Scales: MILLPAD Method

Recently a classmate of mine taught me a interesting way to play scales of 2 octaves, probably because I kept questioning myself if there was a more effective way to play scales. Well, for me this new method made it easier for me the play scales on the bass, so I thought I would just share with you. I call this method: MILLPAD. Basically, it's formula of finger patterns that help you play your scales in different mode, using these 3 finger pattern in a certain sequence.

Why MILLPAD? What does it stand for?

• Mixolydian (V)
• Ionian (I)
• Lydian (IV)
• Locrian (VII)
• Phrygian (III)
• Aeolian (VI)
• Dorian (II)

Basically if you guys are wondering what these foreign language is, it's Musical Mode. In order to fully appreciate this, it is important to understand what musical modes are. But basically modes are scales in a particular. Each of these technical names just tells us which note this scale starts with. Modes will take the key signature of that particular key.

Like for example, Ionian mode on C Major means that the scale is made up of starting from C, D, E...A , B, C

And if I say, Dorian on C Major, it's a scale starting from D, E, F...B, C, D. Notice that there is no F# or C# or Bb in the scale starting with D, simply because this scale takes on the key signature of the key the Mode is on.

And so on...

so before we get confused about Modes, let's reveal the formula...

(Sorry I'm meant Pattern 1, 2 & 3)

Basically, this diagram shows the different fingering pattern for each mode you are suppose to play. Like if the sequence is a Dorian ---> Mixolydian, you play pattern 3 followed by pattern 1 again.

(I'm naming the different fingering as 1, 2, 3 to help the explanation below.)

All scales/modes follows this sequence of fingering patterns,

Mixolydian (V), Ionian (I), Lydian (IV), Locrian (VII), Phrygian (III), Aeolian (VI), Dorian (II) and back to Mixolydian again.

Depending on what scale you play, you start off with different modes and follow the sequence when playing an ascending scale. If you are playing a descending scale, just follow the sequence backwards.

Let's look at the first example in the C Major Scale (Ascending, 2 Octaves).

• First we must agree that, Major scale = Ionian Mode:

So we start off with Ionian, and follow the MILLPAD sequence. In this case will be:

• Ionian ---> Lydian ---> Locrian ---> Phrygian ---> Aeolian
• Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 2---> Pattern 3:

Notice that each pattern is made up of only 3 notes? So basically, once we have completed one pattern, we move on to play the next string with next coming pattern, only at the G string do we have to slide 1-2 frets and play the next pattern (this is an exception for 6 string bassist)

So if we were to play C Major scale, descending the sequence would be,

• Aeolian ---> Phrygian ---> Locrian ---> Lydian ---> Ionian
• Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1

Just basically a reverse of the ascending scale.

Let's look at another example to get it right.

Here we are going to play a C Natural Minor Scale (2 Octaves, Ascending)

Agree that Aeolian Mode = Natural Minor Scale

Now let's figure out the MILLPAD sequence for the Natural Minor Scale. It should be,

• Aeolian ---> Dorian ---> Mixolydian ---> Ionian ---> Lydian
• Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1:

So once again you notice this same pattern again, after 3 notes you either change strings of change position on your fretboard. And descending scale would just basically be the reverse MILLPAD sequence. For me, I find this a very good tool to use as it helps me play bass in different modes quickly, Thus, I won't find it hard to play any scale starting from any note in the scale because of this formula. Apparently my friend who introduced me to this said this came from Victor Wooten. Still, I'm very grateful to her for imparting her secret to me. I hope this will help you guys to play scales on the bass guitar more efficiently. Once again, don't believe everything I say, try it for yourselves!

Feel Free to post any questions in the comments.

Practice Diary for Bass Guitar

Hi people, for now, this blog with be used as my practice diary. Basically I will be posting up the different things I am doing to improve myself on my selected instrument - the bass guitar.

Well, I started off with bass a during Secondary 4, and I have never played it consistently, it 's the curse of a multi-instrumentalist. It's only once in a while when there's a need for a bassist, do I get a chance to properly sit down and practice the bass.

Over the years I found some weaknesses I have with playing the bass (as with a lot of other instruments I play).

• Little control over the instrument, which leads to inconsistent volume, rhythm.
• Little knowledge on scales, and different melodic fills on the bass
• Little Stamina in playing a full song, especially fast punk rock song which require continuous fast fingering.

