random accolade to the lovely jennifer setiawan, who stepped in one week for the musical for a special guest cameo. we had a cast member pull out a month before the show, and though it didn't seem like a big deal at the time (we had enough ensemble members to fill in), there was a minor logistical issue created - may, who took over the role of mrs heng, had to cover also as a random school girl to fall in love with martin. this was ok, but suboptimal. thankfully jen appeared to cover things, and she took it a step even further by volunteering to choreograph the whole dance! (or rather, i met her at some intoxicated gathering, told her 'eh, go choreograph it', we both laughed it off, i woke up the next day, saw her at rehearsal, and told her 'eh. i'm serious.' this was a week before the show.) weaker human beings would have told me to go do bad things to myself. jen sang, danced, choreographed, and turned up for a hell week though she only appeared for one song... my undying gratitude goes out to her.
this song (being one of the 'theme' songs that caleb so detests) was rather easy to write. looping enough boyz ii men and other generic poppy swoony love ballads in triple time made it simple - i have been sufficiently culturally schooled in the grand and august pop music tradition to well, follow the formula. add in enough random love overkill cliches (girl and boy in library, girl and boy sharing study room, girl and boy bumping and swopping notes accidentally...) and tada instant funny love song. i was actually tossing a few more tried and tested scenes around, e.g. girl in elevator, boy rushes in last minute... and then elevator spoil etc etc.
favorite line: "i was surprised/ to find/ his/her notes are much better than mine..." (musical corny fun songs are one of the few places where my over-rhyming habits are tolerable)
most hated line: the entire chorus, really. the whole "love of a lifetime" thing? and "so specially special" (oh so special)? quite a lyrical copout. i was trying to fit in something more funny but there were deadline issues. "so specially special" may be the worst phrase in any of the songs in the whole musical... i'm almost ashamed i wrote it.
hello my dear/oh no my dear/you know my dear
my brother's cameo song. about two months before the musical we were experiencing a strange reversal of roles. my brother has written probably ten times as many original songs as i have (find them on his website), and i have done probably ten times as many music arrangements as he has (due to being part of pennyo, penn's only chinese a cappella group - concert next week! shameless plug!) - albeit only for a cappella. back then, i was writing all the tunes and lyrics - and then he was exclusively doing all the arrangements. this was sort of necessary because - i was writing the book, and not really telling him very much about it, and hence had to integrate the songs into the book - and he's the music genius, so he can pick out the chords and accompany whatever tune i sing at him in <15 minutes (which happens to be the average time he appears at my room before each musical practice).
naturally, he complained about this situation - because he wanted to write some songs. i told him, ok, go write a corny mock emo love song by a long distance boyfriend. make sure to include corny mock emo tropes. i raised the example of white plastic bags swirling in the wind (a la american beauty). and this song evidently was the result - music all by him, lyrics mostly by him. (i tweaked a few lines here and there, and i added in the whole 'oh no my dear' segment (to his chagrin) for structural purposes in act ii)
favorite line: "it says that if you love someone then you must set them fweeeee"(actually, i just like the 'fweeeee'. in an earlier iteration, he was supposed to sing 'for youuu... and meeeee', with the mee in falsetto and in the sesame st ernie voice. he toned down the ernie-ness for the recordings. i was sad.)
most hated lines: i dislike most of the end bits of 'you know my dear', actually- it was supposed to be a mock emo song. and then suddenly it became the very thing it was supposed to mock - an emo song!! noooo!!! ah well. you can't always have it your way.
midnight
a lot of people like this song - it's lovingly rendered by two of our best (if not the best) singers, val and kenny, (lame trivia only comprehensible to cast- after coining 'GGV'(gingivitis), i wanted to address our two lovers as 'valkenny', which reminds me of vulcanicity, but i digress) and they hit this one out of the park. i personally like it a lot, though not as much as 'you are here' - for a few reasons.
a few flaws in construction bug it for me - the verse is not really connected to the chorus, musically (i think it has to go into double or something), and just the general feel of both parts - both of which i like separately but perhaps not that much together?; lyrically the whole 'midnight' and 'light' and 'right' think was a bit overkill in the first chorus - 'daylight' seemed a better fit in the second; the chorus is soaring when they hit it well... but also hard to sing with this bizarre jump/shift thingy in the middle; and just this general... incoherence? i was trying to achieve a feeling of tentativeness, uncertainty (could you be thinking my name/ wondering/ if i /should i feel the same); but then i had to effect this transition from midnight to daylight and the following movement towards some kind of triumphant certainty/stability (daylight! - cue lights on, kevin pang! one of my favorite moments)... all a bit iffy.
