From left to right: Yang Wei, John Oommenn, Me, Lukas Foo, Joni Lynn
Yesterday we were at Laundry, The Curve to witness Paperplane Pursuit rocking the crowd. It was an amazing experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Check out their songs here.
This morning I went to Kin Kin Pan Mee
This is the view from Jalan Sultan Ismail next to Medan Tuanku Monorail station
It was good!
Two things I wrote on my iPhone this morning:
1. Singing Melodies
Before John went on stage, another artist from Singapore sang. He was on a guitar, strumming, and seemingly “ahh–ahhhh-ahh-ing” to emptiness. No direction, no lyrics, just chilling and having fun.
I’m not sure if I got this right but here’s my theory:
The reason why people sing melodies is to tell the crowd, and potential record labels, that “hey, this is my vocal range. This is the melody I like. This is the style of songs that I would love to sing. Now what lyrics have you got, that might fit into my portfolio? How about putting this 30 second sequence into your ‘almost complete’ masterpiece? Maybe I can inspire you to complete your current songs in the drawing board.”
I know a guitarist in SS14 Subang who probably do this a lot. Just playing and piecing notes and sequences together with no real aim. (apparent aim…)
It is just like Formula 1 test day. During the off season testing, cars just go round in circles. There are no competitor. Chances, are, there are laps where the time don’t really matter. The test driver will run the car one lap, turn one screw in the front wing, go out for another lap, try a different setting, and go out again. To a non-racing fan, this looks unnecessary! I mean, who are you competing against? Why isn’t a timed lap being taken? Why are so many people observing in the pit crew collecting data when there is no competition? Where is this going to?
Hahaha…
Well, what we all see on a race weekend, is symphony in motion. (Raw power in motion, if you will!) All the winter test work manifests itself into a flawless race weekend (we’re talking top teams lah, not *ahem* Lotus, Virgin, haha..)
And that’s that.
Maybe this can apply for written work as well. You write random paragraphs of nothingness. After a while, you put them all together and produce a masterpiece. Our brains works that way. We process things in chunks. Often time we miss the bigger picture. And the really successful people, are the one who can see the picture in every sense.
Right?
Check out Owl City’s 2 minute intro track
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud07NoWAG2E
I think Paperplane Pursuit took elements from this pop-synth icon for their intro last night. But I like it ;)
2. Saying “Depends”
Yesterday I had the honour and privilege to teach the Chinese Congregation some camera techniques. Mind you, I’m still a noobie at this. But I had to explain the zooming, focus, panning, adjusting the tension and torque to get the perfect shot. I hope I inspired Crystal and Minn :)
I am quite an observant bob.
Often times instructors tell us “It depends”. So when people ask “how much headroom should we leave?” the simple answer will be “It depends!” I feel it is overused in certain senses.
We should try to be specific. I told my “student” that this amount of head room “is it”. You have to trust me on that one!
Because I believe that if we leave too many questions unanswered, it would create more problems in the long run. The student will not have confidence to make the call, make the decision on how much room should be there. Giving them the truthful answer will also create confusion, because as you might suspect, it depends on whether it is the worship leader, or a backup singer, or a musician or a pastor during sermon we are shooting. The subject is important. But I think the message can be delivered if we are more assertive and making a stance on what we think the right thing should be.
Yeah.
To minimise confusion, I imposed a lot of my values and perception on how things should be done to Crystal. It might not be mainstream “correctness”, but over time, minor corrections can be made to perfect the art.
Have a good friday everyone :)
