丝竹琴韵 3

ok. this is to prevent ppl frm dying after looking at the screen too long. cutting it into 4-4 sections wld be better. yupp. 3 posts dedicated to nyco concert stuff. so this will be the details of the happenings on 18th July 2008. form my pov of course.

The night before
yupp, slept accurately at 10.30pm... cos i reached home at 8 plus and i had to tiao qin the last time before the BIG day. after tiao-ing the bottom half, i got so damn tired, i decided to slp, n tiao the nxt day... wonder how ppl just couldn't slp! hahaha. and then again, practising my solo takes up soooo much time, n exhaust the player both physically and mentally(esp this), i keep slping at 10.30pm, for 2 whole weeks. to the heck with school work and blocks! haha

The day itself: morning
yupp, so i woke up at 7am and got a call frm mum saying tat i shld pack my stuff 1st. so i did, n in 1/2 hr, got my stuff ready, n continued to tiao qin. took a bloody long 2 hrs n a stiff neck to finish. regardless, it was necessary. Called brother to wake up at 9am, then got ready to go hair styling. Yupp, after it was done, i'd met banana at bradell mrt (thanks for waiting!) n proceeded to my house to get the tons of stuff (instrus n costumes), ordered a london taxi which came in 5 mins, n off we went to nygh. Thanks again for helping me, julian

The day itself:afternoon-till SCH
sec 2s bought us lemon chinken n bubble tea frm coro, which by the time we were eating, other sections were all dressed n waiting. n we hadn't finish loading stuff on the lorry yet. THANKS SENIORS<3>The day itself:afternoon-rehearsals
rehearsals were quite badly done, things go missing, it was rather lousy, which made all of us super freaked out. Especially when my marimba mallets went missing n i didn't hav double mallets on. N because of all delays, we did not manage to rehearse thru shan jian n taiyang at all. But mrs ee had faith in us. My solo went pretty well, no obvious mistakes, n i'd gotten an uncanny lot of comments on my dress, which i refuse to believe they're saying the truth. Thanks mrs ee for the wonderful comments. i couldn't hope for better. but basically, i had the same sentiments too, esp since last year.
-When i played yq, i thought i'd had matured more, n the music sound more mature. n u confirmed that.
-i'm nt sure abt the improving part, cos i didn't think i'd improve alot. its the last minute chiong-ing that's making sense. but then again, its confirmed by daddy cos he said (the day b4) that only now, i'd start having some essence of the yq skill that joshua has (cos joshua's the magnificently pro one that dad keep praising).
-i do agree i'd became more "open" in my taifeng. its the years of experience, but not enough. but compared to sec 1, of course there's a slight diff. experiencing some difficulties n everything changed me totally last year (shall i call it a blessing in disguise?)
-i couldn't agree more with wad u said abt my solo that will definitely be better during the actual performance in the evening later on.. i mean, after the concert. i felt it too. kind of... i enjoyed performing for the audience(new founded feeling). i ain't that scared of the audience anymore, though i was nvr rlly very scared of performing solo before. mayb cos i was finally able to get my focus on the music mroe than the notes? anyway, it's a good start.

The day itself:evening-dinner
dinner, guess what, usual chicken rice, beni n shawn brought drinks thou. ARIGATO! n ET was with us, but decided to sit on the bench alone, cos we were taking too long to decide where to sit. Yupp, so dinner ,the only time we could talk. All of us shot qns after qns after qns , which were all solved. Then, as yqp, we ran up to backstage immediately when the door is opened, n got ready everything.

The night itself: 丝竹琴韵 '08
And so it started, with us standing by at the side, getting all hyped up and everything. N after emcees started, we went in, n it was BALI 1st. surprisingly, my consistent failure to play those little 1 bar solo bits were rlly successful n louder! bali went well.
--then SHA DI ER. It was quite well too, but i kinda screwed up the shou gu. its skin was too tight, n thus the pitch too high. regardless, it went well without obvious mistakes.
-I recall the whole yqp being tgt by the side, waiting for our turn, when it rlly was our turn. STORM. the set up took a while cos the wheels of the mallets instru are locked, n are awfully hard to unlock them. still, it turned out all very fine. The whole pice was quite ok, from audience point of view. But as what julian said, passable, not awesome, but passable. that's the most we could do in such short time. GD JOB
- and it was DIYI. It went rather well, n limqing look cool in that gown.my sis said she loved it very much. yup, the vibe proble mwas finally sorted out, thanks to the gd acoustics in SCH.

during interval, i immediately pulled yuka to my VIP rm n got changed into my solo dress. Thanks yuka once again. N then i was done during BAIYI GUNIANG the guzheng piece, so i didn't rlly pay any attention to it. heard it was quite ok thou.

-and it was my itme *shudders* TIAN SHAN SHI HUA. not that i was scared. but as i'd have mentioned, my section gave me the last boost for me to play the music as i wanted it. Giving hugs and encouragements... i was so touched, i almost wanted to cry, n got nervous. BUT i told myself that by doing that, i'd just ruined the whole thing. so I walked out , n started playing. Heard gd comments frm ppl too. Thank you ppl, for sms-ing me words of congrats aftr that!

(added on 30/8/08- heard the recording. AND RECORDINGS ARE MERCILESS. It was not as good as i expected, and what i heard on stage that day. but overall it was pretty well. And as usual, i portrayed the musical sense of the piece beautifully [said by a respected person for music]- but i ain't satisfied. JIAYOU!)

-then, off to change while cass goes on as piano accompaniment for YANG GUANG. it was crap during rehearsals, but it turned out just fine, which was good. gd job cass!

- we were still running abt, getting luos n chuis ready n all that, making sure all drums had powder on etc etc when alumni finished their item. n the the emcees announced our item, QIN WANG DIAN BIN, n we moved out, afap. n it started. everyone was amazed by our drumming, and especially the effects of the introduction, what with the powder effect. I'm quite sure qin wang was one of the best item. We did our best yqp! We placed the whole of ourselves into the music. It was marvelous.

- n then, there was chaos on stage when we all started arranging instrus for SHAN JIAN. it was quite well done. esther was fantastic too! haha, i rmb just b4 qin wang, we were signing autographs for xyz juniors!

-AND FINALLY, our grand finale item, TAI YANG. I think everyone enjoyed this the most, creating the atmosphere n getting the adrenaline. It was not proffesional, but yes, awesome. The effect on the audience was perfect.

The night itself: moving instruments back to m4-01
it was super chaotic after everything, n ppl just left, leaving yqp sheng n ssabollec to fend for ourselves against the merciless rain. We reached school at around 12 (cos this time, 1 lorry was almost not enough as perc has like 2 sets of tim, 1 big marimba n a big datanggu). So we started to unload and move things up- we had to tilt the yun luo vertically and disemble the marimba which took too much time- and by that time, it was qutie near 1am. Gd job us. thanks miss chooi, for staying and bearing with the tiredness that was showing clearly on her face. After settling the important shit, we left, by the naggy but necessary reminders by miss chooi.

It was rlly worth everything. I LOVE YOU, NYCO