what makes it good for me still - caleb and the musicians covered my ass for this one, gliding over the long held notes in the verse and the necessary transition to the chorus with some very nice guitar/piano sequences that still lift the hair on my neck when i remember them; kevin pang and lights (already mentioned); tremendous soloists (already mentioned); a very simple rising line in the chorus ('we'll- just - wait - and -seee); and a couple of lines in the verse that i was very pleased with.
favorite lines: "children should be sleeping/lovers should be keeping time/heart to heart". ah, two feminine rhymes in a row, and with four to five word line lengths at that. it's gotta be lame. but that additional -time tagged on... saves. the. day. and then it runs on to the next sentence and then the second line gains an extra glisten... bam! (the best thing about an english major education is that it gives you the analytical resources to better blow your own trumpet.)
most hated lines: "when i wake i hear you snoring/we'll do breakfast in the morning" i was going for gritty/affectionate realism, and uh, fell very far short. caleb called me up to complain about them a couple of times - and i agreed... but i couldnt think of anything better. sometimes bad lines just stick in your head and every time you run the musical tune over to think of new, better lines - the bad ones just sit there, defying any attempt to put new words in their place.
sweet potato porridge/priorities
anybody else notice how these two songs sound a bit alike? (that's why we put them apart... in act i and act ii... and kept different singers on them... and different arrangements/moods... the scam succeeded!) even worse, i wrote them virtually back to back, without realising it, after becoming mentally stuck in a mode. caleb shouted at me after i sang 'sweet potato porridge' to him... EH! THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE LAST SONG LAH!!! he is pretty consistent about scolding me when i produce similar sounding songs (e.g. prayer for my daughter - random school).
if i had to pick a least favorite, it would be one of these two - possibly priorities. caleb likes it, and his dong-ching-dong-ching arrangement, but gosh do i find that piano raggy thing annoying. you could think of it as an exercise in super-feminine rhymes... or basically, things that rhyme with 'priorities'. the lyrics are contrived, and due to the multisyllable madness the song is nearly unsingable, but our talented singers soldiered through it anyway. i came up with it while walking home past cav's one day - i recall humming to myself "so i've got priorities/ affirmative action for minorities/ like youuu". though eventually that line got cut.
favorite line: "looks for 'whatever he can get' " (re: facebook) - potentially the only line with any subtlety in this song.
most hated line: oh, lots.
sweet potato porridge will eternally be associated with swinging hands/elbows left to right. it's a very infectious hand action. this is also the only song that i (badly) choreographed. (70% of the actions consist of swinging hands/elbows left-right in front of body). the cast may have noticed me carrying out this hand action during virtually every song with a dong-cheng-dong-cheng beat, e.g. priorities, university of pennsylvania, yellow people...
this song is also notable for being inspired by filip kor - some random joke in conversation of his from freshman year, re: parents sending him to school and hence must eat sweet potato porridge every day. caleb wrote the bridge (soy sauce, chye sim etc) and ending (no morrrre - guorui), lyrics and music both, and i wrote the rest. its a "theme" or concept song... and basically was written largely because "porridge" and "college" apparently rhyme. (yes, more feminine rhymes. sorry.)
favorite line: "doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo." (who needs lyrics!) or.. the entire ah ma chorus.
most hated lines: "work for part time at cold storage... have to take a mortgage..." just a little bit too over the top on the rhyming... i also considered "they're bringing back the knowledge.. education we encourage... " and other bad lines before deciding to keep it at two.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Sing, City: The Recording Part One
Today marks the first day of our recording sessions- I'm sitting here my laptop at my desk, planning today's arrangement and the things I need to do for the recording. It's been quite nightmarish- planning out the schedule on my little excel spreadsheet trying to map out everyone's schedule which just happens to clash with Pennyo's Spring concert and pretty much everyone else's Gettysburg trip, homework deadlines, meeting schedules etc. Nonetheless- forge ahead with great strength!
Looking at my master plan for the recording, it just struck me that we actually have 20 tracks- will it fit on the cd?
Will the recording go smoothly? Will Terence's furry mic be of sufficient quality? Will my primitive software mix and hold up well enough? Will ppl be on time and punctual so as not to mess up my schedule? Will it? Will it? More questions, and fewer answers.
Excitement nonetheless!
Looking at my master plan for the recording, it just struck me that we actually have 20 tracks- will it fit on the cd?
Will the recording go smoothly? Will Terence's furry mic be of sufficient quality? Will my primitive software mix and hold up well enough? Will ppl be on time and punctual so as not to mess up my schedule? Will it? Will it? More questions, and fewer answers.
Excitement nonetheless!