So in this performance, I aim to:

• Be able to play the bass tight in a band, and have good control over it by playing bass more in every opportunity possible.
• Be able to keep time well, by practicing with my 'best friend', click
• Train up stamina, by playing more songs and practicing finger exercises and scales
• Learn how to play gospel style bass - from fills to its grooves, by imitation and application.

Hope to hear from you guys how else I can improve my skills on the bass. Some of these goals may not be accomplished during the course of study, but I'm sure it will be accomplished sooner or later...

The Last Day in Keele

Saturday 8 October 2011 11:51pm GMT+1

Sigh, tonight is the last night we’ll be staying here, feeling a little torn right now as one part of me wants to continue living here, while the other longs to go home. Yet, I know I will leave this place to go back to where I belong, because it is necessary.

I guess today’s supposed trip to Liverpool turns out to be a trip down to New-Castle Under Lyme for us to get the last of souvenirs we needed to get. Well, for me, it sure is wasn’t a wasted trip because I got to properly explore the town area of New-Castle Under Lyme unlike our first visit in the first week shopping for found objects.

I’m not going to tell you what I got today, you’ll find out when I get back to Singapore.

Well, anyway apart from spending 3 hours in New-Castle Under Lyme , I spent an hour packing my bag. Surprisingly, I was still able to fit everything into my luggage and hand-carriers without the need for space extension. So that’s pretty much an achievement for me, being able to properly bag a luggage full of dirty clothes neatly by myself, guess the luggage is gonna smell real bad after 24 hours.

Btw, a note to all - We will be arriving in Singapore at about 3.05pm on Monday not 9pm, apologies for the miscommunication. It will be flight QR 638, so yea it’s for those who wants to see me..

So after packing 90% of the stuff into the luggage, we went over to James’s and Melissa’s accommodation, Horwood Hall. It’s a nice area of cottages side by side each other.

Quite interestingly, their place was very warm, even without a heater It’s really strange. Over here in the Hawthorns apartments it can feel as if an air-conditioner set to 5 degree Celsius even with the heater on, while over there, you would rather be outside in the cold than in the room. Maybe is because they had a kitchen with stoves and ovens that’s why.

And speaking of their kitchen, today we had a special dinner prepared for us specially our own Sonic Escapade Chef, Chris! Haha….it was awesome. Special thanks to Melissa for her hospitality to allow us to have a gathering in the kitchen, thanks to James for loaning us his cooking equipments and to all of them for buying and preparing dinner for us.

And we had to thank Melissa’s hostel mates for being so accommodating to us (they ended up having cup noodles for dinner because of us), even though we were pretty noisy too with all the sharing about Scottish and Welsh people and other random stuff…

Well, this time round I didn’t take pictures of the food, but did take some of the processes we took in helping prepare dinner, before Master Chef Chris stopped me. Well, nevertheless it was a good dinner and desert spending our last night in Keele with out fellow alumni in DMAT.

Well, after that we went to Sney Arms to say farewell to the people there, they have served us with lots of hospitality throughout this 3 weeks, and provided us a place for us to have good dinner and desert and other activities as well. We are sure going to miss them, but thankfully we have their Facebook! Haha..the power of social utilities.

Well, I guess I should be sleeping soon, we will be leaving here at 9.30am tmr for the airport, so I will have to sleep early, or least try to sleep, I starting to regret having my last cup of tea in Keele just before bedtime. It’s a bad move..well, let’s hope exhaustion will win caffeine this time…

Thursday: Michael's Session, Farewell Dinner

Well, another morning kind of wasted because I woke up late again! I ought to get rid of that as one of the condition of my climatization. Apparently the more used to the environment I am, the more I tend to sleep.

Well, anyway the day mainly started at about 2pm where we had to get down the Lindsay 1 to attend a talk Michael Spicer was speaking on. It was just basically a sharing session on the approaches he uses in his compositions, what approach he used to come up with piece so quickly in demanding conditions. Well, he actually taught us already in class, but I guess we needed to hear it again because we have not really understood it to be able to apply it in our composition. It basically a metacognitive model of how we think - Generating Possiblilties àAnalysingà Comparing and contrast à Evaluation.

I won’t bother explaining it as I would simply confuse everyone, I found myself to be very bad at explaining things, especially sound things which I totally understand and practice it but not be able to put it down in simple understandable vocabulary for one to comprehend.

Well, after the talk we were pretty much dead and tired, because it was simply mind-boggling, must be the chips that I ate for lunch too. But in addition to the explanation on the metacognitive thinking, we had another multimedia performance like the one on Tuesday only that it had a different repertoire. Well, this one was harder to appreciate, partially because we were already half-dead from the lecture. All the pieces played were great and nice, but I found myself too tired to even enjoy listening to them.

