DONE DONE DONE!

Wow ... after the end of 2 days exam ... it was such a relief! After 1 and half week of intensive practice for my one and only final performance exam in Academy ... thank God i managed to pull everything off. NOT fantastically , but safely and at least cheated my way through .. 7 pieces and 2 jazz piano pieces! hahahahah

BAch was such a pain in the **** for me ok ... and i solely regretted for not putting enough effort into practising it much much earlier , only leaving it to this very last minute .. because when i finally could play the whole piece and learn all the notes perfectly, it was a bit the too late. Pok taught me more things which i never learnt earlier and never gave him teh chance to teach , so i apologized to him for my stupidity ... and could only really really try my best to memorize the piece and not STOP and break down in between.

Well actually because the other 6 pieces were pretty easy to memorize , i had a bit of extra time to try and challenge myself for Bach's piece. Initially the original plan was not to memorize that piece because it was so hard to remember all the idiotic polyphonice melody , but knowing myself as a very stubborn yet prideful person i challenged myself and was still struggling until the very last minute in the morning before the exam.

Whatever it is, i told myself i'm going to just submit to God and do my best. I brought the Chorale's score and put it on the Stagea's cover without opening it , just in case i broke down and needed to start again. But guess what .. HAHAHAHHAHA you'll never hear a better liar and bullshitter than me. Ok let's see .... i'll go piece by piece . Since this is my last semester's exam, let's enjoy the whole process of it.

1) Mambo Medley
This is the piece i practiced the LEAST ... because it's super easy to play, except that the tempo is really fast so i only digged it out to practice a few days before the exam after i played it during my first two weeks of the semester in Sept. During my performance, i dont remember playing and "dancing" on the el so much that i felt i was overdoing it a little ... the fact is i enjoyed shaking to it! HAHHAHA it's fun to move with the music man... then again , some parts were messy but managed it through.

2) JOC - Fairies in Spring
WAsn't really that clean and well articulated ... with one little note i pressed wrongly, but managed to come back cleanly after that. I don't know about the rest of the piece whether i played it with feelings and sound like real orchestra, but what the heck. I tried my best.

3) Chorale Prelude - BACH
OH this is so classic... I started off calmly, it went off well .. with little slips here and there , really minor stuffs .. until this MAJOR thing happened .. with FAITH i did not open the score and just played as usual .. until almost the middle section (I don't even know what is what section in the first place!) my left hand screwed up some notes and there goes my right hand as well .. so by the time, i stopped playing on the left hand and right hand kept going on but in a split second i began to compose my own CHORALE melody and kept going on telling myself i cannot stop cannot break down just go on.. and just said this , "AIYAH must be somewhere here" and continued on from one of the checkpoints i could continue.. so from there on i never stopped and ended nicely. HAHAHAHAHHA ... liar liar pants on fire... but sadly the examiners have the score and if they were looking at the score while i was playing they'd know how much i missed ... but the audience didnt know at all .! HAHHAHA

4) Aura Lee - my own arrangement
After the much commotion of Bach, i had to take at least 10 seconds to calm myself down before i start this piece.. but a sudden block of mind made me play a wrong note for my really beautiful jazz guitar intro (HAHHHA puji diri sendiri) ... which made it EEEU! ahhahaha.. but then the rest went pretty ok .. until the second section where the usual typical EF FAST movement came where i started to really laugh about it lately... thanks to Siang... yst i played it really from my heart and hoped it worked.

5) Fascinating Rhythm
Oooo.... Trully disappointed with this piece. My one and only fast jazz piece (Not even pure jazz-the arrangement is already a fusion one) which i pretty much screw up ... not the rhythm sense, but the notes and clarity of it. Although i screw up some of the notes, but i stilll managed to keep the 7/4 time ... so thank God. but i Just don't know why this turned out pathetic..

6) Sat'isfy
This is my one and only very very slow and "lum" touching song .. ahhaaha my first one played in the exam actually. And according to Eden , it turned out good! YAY! From my point of view, i put the volume a little too soft worrying that people watching me in the hall won't be able to hear, but since Eden gave positive comments, i'm not too worried. I almost forgotten some notes but overall thank GOD my running notes RAN. OH and now people's wanting the original song..=) hahahhha.. LOVE it=)

7) Libertango
Classic song .. you can know by seeing the flow of my performance. This is the last song , which means it has to be the most impressive one ... yes it was UNTIL i reach the guitar solo .. with just 1 simple mistake on my left hand chord, i got mixed up with my right hand melody and i ended up running my own solo lines and repeating some stupid 2 note motif throughout the few bars... until i recovered to come back for the next section. STUPID! And also almost broke down before the cello part ... gosh how can my left hand be so screwed up. I'm afraid it'll be totally screwed by the time concert comes. SYAKS. PRACTICE MORE...