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sing, City! - Colin Goh's thoughts
From Colin Goh's and Woo Yen Yen's blog:
"There was also an excellent musical put up by the students titled ‘Sing City’. I’ve seen similar performances by Singapore clubs in other universities, but this one stood out for me, particularly the poppy score and witty libretto by brothers Joshua and Caleb Yap, two names to watch out for."
Take that, UK universities.
"There was also an excellent musical put up by the students titled ‘Sing City’. I’ve seen similar performances by Singapore clubs in other universities, but this one stood out for me, particularly the poppy score and witty libretto by brothers Joshua and Caleb Yap, two names to watch out for."
Take that, UK universities.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Symptoms of Withdrawal Symptoms
I think it's hilarious that everyone is suffering from withdrawal symptoms from our little show. That includes me too- I've been on facebook alot more than I am usually simply because ppl have been walling, and I decided to capitalise on post-production hype and energy to start a facebook group (muahahahah I feel like I'm five). It's titled- What I'd Do To Do It All Again, a quote from After All This Time (Finale) which the entire cast bellows at the end of the show.
Other upcoming events to negotiate our withdrawal highs include: Noodle Blues Night, sponsored kindly by Philip and Chestnut Hall 1028 where an instant noodle buffet has been scheduled for public enjoyment. In addition to this and massive facebook whoring and repeated whines for photos and other Sing, City! paraphernalia. Upcoming projects include (quote Terence) Sing, City: The DVD, Sing City: The Photos, and Sing, City: The Soundtrack.
And for the record- Terence is NOT a suit! =) He's been an integral part of the production process, and I hope we've credited the administrative and logistical work of Terence, Jingxian, Yexiang and the other crew members enough. We're grateful to them, and apologise for the inconveniences, and unhappy moments caused! No rancour to speak of, except in the moment!
Other upcoming events to negotiate our withdrawal highs include: Noodle Blues Night, sponsored kindly by Philip and Chestnut Hall 1028 where an instant noodle buffet has been scheduled for public enjoyment. In addition to this and massive facebook whoring and repeated whines for photos and other Sing, City! paraphernalia. Upcoming projects include (quote Terence) Sing, City: The DVD, Sing City: The Photos, and Sing, City: The Soundtrack.
And for the record- Terence is NOT a suit! =) He's been an integral part of the production process, and I hope we've credited the administrative and logistical work of Terence, Jingxian, Yexiang and the other crew members enough. We're grateful to them, and apologise for the inconveniences, and unhappy moments caused! No rancour to speak of, except in the moment!
Sing, City! superlatives
I've been pretty privileged to be one of three people who can post on this Sing, City! blog. The other two are the co-creators of the musical, Josh and Caleb Yap. My role in Sing, City! is twofold - playing acoustic guitar, and conducting overall admin sai-kang (given that Club Singapore "presented" Sing, City!). The similarity in these two elements of my role is that I got to piss off either one of the brothers. Caleb, because my eyes were glued to the score whenever I played the guitar and because I played too fast for my own good, and Josh, because I played the Suit throughout the creation of the musical - limiting the budget, procuring a smaller-than-expected performance space, melding the speaker series and musical into one event, worrying unnecessarily (in hindsight) about logistical issues paralyzing the process. There were times when I felt like Ari Gold in Entourage (minus the hot wife and sports cars), while Josh and Caleb were the Vincent and Eric of the musical. Constantly reminding Josh of what he could (not) do, getting Russell to report to me any suspicious spending activity, coming late for rehearsal because I had to get the flyers up in Harnwell, etc. How apt it was that on performance night itself, I run in an hour late for the final run-through, wearing a suit and tie while the other musicians were already spiffily decked out in their custom-painted hipster LoveSG tshirts. Then in my spiderish franticness to set up the video cameras around the room to produce a DVD of the event, I trip over the wire connecting the musicians' monitor to the mixer, spilling the amp on the floor and once again incurring Caleb's rancor. The only consolation is that while Ari Gold is the pompous and gullible suit in the show, at least he's quite memorable. Anyone wanna hug it out?
And now - Sing, City! superlatives! Vote in the comments!
Best Couple
1) Renhua and Janice
2) Kenny and Val
3) Guo Rui and May
4) Gina and Garrett
5) Yao Xiang and Emily (this one's for the musicians to have something to talk about)
Cutest Unforeseen Event
1) Philip's la-la-la through the You Are Here reprise
2) Guo Rui's powdery hair
3) The mass of people clamoring for tickets outside Rooftop Lounge
Best Guitarist (has to be settled once and for all, we all struggled to be louder than one another)
1) Wymen
2) Dennis
3) Terence
Best Bass Guitarist
1) Ben Gan
Favorite Screw-up During Rehearsals
1) Gina's "no pork, no floss"
2) Ren's "investment banking bay (Bain? Baby?) bonus"
3) The musicians. At every rehearsal.
