We won!





This was our performance during our DnD.  My minidream come true!

 



 

And we won the 2nd prize out of the 7 teams! It felt good because we had never aimed to win- I think most of us did it because we had to rep our team. Traditionally the Sales / Marketing teams are very 'on' with full blown drama & entertainment like dance/costume/loud music,  we are more like the goody goody heartwarming act.

 

These are some of the pictures taken during sound check whilst backstage- the guys were practising really hard! That afternoon was especially enjoyable for me because I was just playing and playing for them whilst they practised- its like re-living the entire performance over and over again..

This was at the Westin ballroom- about 70 to 80 tables, so maybe about 700 pax?

More images whilst we were on stage

I joined the guys quite late into the preparations, in fact it was after they had passed through the auditions. I bumped into their rehearsals late one night, and I thought their chosen repertoire of songs were quite manageable, so I offered to accompany them on piano.

The original repertoire consisted of a mixture of chinese/english pop, with a theme of improving cust experience, interpersed by a dialogue. Unfortunately, the chosen repertoire did not quite work out as we found it hard to link a mixture of fast/slow songs with a voiceover yet keep to the 10min timeslot.

And during the back-to-drawing-board session, I was just absentmindedly playing zhui and ai shi yong heng and home, which were all songs by Dick Lee. It so happened that Caleb and Alvin knew how to sing just by listening to the intro. It led on to Jason adding on the tian hei hei and ji de, and we came up with the singapore theme. I was more than happy, because they were all the songs that I was familiar with!

But I realized that accompanying them on piano wasn't as easy as I thought. Playing for leisure with me anyhow humming a tune vs playing for a formal event for 3 people was quite different. The first thing I had to deal with was the different singing styles that these 3 guys had.

Caleb was very specified in his requirements- that he did not want me to have too many 'melodies' in the verses, that I should slow down coming to certain parts, and that I should stop completely so that he can belt out the melody. Even wanted me to keep to a certain tempo. At times , it just 'did not sound right', but he wasnt able to articulate exactly what it was. It was difficult for me to remember because I played without a score and cldn't really note down what he wanted.

In contrast, Alvin had no requirements- he was a bathroom-type of singer, he just wants to sing! But the problem is he dosent keep to the basic tempo nor listen to the music to get his cue in. We tried to guide him to listen to the music to not run like a wild horse, but it did not work out. Plus the fact that he was inconsistent and unpredictable- which he admits its really up to his 'mood', haha. So it was really having to be really attentive and reacting to his 'mood' and skip chords if i had to.

Jason has also no requirements for me, but that is because he is so good, that he knows exactly what to do whichever variation of music I played in, and can even cover up if I made mistakes! I was really impressed with his level of improvisation and harmonisation, especially he has no formal training in music- according to him its just 'like that lor' . I wished I can sing and harmonize like him! But it also added another level of stress for me- I felt I wasn't doing him justice by accompanying him or harmonize with some chords that I cldn't catch, that I asked him a couple of times to just do a solo with his guitar, haha.

Then comes the vocal range- Alvin is low, Caleb is mid and Jason is higher vocal range, so it means the 5 songs come in different keys. I wasn't that terrific in transposing off the fly, so it was pretty stressful having to figure out the chords in the new keys.

Next difficult part comes in stringing the songs together to make it flow- Jason commented I seemed to be able to play the intersecting melodies effortlessly ,but he had no idea on the number of youtube videos I listened to by various singers/variations of the same songs just to get it done, over the long wkend.

As the organisors cldnt get a piano, we had to make do with Peiling's keyboard, but I got frustrated with no pedal as it meant my playing was terrible (plus I cant control the volume on the keyboard as compared to piano), so I had to try cover it up with the keyboard functions like that background music. I had never never arranged a piece of music on a keyboard with the addon functions like drumbeats and fanciful backup music- so I'm terribly proud of coming up with something for Home and 2 other songs. Luckily for me, Peiling managed to get me a pedal so I dropped the 2 other songs.

This is the 3rd time I have performed Home publicly, but each time gets better than the last! And I still love this song! This time round, it was mini-concert style, all my department colleagues were waving lightsticks and cheering from where they were, so I felt really touched and enjoyed the moment immensely.

The last 1 one week, with the almost every night rehearsals was well worth it, even though it meant at the expense of work and family time, ha. It was my dream re-lived many times and came true. :)