IT'S OVER!! and i just know i'm gonna get withdrawal from not practising guitar consistently after today.
having a blog is a good thing, cos you can see what happened for last year's exam with a click of the button. so off i went, in shirt, tie and pants, plus adidas jacket. and indeed the exam centre was cold.
but the exam room itself wasnt. at the end i was sweating.
anyways, today i was as prepared as i could be, letting the learning curve go down a little after one day of rest and then kicking it up again. to my surprise i saw my math teacher who my guitar teaches there, taking his grade 2 exam. haha he was quite nervous.
and then two of my frens from acjc came, thx to them too. altho i got kicked out of a studio cos they dint allow me to warm up in there, -.-, they still let me practise softly outside the exam room. i played through a few studies and through my composition theme and variations on as the deer, which evokes so much emotion, and then it was time to go in (albeit a bit of delay from problems with the examiner's MD player.)
when another unlikely area i was prepared in is that i had already seen who my examiner was, saw him yesterday at st anthony's cannosian secondary school when i went to pick up a score from my guitar teacher, and altho him seemed a bit dao ytd, today he didn't remember seeing me yesterday at all and was very nice. haha.
what i remember is: normal performances of la catedral and recuerdos and capricho arabe, a bit jammed in magic flute, and a slight memory lapse in english suite, and stopping the last chord a little to hard lol. too happy its over already. so once again my conclusion that there is no best performance, if ur prepared enough you dont need luck to pull u through, cos you'd be performing about a mean.
and i'm going to listen to jay chou now. haha bye.
Thank you God.
all this while i didn't have a testimony related to guitar, but after today, i do.
being a good musician isn't all about being able to play all the correct notes.
it isn't about fame
it isn't about how many cds you've recorded
it isn't about how good a conductor you are
it isn't about how many tours you've gone on
it isn't about the amount of musical knowledge you have
it isn't about receiving an mep scholarship
it isn't about receiving an atcl certificate
it isn't about studying music at university
it isn't about winning many competitions
there are so many things being a musician really isn't about.
what's most important about a good musician is the heart.
the ability to touch others lives through music
the dedication
it doesn't matter if you only touch a handful of lives
or give an imperfect performance
it is about the relationships built. the inspiration shared.
i don't know if music is eternal. but one thing's for sure, the things that are not seen, like the human soul, and relationships are.
some of the things you see above under what being a good musician isnt about are what my heart desires. but after today, it all doesn't matter anymore. because i have found my purpose for my music.
"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." - matthew 6:33
3 days to the exam!! lolol.
well i've practiced about all i can.. about 2 1/2h today, and now i shall trust in God to pull me through already. tml i'd probably just practice a bit then give a recital at st anthony's canossian sec (my guitar teacher teaches there) and then wed is rest day, and thursday is IT. but i dun think i'd be elated after the exam, after all its just another run of the pieces that i've been playing for so long.
but the prep work i must say is really a lot!! even for non-musical stuff. today i spent much of my time getting my scores zapped, and rawr i had to scan them in, send them downstairs to the com with a laser printer, adjust brightness and contrast, and print!! and then my laser printer started to run out of ink.. so went downstairs and got ripped off for the rest of the copies at $3 for 14 pages. -.-
mission trip is coming soon too!! oh dear i have yet to memorise those song lyrics. haha. cya.
its 5 days to the guitar exam!! haha.
and contrary to what i was thinking, that i wudnt be able to do much to change my playing during the last wk, after listening to some recordings of other people playing i think that theres a lot i can improve on. so its back to practice practice practice!! lol.
was also thinking about what joanne seah shared with us about finding ur life partner: the scene is one of you running towards God. the one whom u will marry is not someone who runs ahead of you, too difficult to catch, or who runs behind you, being dragged along, but rather someone who runs beside you.
hmm but i realised i'm a bit hard to run beside. i wonder who God will send. haha.
i've been missing from the blog for a quite few days.. so heres an ultra long update!! lolol.
quite an eventful few days i must say. monday. went to acjc in the morning to give a run of my atcl repertoire for the acjc guitar ensemble. also helped my guitar teacher teach a bit. must say that the run at acjc was probably one of my best ever. really on form. then my guitar teacher persuaded me to go to tpjc to give my recital again. 'get it done with' he said.. so i dun need to go up on another day. and so i went. and ugh tired but still managed to pull through without any devastating errors.
on the way back my guitar teacher managed to persuade me to help him teach the next day, so heres what happened on tuesday. first went to st anthony's cannossian sec sch to help teach. i shant say much but if the examiner gets bored listening to all those grade 1 and 2 students, imagine what i felt when listening to some of them play their pieces for me. and then i imagine what my guitar teacher goes through much of the time. mannnnn.
after that headed to mgs, the sister school, where the first batch of 9 students pioneering the guitar group there had lesson, for some of them the last b4 their exam. this group was special cos they're mep students as well. well once again i shant say much haha. i guess my story as an mep student and guitarist applies to them the most, hope they took away something from my playing even though i was so tired that i added an extra rondo section to the last movement of one of my pieces.
yesterday was spent slacking. a well deserved slack. teaching is TIRING.
well anyway even if i dont become a teacher, the guitar will be my friend for life anyway. did i mention that teaching is unbelievably tiring?
and today. before i talk about today, you know, guys dun shop a lot, but honestly i think guys at the end of the day spend a lot more money than women. take my shoes for example.. one pair of mine can buy up to six pairs for my mom. okay but thats beside the point.
today i wanted to go to the city hall area to buy 1) recording equipment i.e. a mike and an mp3 player with a mike line in 2) new guitar strings to change to make sure nothing excessively interesting happens during my atcl, lets say for example a string breaking 3) this cool maple capo i saw at davis guitar 4) any cd with a segovia recording of bach's chaconne
so first the recording equipment. i knew exactly where the mike was, just needed a device. i was pretty sure creative mp3 players had a line in for a mike, and ended up almost pissing one of the Challenger service staff off cos i kept insisting that creative mp3 players did have a line in. but they dint. sigh. anyway to cut a long story short i dint buy any recording equipment.
then went to buy the only two things i bought today on my own.. the guitar stuff. HMV classical guitar section = useless. espl library guitar section = useless.
btw espl lib doesnt accept cash lah. -.- so went back feeling pretty unaccomplished.
then this evening went to look around audio house with my father. shopping with my father is still the best cos 1) he has a car 2) he has resources to buy stuff 3) he knows a lot more than me about where to buy good stuff. managed to buy a stereo voice recorder for $239 and the recording quality with the built in mike was quite stunning already. i tried to record with mr choo's condenser mike and the result was so freaky cos even people who lived 50 years ago dint have this sorta technology in their time. and now we can get the same effect for slightly under $350. and lots of other modern amenities like the ability to copy and enhance and etc. the power of technology. haha.
kk long post. cya. :)
woohoo!! my chinese exam is over!!
i really thank God for seeing me through the papers today even though i was totally exhausted after a poor night's rest. it looks like i dint really make any startling careless mistakes, and in my compo i used 10 cheng yus!! lol. i cudnt help it.. once an approriate one came into my mind i just decided to stick it in a sentence.
and after the exam i went out with my friends to kbox.. how ironic lol. and we (or rather i) have discovered the secret of an additional remote control u can request for the moves the pitch of the song about. extremely helpful for basses like me who want to sing jay chou or wang li hong. but was quite fun.. but got no nehe around so a lot of our songs ended up sounding quite terrible haha.
yeap so that puts a stopper in the flow of exams for this month. nxt one is on 30th nov, the all important guitar exam.