Favorite Celebrity Who Sat Through Sing, City!
1) Alfian Sa'at
2) Colin Goh
3) Francis Seow
4) Ben Gan
Favorite Rehearsal Location
1) Caleb's room
2) Josh's room
3) Huntsman Hall
4) Bathroom
And most importantly:
Cast and Crew's Favorite Song
1) Results
2) University of Pennsyl-vania
3) Sweet Potato Porridge
4) Yellow People
5) Your Dreams Will Not Perform As Advertised (musicians' favorite, I believe)
6) Prayer For My Daughter
7) Hello My Dear / Oh No My Dear / You Know My Dear
8) Random School Facility
9) Sing Little City
10) Priorities
11) Midnight
12) You Are Here
13) Noodle Blues (appeared to be a crowd fav)
14) I Was Fine
15) After All This Time
And now - Sing, City! superlatives! Vote in the comments!
Best Couple
1) Renhua and Janice
2) Kenny and Val
3) Guo Rui and May
4) Gina and Garrett
5) Yao Xiang and Emily (this one's for the musicians to have something to talk about)
Cutest Unforeseen Event
1) Philip's la-la-la through the You Are Here reprise
2) Guo Rui's powdery hair
3) The mass of people clamoring for tickets outside Rooftop Lounge
Best Guitarist (has to be settled once and for all, we all struggled to be louder than one another)
1) Wymen
2) Dennis
3) Terence
Best Bass Guitarist
1) Ben Gan
Favorite Screw-up During Rehearsals
1) Gina's "no pork, no floss"
2) Ren's "investment banking bay (Bain? Baby?) bonus"
3) The musicians. At every rehearsal.
Favorite Celebrity Who Sat Through Sing, City!
1) Alfian Sa'at
2) Colin Goh
3) Francis Seow
4) Ben Gan
Favorite Rehearsal Location
1) Caleb's room
2) Josh's room
3) Huntsman Hall
4) Bathroom
And most importantly:
Cast and Crew's Favorite Song
1) Results
2) University of Pennsyl-vania
3) Sweet Potato Porridge
4) Yellow People
5) Your Dreams Will Not Perform As Advertised (musicians' favorite, I believe)
6) Prayer For My Daughter
7) Hello My Dear / Oh No My Dear / You Know My Dear
8) Random School Facility
9) Sing Little City
10) Priorities
11) Midnight
12) You Are Here
13) Noodle Blues (appeared to be a crowd fav)
14) I Was Fine
15) After All This Time
Sunday, March 25, 2007
sing city, the making of - episode one.
people have been asking - how did you guys write the whole thing? who wrote what? what were you thinking? blah blah blah. so... here's a little bit of background info on... where the songs came from.
i had a lot of musical ideas connected to certain lyrics (in cases, maybe just individual lines) that had bounced around my head for quite a while during the percolation process. so one saturday afternoon, my brother and i sat down and bashed out concepts for eight songs that would form the backbone (or so we thought) of our musical.
at this point, we had no script, or even any vague idea of where it was going - only that the musical was set at penn, and that it was about love - hence you may notice that most of the songs that actually survived this first wave ended up in act i (introductory material), and/or are pretty general. most of them began really just as tunes in my head, linked to a few words, phrases, lines. then under pressure from caleb, and occasionally with some chords from him that uh, were different from what i had in mind, i began to flesh out the rest of the tunes, and then add more lyrics.
this was the first wave of songs that made the cut -
you are here; random school facility; yellow people; university of pennsylvania; midnight; priorities; friday night lights, (waking up alone on a) saturday morning, SINGAPORE.
yes, some of these never survived to the next round, notably 'friday night lights', a frat party-themed rock song which died a horrible death (caleb hated it and i never really liked it) and was resurrected in spirit from the grave, and went heavy reconstructive surgery to become 'sing, little city' (which made much more musical and lyrical sense.) 'saturday morning' was meant to be a slow, soppy counterpart in the aftermath of 'friday night lights', and they were meant to meld into a call-and-answery layered reprise titled 'friday night/saturday morning' that... never saw the light of day.