There it was... my 7 pieces on the electone .. then when it comes to my 2 jazz piano pieces which i've prepared and even fixed some solo lines , NO ONE except Mun Wei watched ... all of them LEFT the hall IMMEDIATELY after i finished libertango .. HOW OBVIOUS! Even Julie who was there while i performed my electone pieces .. she left too and came back after my piano! Nonsense .... thanks Wei .. you're cool.. but my classmates had to leave because Adeline was waiting for them to go present our composition assignment. Forgiven. =)

I wasn't really totally happy with my own performance overall , but was pretty taken aback by some positive comments from my friends after that ... so yeah i'm hoping to see some consistent results coming the way. Anyway, since the examiner wasn't even close to being RICHARD YAN, stupid C.H .. who i think wanted to scare Mun Yee and Siang .. intentionally created a story of Richard being the examiner... I was quite relieved and strange to find out the examiner was Kaori instead with another lady from outside. (Unknown) ... =) Whatever or whoever, i'ts over.

Today was our 2nd day of exam... and for once, i don't know why i was so so so so complacent and relaxed ... knowing today was Musicianship Skills exam... with impro , image impro , singing, aural, motive, kb harmony, score reading, sight reading, and transposition all in one go.. i wasn't scared to the bit until just before i entered the hall to do it. HOW FUNNY... unusual of me, i only started practising for it yst evening at 7pm until 10pm... (Usually started at least few days before last time) ... but this time with so much going on, and the Bach haunting me.. i cared-less about impro ... about everything .. hahahaha ...

The whole scenario today was funny. And also relaxing .. although knowing Richard is the examiner , i finally can proudly face him as my examiner! YAY! He wasn't even scary or anything of some sort i used to think about ... plus with the pressure and existence of his co-examiner being Loretta.... My eyes cocked out when Siang told me it was 2 of them when i reached school .. but overall , the whole situation in the hall was really relaxing and like as if they were just teaching us in our classes. HAHAHHA... wasn't scared of them at all man ... AMEN!

But i must admit though , i couldn't harmonize the impro A chords well ... came out with my own set of chords and improvise my 2 variations CONFIDENTLY like as if i got them right, but when Richard gave us the answers and shot us with

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU ALL BEFORE EXAM??? ONLY 1 PERSON GOT IT HALFWAY CORRECT!"

I knew i had almost 80% wrong chords... hahahaha ...disappointed. How am i suppose to go take gd 4 exam!!!????

Sight singing was fine ... easy , transposition ... took too long to read the ques and end up more mistakes than usual... stupid... kb harmony, kept forgetting the G# note for A maj , so almost break down half way.. hahaha ... then Score reading oh that was funny .. started off well then middle left hand was nonsense then finished ok. Image impro .. HAHAHAH 3 boys marching ? That was cool .. did some Turkish march rhythm and played "Oh When The Saints" song.. hahahaha... Loretta thought it was interesting.. then Sight Reading , was a little more challenging than usual .. but surprisingly could play almost 80% of it well ... (SLOW MA) then Singing ? Oh thank God i practiced some exercises yst ... 1 ques i practiced came out .. ahhaha .. AMEN..

After that ... here comes AUral test... classic man... none of us could get the melody dictation .. and it was the kind of melody Eden was fearful of ... and we got it. This is the first time i got a melody dictation that didn't start on the tonic , 3rd or 5th note of the tonic triad! But on the 7th note... which obviously i know but couldn't get what note was it... then only got the last bar confidently right .The rest ? SCREW It. Richard played so fast he went through our answers and laughed at us HAPPILY and said

"Aiyoh .. what happened ? After play so many times only got this much writteN? Hahahaha .... your ears are DEAF.. AHAHHAHAHAH!"

Only classic Richard Yan can laugh at people's distress and we still chuckle at it. After that he went back to the piano and play 2 more times for us (extra ones on a pitiful note) saying

"OK i play again for you all la.. don't say i never help you all ah!"

Well , Richard's Richard .. and i will miss him too! Suddenly knowing the fact that today's the last day we'll see him in Academy as our tutor ... when he wished Eden good luck in England and the rest of us he said ,

"CONTINUE TO PLAY MUSICALLY AH!"

AHAHAHHA... he's classic man ... I must come back and look for him to go lunch next time when i go seminars in Kj .. =)

I now consider myself free from exam and burdens... while i can fully concentrate on our concert items and prepare for my 1 and only EF piece for the next 5 months! And oh more jobs to come ... Ampang already called me up to team up with Shiyan to prepare an item for our J course students for their Prize Giving Day on 24th Feb .. HOW LAST MIN!! Then , practice my gd 4 impro like mad dog so i can pass .. (YAY now i've overcome the fear of playing in front of Richard, i must pass it once and for all!) ....

Tues ... Orchestration.. EEEU suck. Anyway , i can't wait to see GRACE LEONG!!! HHAAHAHHA she's back!! WOOOO!! CAN GO crazy with her again! ANd share so many stories with her! YOO HOO!! aiyah tomorrow have to open another new JMC class in ampang ... behave like another clown idiot again. Arghh... but not teaching next sat on my BIG DAY! YOO HO!!

THANK YOU JESUS for giving me the strength and divine energy i needed to work on my exam pieces the past week or so .. and thank you so much for teaching me what is submission and FAITH all about. Honestly , i learnt a whole deal of having faith memorizing all my pieces for exam and also for musicianship skills .. ahahha! overall .. THANK YOU JESUS for YOUR help and peace and power! HOLY SPIRIT indeed rained over me throughout BAch.. haahhaa