This blog has now reached it's end. The American Adventure has finished. Will there be a sequel in the near future? One will never know, but for now let's let the credits roll...

Monday, November 29, 2010

PRAISE THE LORD!

JOB LANDED!!!!!

CONFIRMED!

WUAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

POP THE CHAMPAGNE!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Chapter waaaaaaa

So long no update?!!

Such is my life at the moment - nothing happening. So sad. No money go anywhere. No vehicle go anywhere. No motivation to go anywhere.

No job. No work.

Very bored.

But fear not!

I just had a very interesting audition experience just this last Monday.

It was an audition over the phone. Yeah, you read that right. Audition over the phone for a company called proship entertainment. Yep, KJ is applying for more cruise gigs because they are just awesome jobs.

So before we get to the juicy details that only relatives can possibly care about - like how it went and when I'll hear back from them and whether I'll get the job - let's go into the juicy details that I am obviously good at describing. The audition itself.

It was a very weird experience. I've never done any auditions over the phone, heck I've barely done any auditions live but I do know what it's like to play stuff for people on the spot, but in the same room with a tangible human. I did that all the time at school.

But over the phone? Not even skype? Not even a video conference? On my cell phone?

You'd think it'd be impossible, but they seem to have the process down very good.

So the guy calls me at ten in the morning and directs me to a website where I download a whole bunch of mp3's for the audition later. I give all of them a quick listen, my heart thumping like mad and my fingers cold with nervousness, I say out loud to myself 'Hoowah, let's do this' in my best Arnold Shwasz... shcawsz... schwayzsy... shwazszrenger...  Terminator voice and hop on my bike and get down to the studio.

Oh wait, I forgot to mention I also had charts to work on. I had 3 songs charted out and these weren't your basic lead sheet charts. Oh no, they tried to confuse me as best as they could with their weird phrase lengths and changing beats and weird broadway 2 beat boomchak 'botak' groove charts. Now I didn't have a printer handy at all. Thankfully there was a printing shop right next to the studio I was headed to.

25 cents a print.

WHAT!!! You're insane lady!

Considering that a printer costs a lot more than that, I decided to pay quietly for my charts. A quick glance at them and a swear word later I was in the studio, panicking.

Wait... No I wasn't. That's because the stupid studio guys opened LATE! ARGH. I lost 15 minutes of precious prep time. I told them ten in the morning. And they showed up at 10:30. Only served to feed my panic.

So there I was frantically trying to set everything up. It did serve well that I used that very same studio the night before and everything was already in place.

I had an hour between the first call at ten before the guy would call again for the audition. Half an hour of that prep time had gone. I started working through the charts. Initial reaction was 'Oh crap these are HARD!!! ARGHHH!'

Thankfully, I've proven to be a systematic learner. The more I played the more I got.

11 o'clock. RINGGGG!!

Here we go.

So the guy runs me through the process and I put down the phone, not hang up mind you, and sit it right next to my drums, put the tracks on and here we go.

Part 1 of the audition required me to play a total of 8 different styles like swing, funk, rock, samba, rhumba, broadway, etc (strangely no blues) and some brush work. MI training came in handy immediately. I racked my knowledge of latin styles and pulled out my grooves to perfection. And it totally helped that I spent the last six months at school working on my brush technique. I was the 'brush dude' in class. Nobody saw me without my brushes for that period of time.

SCORE!

Then came the terrifying charts. But then the audition-er told me something that totally calmed me down - they weren't going to cut me off if I messed up. I got two chances, and they will be impressed with the ability to fix stuff and improve quickly.

Luckily for me, I am a master at fixing my errors off the bat. All that playing in LPW's in school had totally prepped me for that. I used to play once, get my teacher's advice on what was crap and immediately sound like a pro the second time I played it. And this was no exception.

I CAN DO THIS (Terminator voice)

The whole idea of doing it over the phone made it seem more awkward than it needed to be. But I got through it nonetheless. I video-d the whole thing and packed it up and sent it off to them over the internet.

It took almost an hour to get through all the material and then I had some extra stuff to do for the video. But at the end of that, I was totally exhausted. And hungry.

I went home, ate, and totally crashed the whole afternoon. Maybe my nerves had tired me out. But still, it was incredibly exhausting.

So there you go. That was my audition.

I've gotten two calls back so far to check up on some details and initial reports say I did well in the audition.

The kind lady at proship called me today to ask if I would be interested in a six month contract on the Celebrity Millennium. I said yes without a second thought.

Go look that ship up. If I get that job, I start in march. Unless they whip up something earlier for me.

It's not confirmed yet, but it does look very hopeful. Keep praying. Hard.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Chapter 79.625 - You're never too far from home part 5

To the peeps around the world - You are NEVER too far from home.


Post tasting observation

- Product is made in Colombia. Wow.
- Taste much less sweet than Malaysian version. Without sugar, 5 table spoons in one cup is still not sweet.
- More chocolatey? Not by much.

What's to be said? Buatan Malaysia version better. Long live Milo Ais at the mamak.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Tales from MI - Chapter 6.5

Continued from the previous post regarding my playing technique class.

Rob's finals have always been some of the most challenging. They aren't hard, they just require the most amount of rehearsal. He often includes snare drum pieces and exercises that include all sorts of rudiments, dynamics and tempos.

The very last final was a particularly tough challenge. Here's my original piece that we had to write for the final. Take a look at it and see if you dare play it.



So there you are. I wrote something regarding the title some time ago so if you didn't read that story, here it is.


And now comes the kicker - me actually playing the damn thing. There was a small mistake in the middle section where I stopped and restarted, but for the most part, it sounded pretty good.

Here's the insanity.


There you go. That's the culmination of 18 months of intense physical training and coordination. Questions regarding the piece? Anyone want to attempt it?

I didn't think so.

Till the next part.