'SINGAPORE' was this concept that we had in our head very early - an introductory song with lots of singaporeans waking up, along the lines of 'belle' from 'beauty and the beast'. i in fact wanted to begin the musical with grace singing the lines - "sing-a-pore/it's a quiet island/every day/like the one before/sing-a-pore/full of sing-a-po-o-reans/waking up/to/say...." and then i couldn't think of anything suitably singaporean and bisyllabic greeting-esque except "wah lau" to take the place of "bonjour", so that idea was tossed. much later... i ay-ay-ay-ay-ed 'results' into existence to caleb's chagrin, and the rest is history.
before i started this blog, i actually wanted to sit down and detail the work done on each individual song, both as a personal reference for myself on the songwriting process, as well as interesting anecdotal material for whoever's interested in how we actually wrote the whole damn thing in two months. so i did a rambly background on the making of 'you are here', and that took up all the energy i had. i'll write more if the mood takes me.
You Are Here - for the longest time, was just a chorus and a concept - in fact, jst the strange modulation/progression in lines 3-5 (..you are HERE (question posed)... when the WINter's done its WORST (strange chord, tension)... when the SNOW at last (progress, wistful chord, still strange).. has MELted into memory (resolution, return to comfort...). i had the tune for that ringing in my head long before i filled in the lyrics - the only lyric lines that were existent from the very beginning were 'you are here' at the beginning of each chorus line, and 'you are here, and it matters to me' at the very end. i was really planning to change that ending when i first wrote it - felt a tad cheesy? but after the wordiness of the previous choruses after i filled in more lyrics, it felt simple - clean - and by then it had settled quite definitely in my head. simple, primary school vocab - but simple, primary school concepts are also the strongest.
the chorus as we know it now - was actually going to be just a repeated verse unit, and i was stuck there with this song for a long time, but out of somewhere the lyrical/musical line 'where i'm from, things don't change..." just hit me - and then 'summer nights to summer days...' immediately followed - and after that the whole seasonal theme just piled on. other early lines that felt suddenly right were 'no one sees/ it begin/ just a changing of the wind' (personal bad inclination towards -ing-ing verbs into nouns); 'the lights go up on locust walk' (one of my favorite visual memories of penn). it came back to me then, that fall day in sophomore year, walking by vance hall, and the golden leaves suddenly all cascading down - the rest of the song wrote itself.
there are lines that i must continually apologize for/explain: 'a time to give/a time to take/where you going for spring break' - they were intended originally as an interlude of guorui (dad) and yanmin(mom) and random singaporean, to lighten the somewhat emo tone of the song. and then the following line 'when the heart begins to ache' allows a swift return to the original mood, and i was just thinking of valerie's voice soaring up that note in sweet contrast to the more farcical spring break line.but people still complain. aiyah.
the last verse is of course the one most relevant to me as a senior, and caleb actually takes the credit for assigning it to filip. early into the practices, he sold me on the idea of having filip half-speak, half-sing those lines ('here it ends/where we begun/packing boxes one by one') in his distinctive toodle-dy-doo filipian fashion. to my deep sorrow, the previous spring break lines appeared to have gained more ground in the filipian consciousness as opposed to my deeply sentimental ('i'll put my memories on rewind/looking back on better times/ now it's finally time to find/ what to take or leave behind') - because he sang the former instead! ah!!! :} i spent a lot of time cobbling those last two lines together. (though right now i feel that the last line should be 'what to keep or leave behind'). i saw those lines from the very beginning as a single character standing on stage in front of a box, two items in his hands - each invoking memories - but only one can fit. primitive foreshadowing. woohoo.
i actually thought the first take of 'you are here' would appear early in the play, and the last final reprise would be very late in the play, so i wrote the two lines 'after the world has done its worst/after the joy and tears have melded in our memories' with the extremely long 'after the' taking the place of 'when', thinking of some kind of musical dramatic pause (fermata? whatchamacallit?) (you are HERE ....pause....aaaafter the world..etc) to be injected there. i was also very smug when 'joy and tears have melded in our memories' took the place of 'snow at last has melted' in my head - ah, i love what you can do to the english language just by changing a letter. (in retrospect, the subtle difference is a little bit hard to catch while sung, though. lesson learned.)
'you are here' was the first song to be completed, and one of my personal favorites. (also the first original song i've written in, uh, 9 years.) i do somewhat regret that its eventual placement in act three somewhat downgraded its significance in the musical - and shanghai-ed its thematic focus away from seasonality/transience/permanence (the importance of time - which is what i was thinking of) and towards location (the importance of place - which is what it seems to come off as being about, both from title and the dialogue leading up to it). i was also thinking of it as a triumphant ending song, but caleb wrote his massive 'after all this time' ending over it, so, fine, bleah.
oh, and it's dedicated to jasmine tsai, for being here. the song's inspired by her, anyway. ultimately, the rest of the song is just icing - the last two primary school lines are what i mean to say. regardless of changing seasons, time and place - here and now, you are here - and it matters to me.
