Saturday, June 25, 2005
Party Piece
We performed a solo "Party Piece" today, which we were supposed to be able to play while "dead-drunk", according to Michael at least. It had to be 3-5 minutes long. Mine was like - 1 minute? I was endlessly debating in my mind over what piece I should perform for today. Since my major instrument was the electone organ - and the facilities in school didn't provide for it - I was in a dilemma over whether to improvise the chords of a moderately-difficult piece or stick with a simple piece. I eventually decided to keep things simple and did a medley of
Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles and the Super Mario Theme on the keyboard. Nice, short simple tunes. Fortunately for us today we were not being graded. My medley, however, was spoilt by the rhythm when I went too fast, resulting in several bars of notes not being played. And of course the whole medley was an improvisation - meaning that you'll not hear the same exact notes again when I play it another time.
Another major thing happening this week was the opening of ICT Recording Studios B and C - the ones we had been waiting for - for like, 1 month at least! Complete with a baby GRAND piano, sound-proof rooms, drum sets, ProTools with mixer/configuration (with 2 VERY LARGE LCD monitor screens), the whole multi-million dollar project cost like - ya, a bomb! Even before the piano was tuned, it was already being played by several of us.
I managed to get more piano scores from various sources, but I realised that it was not much of a point because firstly, I don't have a piano to practise on - and secondly, I put my assignments before my keyboard practices in priority.
A notable song that I have heard in this week is Jacques Offenbach's Can-Can, which I admired for its dexterity and eccentricity.
Straying slightly off topic, we're halfway into Term 1 already and the pressure of our assignments (including THIS performance journal) is already building up, with projects and due dates every week. The workload never ceases! I feel I'm getting rather overworked by the assignments... it's like from morning to night I only have less than 1 hour's rest - so much time spent on ASSIGNMENTS! From doing the Musicianship Textbook every morning in the long 50-minute MRT train ride, to only 1 hour of lunch break most days in school, to CCA activities in the afternoon, and coming home late in the evening/night - only to rush and finish MORE assignments and squeezing in practice time for my keyboard skills - AND finally sleeping past midnight most of the time - THERE IS HARDLY ENOUGH TIME! Hopefully I can adapt quickly to the hectic schedules of polytechnic life. I once thought that only in JCs was there such an amount of stress - polytechnic life has shown itself to be otherwise (after all, it's a tertiary institution). Oh well. Trying not to stress myself out too much!
1:25 pm *
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Party Piece
We performed a solo "Party Piece" today, which we were supposed to be able to play while "dead-drunk", according to Michael at least. It had to be 3-5 minutes long. Mine was like - 1 minute? I was endlessly debating in my mind over what piece I should perform for today. Since my major instrument was the electone organ - and the facilities in school didn't provide for it - I was in a dilemma over whether to improvise the chords of a moderately-difficult piece or stick with a simple piece. I eventually decided to keep things simple and did a medley of
Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles and the Super Mario Theme on the keyboard. Nice, short simple tunes. Fortunately for us today we were not being graded. My medley, however, was spoilt by the rhythm when I went too fast, resulting in several bars of notes not being played. And of course the whole medley was an improvisation - meaning that you'll not hear the same exact notes again when I play it another time.
Another major thing happening this week was the opening of ICT Recording Studios B and C - the ones we had been waiting for - for like, 1 month at least! Complete with a baby GRAND piano, sound-proof rooms, drum sets, ProTools with mixer/configuration (with 2 VERY LARGE LCD monitor screens), the whole multi-million dollar project cost like - ya, a bomb! Even before the piano was tuned, it was already being played by several of us.
I managed to get more piano scores from various sources, but I realised that it was not much of a point because firstly, I don't have a piano to practise on - and secondly, I put my assignments before my keyboard practices in priority.
A notable song that I have heard in this week is Jacques Offenbach's Can-Can, which I admired for its dexterity and eccentricity.
Straying slightly off topic, we're halfway into Term 1 already and the pressure of our assignments (including THIS performance journal) is already building up, with projects and due dates every week. The workload never ceases! I feel I'm getting rather overworked by the assignments... it's like from morning to night I only have less than 1 hour's rest - so much time spent on ASSIGNMENTS! From doing the Musicianship Textbook every morning in the long 50-minute MRT train ride, to only 1 hour of lunch break most days in school, to CCA activities in the afternoon, and coming home late in the evening/night - only to rush and finish MORE assignments and squeezing in practice time for my keyboard skills - AND finally sleeping past midnight most of the time - THERE IS HARDLY ENOUGH TIME! Hopefully I can adapt quickly to the hectic schedules of polytechnic life. I once thought that only in JCs was there such an amount of stress - polytechnic life has shown itself to be otherwise (after all, it's a tertiary institution). Oh well. Trying not to stress myself out too much!
1:25 pm *
