Monday, November 7, 2011
-I'm back. Again.- 6:47 PM
Hello everyone. I'm back again.I know I have not posted anything for ages.
If you're still reading this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, whoever you are.
I really feel touched to know that there are people who care.
Thanks for taking the time to even check my blog, knowing there might not be a new post.
It seems that nowadays when I post something it means that there's something wrong with me.
It's the holidays now, do you wanna know what I'm up to? Sure.
This Thursday morning I have to attend a rehearsal for an upcoming performance that I've been awaiting since last year. We've been really busy, and we've only actually got something done last week. The sad case of my band and I.
In the afternoon I have choir practice, nothing special, though I have missed all of 3 practices thanks to my 5 continuous days of intensive practice for the choral festival. This means a lot to catch up on, but this is probably the last thing on my mind.
Afterwards, my good friends from choir are going to sort out a Canon remix at my house. This has been thought of for quite long, and I've recorded some GarageBand stuff, but honestly, I've done shit for it. I'm really sorry for my friends.
The worst thing is that I have this terrarium project that has been initiated by my friends earlier this year, and there was quite some hype about it, unfortunately the workshop we've been eager to conduct has been put off so many times by - yes, procrastination, and the terrarium is currently dying. In fact, new plants have been planted already. But the problem here is that my dear teacher wants us to conduct the workshop on Thursday at the same time as my choir practice and well, I'm really at a loss as to what to do. She clearly told us it would be on Wednesday. I don't see how all this confusion came about, but very unfortunately for me to say, my friend hasn't really been taking the initiative to inquire herself and I've been given the responsibility to settle everything.
Well, I really have no idea what on earth to do to settle this mess.
And I don't actually blame my friend either, I'm really a big fuck up. I have no fucking idea what to do anymore.
I really wouldn't mind if someone knocked me out at this moment, thinking about all this is utterly unbearable. I don't want to think about it, but I contradict myself. I am an ironic wreck.
And the day I really dread - 18th of November. It's the day after the closing gala of the choral festival, yeah yeah. That's nothing. That morning I'd have to get my ass to choir practice. Typical morning again. But what's really bugging me is that after that I'd have to rush to my guitar exam. Literally rushing. I can't even go home to practice okay.
And you'd think I'd have a breather during the evening.
No, no, no.
Remember what I mentioned earlier? A concert?
Yep that's the last day of primary school, I have to give the performance we've promised, oh yeah.
I think we're just gonna wing it. Seriously. I have to admit though, we indeed put in quite some effort for this. We have the motivation, the drive to do this, a purpose, but what's obstructing us is time. Oh time, have mercy on us.
Being the insane freaks we are, we decided to do a "band camp" on the spot, realizing the fact that we have zero fucking common free dates. So yeah, last night my baby and my good ol' pal had a sleepover. Just on a whim. Purpose - to save just COMMUTING time.
Now let me stay off the painful, annoying things and rant about something interesting. Well, at least interesting to me.
A Piece of Band Life:
Alright, I shall talk about being in a band for a bit now.
1. Let me clear this misconception. Being in a band, a fucking rock band by the way, not those faggoty boy bands/bimbotic girl groups no no no, is not just about the sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll. Oh yes you need the groove but seriously, if you're forming a band the main purpose should not be fame. 'Cuz that will get you a bucketful of self-indulgence and in reality, nowhere.
A band is about almost 100% effort and commitment. If you can't give, you leave. The fun can wait. The three of us girls, we started a humble cover band last year. We had big dreams, but now we're still pretty much a cover band. I'd dare say we improved a lot, but this is really because we put in effort to nurture the band and we go through all kinds of trouble.
We now take the initiative to do things such as propose daring ideas to organizations, namely our primary school. We try to get other musicians involved to and publicize as much as we can. Yep we've now matured. Glad to say that yesterday we actually broke down the songs into parts and drilled them until they were good enough.
2. When you're in a band, what really keeps you going is chemistry. You need chemistry, you can't evade it, you can't lack it. You really need to build rapport with your bandmates. I realized through playing in groups (choir is also a group affair, not only my cover band... simple collaborations also count) that you really need to depend on each other. It is so important to listen to one another, make sure you don't completely drown out the others, and not only that, sometimes you depend on each other just to remember the song and pull off a great set. That's what we did yesterday. It's all about helping each other. Guess we got a head-start since we have been the best of friends forever. Just gonna give you an example of THROAM since I've been reading it recently (guilty pleasure haha), you know when dirty secrets get exposed between bandmates and they squabble over shit, that's the time a band falls apart. And they kinda did. Hehe.
3. Things always don't go as planned. This is very true. You know, we got all hyped up when we found out we were getting a vocalist, and we wanted to meet her (plus her bf) at STGCC, but she fucking bailed. It was so late, and she didn't clarify things properly, and we gave up. Enough of waiting. We just left, and I haven't heard of her ever since. So much excitement over nothing, really. Another example: we planned a large-scale event in order to accumulate huge amounts of CIP hours for ourselves, but it got down-sized to a freaking one item performance by the "IJ Alumni Band". Yep. You see where we're going.
4. Starting a band is an extremely money-draining thing. I swear, everything about music is expensive. Allow me to let you in on how much I've spent, okay? My Syn guitar is 1.2k, my initial amp was a hundred bucks, quite all right, but I upgraded it. And my lovely Laney costs a thousand dollars. Kudos to me. Moreover, before my Laney I bought a Pearl drum set. It costs $1000+, cost inclusive of the Sabian cymbals bought separately. Oh yes, my Boss distortion pedal costs less than a hundred. Oh the pains. Basically to form a band you need to be either a) rich or b) sell-outs. Hah.
I'm now running out of ideas and I have work to do, so...
SEE YOU ALL
Can I trust you to support my performances? ;)