i had a lot of musical ideas connected to certain lyrics (in cases, maybe just individual lines) that had bounced around my head for quite a while during the percolation process. so one saturday afternoon, my brother and i sat down and bashed out concepts for eight songs that would form the backbone (or so we thought) of our musical.
at this point, we had no script, or even any vague idea of where it was going - only that the musical was set at penn, and that it was about love - hence you may notice that most of the songs that actually survived this first wave ended up in act i (introductory material), and/or are pretty general. most of them began really just as tunes in my head, linked to a few words, phrases, lines. then under pressure from caleb, and occasionally with some chords from him that uh, were different from what i had in mind, i began to flesh out the rest of the tunes, and then add more lyrics.
this was the first wave of songs that made the cut -
you are here; random school facility; yellow people; university of pennsylvania; midnight; priorities; friday night lights, (waking up alone on a) saturday morning, SINGAPORE.
yes, some of these never survived to the next round, notably 'friday night lights', a frat party-themed rock song which died a horrible death (caleb hated it and i never really liked it) and was resurrected in spirit from the grave, and went heavy reconstructive surgery to become 'sing, little city' (which made much more musical and lyrical sense.) 'saturday morning' was meant to be a slow, soppy counterpart in the aftermath of 'friday night lights', and they were meant to meld into a call-and-answery layered reprise titled 'friday night/saturday morning' that... never saw the light of day.
'SINGAPORE' was this concept that we had in our head very early - an introductory song with lots of singaporeans waking up, along the lines of 'belle' from 'beauty and the beast'. i in fact wanted to begin the musical with grace singing the lines - "sing-a-pore/it's a quiet island/every day/like the one before/sing-a-pore/full of sing-a-po-o-reans/waking up/to/say...." and then i couldn't think of anything suitably singaporean and bisyllabic greeting-esque except "wah lau" to take the place of "bonjour", so that idea was tossed. much later... i ay-ay-ay-ay-ed 'results' into existence to caleb's chagrin, and the rest is history.
before i started this blog, i actually wanted to sit down and detail the work done on each individual song, both as a personal reference for myself on the songwriting process, as well as interesting anecdotal material for whoever's interested in how we actually wrote the whole damn thing in two months. so i did a rambly background on the making of 'you are here', and that took up all the energy i had. i'll write more if the mood takes me.
You Are Here - for the longest time, was just a chorus and a concept - in fact, jst the strange modulation/progression in lines 3-5 (..you are HERE (question posed)... when the WINter's done its WORST (strange chord, tension)... when the SNOW at last (progress, wistful chord, still strange).. has MELted into memory (resolution, return to comfort...). i had the tune for that ringing in my head long before i filled in the lyrics - the only lyric lines that were existent from the very beginning were 'you are here' at the beginning of each chorus line, and 'you are here, and it matters to me' at the very end. i was really planning to change that ending when i first wrote it - felt a tad cheesy? but after the wordiness of the previous choruses after i filled in more lyrics, it felt simple - clean - and by then it had settled quite definitely in my head. simple, primary school vocab - but simple, primary school concepts are also the strongest.
the chorus as we know it now - was actually going to be just a repeated verse unit, and i was stuck there with this song for a long time, but out of somewhere the lyrical/musical line 'where i'm from, things don't change..." just hit me - and then 'summer nights to summer days...' immediately followed - and after that the whole seasonal theme just piled on. other early lines that felt suddenly right were 'no one sees/ it begin/ just a changing of the wind' (personal bad inclination towards -ing-ing verbs into nouns); 'the lights go up on locust walk' (one of my favorite visual memories of penn). it came back to me then, that fall day in sophomore year, walking by vance hall, and the golden leaves suddenly all cascading down - the rest of the song wrote itself.
there are lines that i must continually apologize for/explain: 'a time to give/a time to take/where you going for spring break' - they were intended originally as an interlude of guorui (dad) and yanmin(mom) and random singaporean, to lighten the somewhat emo tone of the song. and then the following line 'when the heart begins to ache' allows a swift return to the original mood, and i was just thinking of valerie's voice soaring up that note in sweet contrast to the more farcical spring break line.but people still complain. aiyah.
the last verse is of course the one most relevant to me as a senior, and caleb actually takes the credit for assigning it to filip. early into the practices, he sold me on the idea of having filip half-speak, half-sing those lines ('here it ends/where we begun/packing boxes one by one') in his distinctive toodle-dy-doo filipian fashion. to my deep sorrow, the previous spring break lines appeared to have gained more ground in the filipian consciousness as opposed to my deeply sentimental ('i'll put my memories on rewind/looking back on better times/ now it's finally time to find/ what to take or leave behind') - because he sang the former instead! ah!!! :} i spent a lot of time cobbling those last two lines together. (though right now i feel that the last line should be 'what to keep or leave behind'). i saw those lines from the very beginning as a single character standing on stage in front of a box, two items in his hands - each invoking memories - but only one can fit. primitive foreshadowing. woohoo.
