Band performance for Animangaki 2014!

Haha this was a 4 weeks ago!

This is the third time we performed for AMG xD
This time there's a slight change though, instead of our usual bassist Dustin, we had a sessionist to replace him, Taro :3

The lovely members~

This time we planned proper jamming session instead of just last minute rushing we usually did hahaha. But then thinking on that, I think we changed the habit. Can't recall when was the last time we rushed lol~ It's a good thing XD 

Here's a picture during jamming!

This was in Pertama's studio. Meh, don't like this studio, it's quite crappy. I don't mind the room downstairs which is better, but then that is more expensive.

Usually we jam in M2 Studio, in Puchong. It's wayyyyyyyyyy better. But because of some timing issue, we have no choice but to go here.

I don't know if I'm the once that changed, or my members did. I used to think the guys as very serious and no fun, and it was hard for me to talk to them before lolol. But now, it's all different. They were making so many lame jokes hahaha xD And they seem more cheerful as well o.O 

Except for David, he seems more emo lol.

Minori is just like she was xD (Stay fun, Minori! XD)

Well, overall the jamming sessions were really enjoyable :)

Now, on to the performance~

I was supposed to fetch Taro in the morning, but kind of knowing him, I guessed he'll still be sleeping lol. I was right xD I called him when I depart from my house, and hahaha he was like 'oh my gawddd'.

Luckily I called him first~

Because of that we're kinda late, but it doesn't matter, the sound engineers were later than us. -_-

So...we just hung about waiting for soundcheck.

HAHA my expression XD

Lol don't know what i was talking about, but I look so funny haha. And lol I wonder what is so fascinating about the cables I was rolling to make Taro stare at it like that~

Made Daniel hold on to the cables while I do goodness knows what. And I can't remember who took the photos lol.

Selfie!

Without Chrysler and David, don't know where were they. And with an additional Acap lol.

There's this poster, and Minori was going on about how bishie the character is hahaha xD

We're all teasing her afterwards lol~

Half group photo lol

Anyway finally the sound engineers arrived, and we start soundchecking. 

It's unfortunate for me, but I think there is something wrong with the DI box for the keyboard amp. In the end I had to blast out form the amp T_T

Other than that, it was ok. 

BUT.

During performance, stuff went wrong with the monitors. I can't remember exactly what it was.(Ahaha I'm writing this 4 weeks late ._. )

We couldn't hear each other properly lol (Isn't that always the case???)

And the speaker placement is quite cacat. The audience on the left and back could hear clearly, but those on the front and right will have no clue what we are doing lolol. 

Oh well. We had fun anyway wwwww

Here's a not complete video that my friend Gem took. Haha thanks!

After performance, we went to have our lunch in Texas chicken :D
Woah, I can't recall going with the whole band to eat something and just chat :o
It was great though.

And then we encountered this 'photo booth' hahaha

Chrysler have already ciao-ed that time though. Oh well :3

They printed this photo out for me too hehe.

So yeah, hung around a bit more after that, and they I left :3

We still have 2 jamming slots left with the studio, can't wait to meet them again!

View of KL International Jazz & Arts Festival as a stage crew

KL International Jazz & Arts Festival, UM, on 17th May 2014.
It was a 2 day event, 17th and 18th May, but I only attended the first day, 17th May.

Upon arriving, I was given my volunteer tag and their T-shirt, which said KL International Jazz & Arts Festival 2013 :S

In UM's toilet LOL

Anyway, Emad and I were assigned to Experimental Theater.

When we got there, it was around 1pm. 

They were still setting up, even though they were supposed to do that in the morning :o

The sound guys told us that they've been trouble shooting problems since the morning.

While they are still setting up, I checked out how they mike up the drums, piano, amplifier etc.

The piano there was C.Steinbert, and holy shit the moment I pressed the first note, I was drawn. Completely drawn. As if something was sucking me to it.

I've never felt such an awesome piano before. The clarity of it, the touch, the feel.

Sigh. One day, I'll get a piano like this!

And oh, when the sound guy asked who can play the piano, without thinking I just raised my hand up and shouted ME!!!!!!! 

Then I played on the piano a while for them while they check the signals and everything.

Sigh, it was so beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. 

After that, I just hang around until the first band that were supposed to soundcheck arrived.

The stage manager brought Emad and I to the main stage to check out others performer soundchecking. At that time, I was lucky to have heard Keiko Matsui's soundcheck.