Well, it got better in the second half the show after the intermission, because now your body knows it’s pointless getting tired because I’m not going to be sleeping anytime soon, probably also because the mint sweet I bought helped to keep up the sugar level up.

So after the performance/showcase, we had a 40min break at our accommodation before we met to go to ‘Hand and Trumpet’ restaurant for a farewell dinner. Well, because this was going to be part of the University’s budget, our meals were subsidized, so I had a £13 meal for £7. And of course a chocolate ice-cream for dessert. YAY!

Well, yes so our main conversation there were about our alumni, because 2 our alummi – James and Melissa – joined us for dinner. They are now current students in Keele University. Well, what else would you expect in a conversation of them with Michael Spicer, of course it had to be about our seniors.

Interesting to see how we had really skilful musicians in the past, they were like our imbar batch of musicians, especially the second batch of DMAT. It’s really interesting yet sad at the same time to see where they ended up to and even for some who dropped out of the course – their rationale behind them.

Some of the graduates and are studying in Berklee, some like Melissa and James went to Keele, some went to local universities like MUS, SIM and NTU to do other things slightly non-related to DMAT, like Finance and Banking, some went on the NIE to do teaching. Some went on working in Soundfarm, our local production house of which some of my current seniors interned in.

Those who dropped out, pretty much left because they wanted to do what they really want, like playing in Gigs and sessions in Pubs, being a DJ turning turn-tables, they didn’t do too well in the course simply because they were too busy on external stuff that they couldn’t concentrate on their studies. I guess the total opposite of me, being busy in school during schooling periods and busy too in the holidays.

Well, some made silly decisions, some made radical ones, but ultimately whether they were really good decision was a real question for me. It seems like the older you get the bigger the price you have to pay for every bad decision you made.

If you chose not to do your homework when you were young, at most you will face a punishment of writing lines, which may last at most 2 days.

If you chose the wrong combination in JC, you suffer for 2 years.

If you chose the wrong course in Polytechnic/University, you would probably suffer for 3-4 years and then be free of your consequence.

If you chose the wrong scholarship for a wrong bond, you would probably suffer 6 years or so working in a company you don’t wish to work.

If you chose a wrong job, the consequence could be 10 – 60 years.

If you chose the wrong wife, consequence could be a lifetime, otherwise a divorce, which is also a lifetime consequence.

And lastly, if you ultimately chose the wrong way to live your life that would be an eternal consequence you have to face.

I guess the important thing is to make every effort to make good decision, and learn from the bad ones you make. Ultimately I guess, everything’s pretty much clear to me, I know which route I should take, and the price I have to pay for each route, the question is, am I willing to make that decision?

Wednesday: Free and Easy, First Tin Whistle Session with Michael

Wednesday was another free and easy day, so most of the time was spent on uploading the videos for the rehearsals on Monday and trying to upload the performance on Tuesday though I know it would be pretty much impossible to do in a day. Now that youtube has this function that enables you to pause and resume uploading when you leave and return to a wifi area. That means that if you have like a maximum of 20GB of videos, you can upload half of that in one day, turn off your computer and resume uploading the rest of it as one entire video, pretty cool.

Well, yes so most of the days was mainly spent on that and mixing and eating, not forgetting I had wasted one entire morning still snoozing comfortably in bed. Seriously, nothing beats the warmth that the heated room brings after a long hard day in the cold.

And yes it is drastically colder now that the weather’s back to 13 degree celcius, I guess the Singapore weather came and now wants to bring us back to Singapore.

Well, that evening we spent quite some time over dinner hearing about Michael’s life story, about how he first started to learn about synthesizer programming at the age of 17 where he heard a distinct timbre which he liked and found out that it was the mini moog.

Then how he went to university after that to get a degree in composition and as playing as a session musician in a pub and later in his first original band called FX and then later as a third-class rock-star in Redgum as a keyboardist and flautist at the age of 23. Well, I forgot how long h toured with them but what I do know is that he was partially the cause of Redgum’s hiatus till now. Apparently the band was going to reform after 1-2 years, after his visit to Singapore. But that ‘1-2 years’ turned out to be like I think 8 years till now, and it has still not reformed. That’s bad news for Redgum fans..