i actually thought the first take of 'you are here' would appear early in the play, and the last final reprise would be very late in the play, so i wrote the two lines 'after the world has done its worst/after the joy and tears have melded in our memories' with the extremely long 'after the' taking the place of 'when', thinking of some kind of musical dramatic pause (fermata? whatchamacallit?) (you are HERE ....pause....aaaafter the world..etc) to be injected there. i was also very smug when 'joy and tears have melded in our memories' took the place of 'snow at last has melted' in my head - ah, i love what you can do to the english language just by changing a letter. (in retrospect, the subtle difference is a little bit hard to catch while sung, though. lesson learned.)
'you are here' was the first song to be completed, and one of my personal favorites. (also the first original song i've written in, uh, 9 years.) i do somewhat regret that its eventual placement in act three somewhat downgraded its significance in the musical - and shanghai-ed its thematic focus away from seasonality/transience/permanence (the importance of time - which is what i was thinking of) and towards location (the importance of place - which is what it seems to come off as being about, both from title and the dialogue leading up to it). i was also thinking of it as a triumphant ending song, but caleb wrote his massive 'after all this time' ending over it, so, fine, bleah.
oh, and it's dedicated to jasmine tsai, for being here. the song's inspired by her, anyway. ultimately, the rest of the song is just icing - the last two primary school lines are what i mean to say. regardless of changing seasons, time and place - here and now, you are here - and it matters to me.
what you blahblahblah echoes in eternity blahblahblah or at least online
just to prove that i've been stalking my cast and crew.
msn:
jx got a craving for some noodle soup
snami8 - your dreams will not perform as advertised
Mrs Heng and her fan
kendrew(uPenn): Sing City - the musical!!!
facebook:
Gina is having the post sing-city blues.
Terence is musical-ing through the week.
Kenneth is singing in the club singapore musical!!
Janice is not fine... no more sing city!
msn:
jx got a craving for some noodle soup
snami8 - your dreams will not perform as advertised
Mrs Heng and her fan
kendrew(uPenn): Sing City - the musical!!!
facebook:
Gina is having the post sing-city blues.
Terence is musical-ing through the week.
Kenneth is singing in the club singapore musical!!
Janice is not fine... no more sing city!
The Suit speaks
Let's focus on Sing, City!: The Photos and Sing, City!: The Video first, before thinking about the soundtrack!
Saturday, March 24, 2007
multitasking
we were thrown for one big one by clearsound, when they happily arrived, dropped the equipment on the floor, and walked away. my previous experience with clearsound (from ten+ a cappella concerts working for different groups) is that they arrive, set up with whatever help we can offer, and then they run away. apparently there's a different policy for the rooftop lounge/club singapore? then again, we did get a significantly cheaper package than the one i'm used to... hm...
i haven't done significant setup since, well, grace baptist church, usually relying on the techs to connect all the wires before i go on to tinker with room eq, individual mike checks, balance, tape etc. also i haven't worked with wireless mikes before, let alone 8 of them. so when the boxes hit the floor and i unfurled the 'instruction manual' - 1 large sheet of paper - that they left behind, i realised i would have zero bandwidth to manage anything but sound in the next 2-3 hours. fun times.
thank god for kevin pang - who i was able to just point to, say "fix lights", and he got it done; filip, renhua, garrett and the rest of the cast ("assemble set" - luckily by this point some of them had gotten an idea of how the monster backdrop was supposed to be set up); caleb and the music team, who had to deal with (a) being relocated (b) moving a grand piano across and around the entire lounge (c) cables not long enough (d) a drum set that mysteriously drops out below a certain frequency unless i half-UNplug it from the mixer (e) a dead keyboard; peony and flowers; cynthia and makeup; kenny/guorui/filip/russell/janice (and rest of cast!) who helped me individually at some point or other to run rehearsal in my complete absence; my much-abused stage manager crew (yexiang, nadia, yinwei) - together with some other elite muscles (russell, wee siong) who carried my poles up 25 floors of highrise stairs because they wouldnt fit in the elevator - stripped lights/electric strips from my house - dug a missing key out of a pair of pants that i had thrown around - fiddled with powerpoint for 11 hours - got shouted at me and made to run around all over the place...