I was completely blown by how she performed, even though it was only a soundcheck. She was playing "Dream Seeker" at the time. After a while though I have to go back to Experimental Theater cause the soundcheck there was about to start.

Lisa Young Quartet was the first band, followed by Niccolo Faraci, and then it will be performance time.

During the soundcheck, there was quite a lot of problems :S

The sound guys were rushing about, panicking while Emad and I just looked at them and kind of..Facepalm. They have no clue what they're doing, I won't go into details about what is happening since I didn't really communicate with them, but I remember one of them finding out that a cable is actually not plugged in, after HOURS of troubleshooting what went wrong.

.....And another case is, Lisa requested more higher mids for her mic channel, the sound guy was like "The highs?" Lisa kind of looked confused for a moment, then she said "No, the higher mids." 

Then the sound guy just increased the volume. ....................Yeah, I'm kinda speechless.

Anyway screw their problems, it is not my problem lol.

I was kinda like an extra since I'm volunteering under SAE. There is nothing much for me to do except see to what the artists wants. One of them even asked me to go get his jacket lol, but seriously other than that I was just standing backstage enjoying the performances.

Most of the time I roam around the place, checking stuff out.

This is the soundroom

View from the room

Niccolo Faraci Trio

Lisa Young Quartet

And erm...no idea who's this.

After the event finish in Experimental Theater, Emad and I roamed around more, checking out other stages. 

Later in the evening, we just sat and chill with our seniors at the CD booth.

Until I heard Keiko Matsui playing in the other hall.

We went in to watch her performance which was MIND BLOWING. The atmosphere was awesome, and her band sounds so well balanced. It did not focus entirely just on her, other instruments got some awesome parts too.

After her performance, she headed out to the CD area where we were chilling for her autograph session. And the whole time, I was standing behind her, photo bombing everyone that is taking a picture with her x'D

And I'm not sorry :p

Keiko-san selfie-ing with a random dude haha

We waited for about an hour of so (?) before there is no more crowd left, then I asked for her signature and a picture with her. She's very friendly and nice! She even thanked me for volunteering when she signed on my "volunteer" tag. :')

And oh, when Emad told her he would like to play alongside her one day, she looked at him, and genuinely asked what instrument he played! :O 

We did not expect that at all. 

Hahahaha I selfie with her www

Emad taking a proper picture lol

Sigh. I would love to attend her live again someday, and hopefully worked along side her as well.

Meeting Keiko Matsui and playing the Steinberg piano is the only experience that I really enjoyed. Other than that, it wasn't that fun :/

One of the performer (quite famous pianist) was arrogant, and pffffffttttt his music wasn't even that great. I expected his music to be good since he was quite arrogant, but when he performed, all I can do is try not to laugh. I don't find emotion in his music, and his band wasn't balanced, I felt like the members were trying to outshine each other.

Funny thing was, he's so arrogant backstage, but on stage he pull on a "Oh I'm a great guy, look how funny am I" type of attitude. It just kind of disgust me :/

It's like there is no sincerity?

Oh well.

Keiko Matsui is still the best :D

Humble and nice person, and her music truly inspired me.

To the point I get kind of emo, cause thoughts like "Why didn't I continue with a music course?" "Why did I choose to go backstage instead of onstage?" starts to bother me.

But oh well, I'm not really regretting, knowing all these audio stuff is great too. I did not regret picking up audio engineering. And it will never be too late to take up music as well :3

Well, I guess that's all.

Hope to meet more awesome musician in the future!

Being a crew for Indie Youth Fest 2013!

Indie Youth Fest event happened a week ago, at Publika.
I got a chance to help them out through my college. At first I was having troubles deciding whether to go or not, since I have a run on the 10th, but in the end I said yes.
I'm glad I went :)

I drove over to USJ on Friday, and on Saturday morning I headed along to Publika along with Oliver and Emad. I did not know the route to Publika, but luckily there is GPS. It's kinda scary though, my driving skills aren't that stable yet, and Oliver is scaring me by scaring himself hahaha. Still, we got there safe and sound xD Guess my driving skills isn't all that bad hahahha.

When we got there, we were briefed on what to do, and we setup the stage.

Did some arranging of chairs, setup those banners, setup microphone stands, etc.

Monitor speaker

Mic and line port, where we connect microphone and the monitor speaker

 Cables and DI boxes lol

*random: 3 functions of DI boxes:

-Impedance conversion

-unbalanced to balanced conversion

-Earth isolation

lol. 