Well, but it was thanks to his Redgum days that he was well-aquainted to Irish tunes. That pretty much led to a session of Tin whistle tunes in Valarie’s room, where we basically followed the John Walsh Session Tunes score and played all the Irish folk tunes together. Well, being a poor sight reader and a amateur tin whistle player, I was of course not able to catch up with them, so basically, I had to listen and learn by ear and practice it on my own before playing with them again. It was a fun time learning to play the whistle, I can tell that Valarie probably practiced the whistle harder than me cus she on the way of becoming an Irish musician.

Well, at least I got to know one more Irish folk song on the tin whistle, but I will definitely need more practice on the whistle before I can play a piece fluently on it. Apparently you are not allowed to use tonguing in Irish folk music on tin whistles, you might get executed for that.. You were suppose to play every phrase within on breath smoothly and add ornamentation to two of the same notes played to distinguish the notes, now that’s tough.

But who knows maybe the tin whistle can be incorporated in our church worship band, I have one in Bb key now, maybe with a D major one, it will be much easier to play.

Monday And Tuesday

Well, Monday was basically another free and easy off for us, except for those who have lessons. Lessons as in lectures in Keele, because this is also an immersion program, we too had the opportunity to get to attend the lessons in Keele university and see what their teaching style is like, what their module content and assignment workload is like.

Mine’s on Tuesday and on Thursday so basically I had a free day off on Monday till our Rehearsal at 5pm and following that a multimedia concert featuring acousticmatic pieces from a few of the Keele lecturers and alumni, and of course Michael Spicer himself playing the crystal garden.

Yea..so the rest of the days were spent on uploading more videos and mixing some stuff I found on recording-microphones.co.uk. Just to get back into the practice of mixing and stuff, and of course to analyze some of these arrangements these songs have.

In a sound engineer’s point of view, a good musical arrangement is one that balances out by itself without having to even lay a finger on it. Meaning to say that a good arrangement – a good choice of instruments, where and how they are played in a song – would almost mix itself nicely, so the mix engineer just have to mixed in accordance to his interpretation of the piece.

Michale Spicer has a pretty strong opinion about this – that you will first have to be a musician before you become a sound engineer. Technically I would say sound engineers who deals with songs and stuff are pretty much musicians I guess, playing their instrument called the mixer. We had a pretty long conversation about this over dinner and I guess I will skip that discussion for now.

Anyway, the supposedly ‘full dress’ rehearsal was yet another time of making new combination of instrumental group again. In fact even for the actual performance, almost all our groups were randomly put together, will upload the video once I have the time to, maybe in Singapore.

And you can find some of our rehearsal videos on my Facebook videos as well, which I may put them here should my lecturer request me to do so.

Well, we had our first multimedia screening that evening after practice, and it was certainly a rather interesting experience hearing music that it is hardly music. In fact, some might not even call Sonic Arts music as it Is another form of art though it makes use of musical elements. Most of acousticmatic pieces in general make use of sounds rather than actual notes, scales and rhythms. Yes, they contain pitch, time and texture base organization like music does, only more disorganized. As some would define it, music is organized sound. Then again, how do we define music?

Well, Tuesday was my first and last lecture in Keele, apparently I had to skip class on Thursday to attend a presentation given my Michael Spicer. Well, the amusing thing was whatever that was covered in that lesson was already done so in REMT1 in our first year. So, it was simply like revision for us, in fact I would love to stay in year1 in that module because the whole assignment for the year was it is simply what I just did – a individual production, 31^st July. I have couple more songs up my sleeve to attempt to reproduce.

Well, the actual performance on Tuesday was pretty much very informal and slightly disorganize, mainly because everything was just improvised on the spot, well, that’s apart from some of the band grouping we originally had. But we also had some of our audience come up and improvise with us as well, Well, will get the video here once I have uploaded it on youtube. As you would have already know a 13GB video takes 2 days to upload.

I guess this experience has really changed my perspective about music really, The way we do in Singapore is always the safe way, copying whatever the big 4s have to offer rather than coming out with our unique style of music. We always copied arrangement styles, mixing styles, performance styles in hope that we can make money producing what’s already in the market and not meeting unmet needs, competing with the rest of the more experience musicians in that genre, maybe that’s why the music industry in Singapore never bloomed much, simply because we didn’t have any unique points in our products. Simply because we are afraid to step out of our comfort zone to explore other ways to make music which may be far better than that of what we hear today. Perhaps, pragmatism has killed the artistic industries of Singapore

Catching Up on what I have missed...