thank god for competent, responsible and intelligent singaporeans (and friends of singaporeans) with initiative. if i had a battalion of them dressed in combat fatigues and a shipload of arms and weapons - heck, screw the weapons, just give me one thousand dollars in seed money and some duct tape - i could take and hold west philly against the US army or any other comers for at least 2 weeks.
i haven't done significant setup since, well, grace baptist church, usually relying on the techs to connect all the wires before i go on to tinker with room eq, individual mike checks, balance, tape etc. also i haven't worked with wireless mikes before, let alone 8 of them. so when the boxes hit the floor and i unfurled the 'instruction manual' - 1 large sheet of paper - that they left behind, i realised i would have zero bandwidth to manage anything but sound in the next 2-3 hours. fun times.
thank god for kevin pang - who i was able to just point to, say "fix lights", and he got it done; filip, renhua, garrett and the rest of the cast ("assemble set" - luckily by this point some of them had gotten an idea of how the monster backdrop was supposed to be set up); caleb and the music team, who had to deal with (a) being relocated (b) moving a grand piano across and around the entire lounge (c) cables not long enough (d) a drum set that mysteriously drops out below a certain frequency unless i half-UNplug it from the mixer (e) a dead keyboard; peony and flowers; cynthia and makeup; kenny/guorui/filip/russell/janice (and rest of cast!) who helped me individually at some point or other to run rehearsal in my complete absence; my much-abused stage manager crew (yexiang, nadia, yinwei) - together with some other elite muscles (russell, wee siong) who carried my poles up 25 floors of highrise stairs because they wouldnt fit in the elevator - stripped lights/electric strips from my house - dug a missing key out of a pair of pants that i had thrown around - fiddled with powerpoint for 11 hours - got shouted at me and made to run around all over the place...
thank god for competent, responsible and intelligent singaporeans (and friends of singaporeans) with initiative. if i had a battalion of them dressed in combat fatigues and a shipload of arms and weapons - heck, screw the weapons, just give me one thousand dollars in seed money and some duct tape - i could take and hold west philly against the US army or any other comers for at least 2 weeks.
Friday, March 23, 2007
one last time!
Blood was spilled and tears were shed, but we are now ready for the big one.
God giveth us the strength to pull through until the afterparty, where we imbibeth til we are trasheth.
God giveth us the strength to pull through until the afterparty, where we imbibeth til we are trasheth.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
practice live blog - 2 days to concert!
615 - the musicians have arrived. the cast is trickling in. my brother was redirected to drexel due to his inability to read emails. for the first time we have an actual lecture room that simulates to some extent the layout of the stage. very wide and not that deep, with enough space for the musicians..
620 - the musicians have been having a five-minute discussion on how to put a keyboard on a table.
625 - its time for nee-nor-nee-nor-nee .
1024 - oh wait, practice finished and no time to blog again.
620 - the musicians have been having a five-minute discussion on how to put a keyboard on a table.
625 - its time for nee-nor-nee-nor-nee .
1024 - oh wait, practice finished and no time to blog again.
ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY
as things roll on daily with a growing sense of inevitability, i've come to the eventual realization - that i'll never be able to do this again. write a script? perhaps. and a few songs? maybe. but it's unlikely that i'll have my brother around to do all the arranging for me, nor will it be easy to find anyone with similar musical talent yet willing to work under my onerous conditions (i.e. everything at the very last minute).
similarly, i doubt i have the chops to cut it at any level higher than uh, an elevated school skit, so this is probably the only time i will be given the reins to anyhow play as much as i want. not to say there's anything wrong with school skits - another part of this realization is that only in college will there be a sufficiently large pool of willing and able personnel to serve as cast, crew, musicians, saikang parties... in the real world, you have to pay for all this shit! and my library of stored up personal favors doesn't extend that far.
i mean, where else would i be able to dial up a few people, 4 days before the production, and tell them to go... steal rocks from a construction site? (in order to weigh down my set). oh, right... the singapore armed forces. maybe i'll do an SAF musical. or hasn't that been done already...
similarly, i doubt i have the chops to cut it at any level higher than uh, an elevated school skit, so this is probably the only time i will be given the reins to anyhow play as much as i want. not to say there's anything wrong with school skits - another part of this realization is that only in college will there be a sufficiently large pool of willing and able personnel to serve as cast, crew, musicians, saikang parties... in the real world, you have to pay for all this shit! and my library of stored up personal favors doesn't extend that far.
i mean, where else would i be able to dial up a few people, 4 days before the production, and tell them to go... steal rocks from a construction site? (in order to weigh down my set). oh, right... the singapore armed forces. maybe i'll do an SAF musical. or hasn't that been done already...
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