It took a really long time to setup the stage for some reason, mainly because the drums and amplifiers were late? Anyway, it was done at last.

Kinda learnt how to setup an electric drum set and the amplifiers, which are quite easy I guess.

After everything on stage is done, the first band did their sound check.

Not sure if I remember correctly or not, but I think they took AGES to do their sound check @_@

Anyway, I felt sorry for them .___.

They're the first band to play, and the place is empty. There's on audience beside us crew, and the vendors.

So I went and sat down on the chair, and be their audience. 

The vocalist's like, "...erm, hi. *waves* " And I waves back and said hi lol.

Then he look around, and goes, "...Hi, chairs."

lol

Still, I felt bad for them :/

After them, there's a solo by erm..Forgotten his name .___.

But here's a pic:

There's some other bands as well, but I really like this Singaporean band called Take Two.

They're doing acoustics, and their songs is awesom!

And look at all the handsome faces *w*

Hahahhaha.

Oliver's like, "so, which one do you like?" 

Lol xD

And oh, in their middle of their performance, the wind blew strongly and the banner behind fell -_-

I jumped up the stage to fix it, and bruise my leg in the process fml.

Been a week, and the bruise still hurts T^T

Then the wind blew away straws from a food vendor's stall, and I picked those up too.

The I stupidly gave them to Emad, and he look at me funny and said,

"Just throw them away, no one's gonna use those straws now."

.....What was I thinking .____.

When will I stop being absent minded OTL

Anyway, our job was just to make sure stuff goes on smoothly on stage, and tends to the musicians.

I helped setup the keyboardist's keyboard, and all of them have such nice keyboards and midi controller T___T So jelly.

Anyway watching all those bands, I miss my band T_T

I wanna go jamming, and perform with my members again.

Why is everyone so busy TwT

Well anyway, halfway through the event I got dragged to look after the CD booth -_-

Boringgggg ._.

Luckily it's only for a short while.

I helped record videos too.

This is the sound room, but it's placed in a horrible location lol.

I got the experience to try and listen to the bands through the headphones, basically all the mics and lines and connected to this thing. It sounds just like a recording, but the band I listened to sounds...erm...bad ._.

So I guess sometimes being a sound man could be bad, depending on the situation lol. :x

Around 7pm, we changed location.

We moved in to Paradiso lounge, instead of being outdoor.

Look at all the instruments *o*

Setting up and indoor location is so much easier lol, probably because the venue is smaller.

After that, I went with an old lady (not sure what is her role in this event) to get food for us.

I don't really like doing these type of stuff actually, but since I'm the only girl she just drag me away TwT

Oh well.

After that, there's not much to do.

We ate, then just chill on a couch.

Here's a picture of me, looking tired haha. Awful eyebags and dark eye circle TwT

Anyway, I guess that's all.

Before this during live performance, I've only experienced being the musician. (keyboardist)

But now, I've experienced the stage crew side.

Being a stage crew wasn't as easy as I thought, there's more to it than I've always thought.

On the other hand, some things could be extremely simple too lol.

There's this guitarist that couldn't get a sound from his amplifier, and he asks for my help.

And all the time, it's because the main switch is off.

I sure did have a silent laugh to myself xD

Well that's all. Can't wait when I could go on stage and perform again, and at the same time, become an audio engineer xD

Practice, practice, and practice.

6 more days till jamming date, 6 songs to get ready.

OTL||||||||
I'll do a song a day. Today I'm learning Aerosmith's I Don't Want To Miss A Thing.

Oh god. This song. It's killing me =A=
So many freaking strings in it. And there's piano part together with strings. Play die me... Orz
At chorus the piano part is chord some more, but I'll just omit that at leave it to the bass or guitars -.-
The strings part is more than enough to handle. And I want to sing the harmonies haha.
Can't control so many things at once lol.


Anyway, I've been sitting in front of the laptop and keyboard since 10am, now its 3.20pm @w@
But hmm..of course minus all the time I chat on fb and take a stroll in the internet haha xD

Still got time take picture LOL.

Lol writing down the notes. And thank god there's some synthesia videos for this songs in YouTube. Save me some listening to do, but I still need to change and work on it cause it's quite cacat =_=

Sigh....
SHEET MUSIC, Y U NO APPEAR??? >_>


Anyway I guess it's a good thing. Good for my listening skills and patience haha.

CrestFall band at Animangaki 2012

Woohooo!! We performed yesterday!! :D
I can't judge how the performance went since I'm not in the audience, but I guess it was okay..

CrestFall, maybe that's not a good name in your opinion, cause CrestFallen?
But actually it brings another meaning, it's "Yuuki" (勇気) which means bravery.

As I said in my last post, it's all very rushed and last minute, with a total of only 5 jamming hours before we performed. Haha so that just shows we could do it as long as we have the determination :D

I took some jamming pictures, but they're awful lol. Cause the studio is so dim =w=

 Dustin, bassist.

 Daniel, lead guitarist.

David, rhythm guitarist. 

Minori, vocalist. 

Drummer, Chrysler.

No photos of me lol, lazy ask someone to help me take~

Haha, look kind of poor right?

But that's just cause of awful photos x_x 

Don't judge yet :|

Meh, anyway was supposed to go to Sunway Convention centre at 8am for soundcheck, but Dustin was late =w=

And on the way his car tyre broke down lol, took around 20 minutes to fix it. Haha bad luck.

HAHA I took a picture LOL

(too free, nothing to do while waiting for Dustin and his friend to fix it =w= )

Meh, anyway, got to Sunway around 9.30am I think?

Then got this, as our pass xD

HAHA "superstar" awww yeah! xD 

Then we soundcheck, and haha Dustin's bad luck strike again, his bass string broke lol!

So we went down to Guitar Store to get it changed.

Then basically after that we just went to a staircase corner and discuss/practice/meditate/listen to music haha...At 1pm, went to listen to Minori solo singing.

After her solo, just hang around and discussion again.

And then...3.30pm! Performance time :DD

No on stage pictures yet /_\

But after performing we photoshoot a bit.

So...PICTURES!! :DD

 Me with Minori :D

Full band :D 

Minori's peace at my head, I've become a bunny lol =w= 

My little harem HAHA  

Me with Dustin 

Full band again :D 

Me, Chrysler, Minori, Dustin 

Full band with David's mouth opened xD 

Me, Chrysler, Minori

I'm actually very glad to be able to join this time too, eventhough it was freaking last minute and rushing.

Wasn't supposed to join for AMG, cause Jason wouldn't let me, he said my trial is very near and he wants me to study first LOL

But in a funny way it ended up me joining, and he going off to Phucket and not joining HAHA.

Weeee I love my band :D

Another of the best things that happened to me >w<

Well that's all for this post, ciao!

Just an update. And stupid me.

Finally get to use a PC again. Not really familiar with a mouse and typing on a real keyboard now ._. Have been using my phone to online for more than a month now, almost 2 month I think.
So, just updating my blog, and about what have been happening.

Yesterday I went for my grade 7 ABRSM piano exam.
All I can say is, I was really naive to think, with so little practicing, and with just 3 years, I could skip from my grade 1 to grade 7. How stupid I was. I was too full of myself. But meh...this time it's better than my last year's grade 5 exam, so I guess I'll be alright. Afterall, I did pass my grade 5 exam. Hopefully.

Been feeling emo lately, cause of this piano exam...I realised how stupid I was last minute, and feels down down down.


And because of this, I thought too much :/
There's this second keyboardist in CrestFall band, a nice girl, and I have to say she's better than me alot. And so..I thought that my band members was hinting for me to leave with another keyboardist....
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against her, in fact I'm looking forward to play with her ._.
And I feel wrong thinking like this about them Orz. I know that they're straighforward. ._.

But. Being touchy and sensitive, I thought too much ._.

So I texted Jason, and he told me it was because he know I'll be busy with SPM. Jason discussed with Minori, and they think it'll better to find someone that could fill in my role. Plus I guess having two keyboardist is handy as well :) I know I can't attend AniMangaki, I told Jason that months before lol. And yeah, doubts cleared. .__.


Oh yeah, attended Bon Odori 2012, hired a bus.

I'll make a full blog post of it soon.


Hmmm...what else.

Oh yeah, transformed myself into a zombie a week ago.

Also a full blog post on this after I done sorting out all the pictures.
Right now I have around 600 pictures to filter, rotate, and categeorize :x


Last Tuesday, I made a bet with Chii. We were playing eraser battle during class, when I stupidly suggested the loser shall have to tie twintails to school -.-'' And guess what, I LOSE.

adfghjkdfghj

:x
At least it wasn't Miku style twintails. Thank god for that.


Will update more when I can :/ Sorry dear blog :|