Thursday Oct 6 6:12pm

Hey guys, have not been writing much this few days haven’t I? haha…yea..I guess I forgot to update this blog regularly, been trying to post the rehearsal videos up on facebook as archives so that I can clear them from my computer.

As of now, I’m left with 14GB of free space left out of the 180GB Hard-disk, couple of times I had no enough space to import my videos from the camcorder since most of the 4min videos in MOV SD format are like 2GB, so if that was so, I would only have enough space to store 7 more videos, and that excludes the pictures and the audio for our first performance..

Well, anyway now that I will be relatively free from now onwards, since all the major programs are pretty much over, I can start journaling again. Well, because I missed out so much (like 4 days of experience), I’ll just explain what happened during the time of my ‘absence’

Last weekend was basically another free and easy weekend again, this time I’m not travelling anymore as I would be broke by the end of this trip if I had gone to Edinburg with Irfan and the rest…so pretty I thought it would be good to spend some time to update the family about what’s happening here face to face rather than in words.

Since a picture paints a thousand words, a video would portray more words right? Hence the rationale for Skype! Well, actually it was an initiation that I made while chatting with my brother on facebook while uploading our rehearsal videos…well, since I had just re-installed Skype on my computer and we both have web cameras, what better way to use them than Skype-ing one another?

Well, our first Skype session on Saturday 4pm (GMT+8, 11pm) was actually meant to be a test to see if Skype works, but it turned out to be an hour session conversation with the family, well a fruitful one for mom I guess since her birthday was the very next day, I hope that my Skype call would suffice as my punctual birthday present for her.

Speaking of her birthday, she was given an iPhone 4 on Sunday, her birthday. 3 Days before the iPhone 4S was released, oh well I guess people were selling them cheap than as they anticipate the next iPhone to arrive, which actually didn’t have much difference to the previous version. Just maybe a 8 megapixels camera, and some other network thing that we can live without.

Well, our conversations mainly revolved around the basic stuff like am I getting enough food there, do I have enough clothes to wear (which at that week it was particularly warm), whether I have enough money to live as so on. Apart from that, there were conversations about my results and my future plans for studying in Keele. As of now, I don’t mind living in Keele, from what I have experience it’s quite safe over here in Keele village with warnings of drunken people.

But I guess I’m still pretty undecided whether I want to go on to university or simply start work after poly, the course I would take here would probably be Music Technology, which seems to revolve largely around Sonic Arts and less commercialized music, more of Acousticmatic piece rather than pop music.

As a musician I would love to combine the two worlds together, using acousticmatic music ideas in pop songs or the other way around. But ultimately if they can both used to share the gospel to other people, I would really want to learn to do so.

It will certainly cost me my fame and my pride to be a prestigious musician to be a God-follower, because when Christ calls a man, he bids him comes and die – die to all these worldly passions, and for myself, the desire to leave a legacy behind as someone great and famous.

It still a bittersweet thing, to really give up something you love to have yet knowing in time to come that you’ll have something even greater than what currently have or wish to have. Nevertheless, I will continue to be diligent as a Christian, a son, a brother, a student, a Bible Study leader, and a musician/sound engineer.

Trip to Wales

Saturday 1^st October 2011, 2.00pm

I guess climatization for me waking up later, can’t believe I woke up at 10.45am today..must be the hiking trip yesterday to Snowdonia in Wales that exhausted all of my energy, I returned with a aching lead and a broken shoe. But trust me, it was worth it, the fun of hiking difficult terrains as well as the wonderful scenery of the lake was enough to offset the setbacks.

Well, yesterday we went to Wales, probably a 2 hour drive down from Keele. One thing good about Keele is that it is at the central part of UK, so it’s really easy to travel around UK from here, if I had not woke up so late, I would have joined my friends in Edinburg today, now, I missing out on all the fun. Sigh…

The trip I guess was organized to fulfill Valarie’s wish of seeing a Castle and Michael Spicer’s request for his favourite hobby – hiking (Oh no…). If you ever go the Wales, you might want to learn Welch, then you can prably read the signs there without looking at the translations below. So the 2 places we visit were the Beeston Castle and Woodland Park as well as Llwbr Pyg Track.

Beeston Castle

If you love ruined castles, and very windy places, this is the place to go. Well, I probably tell the experience using pictures, because a picture speaks a thousand words.

This is the structure of the castle itself, made out a the castle itself, and it's outer walls and the gateway as well. There were two enclosures, the Inner and Outer Bailey, each having a massive gatehouses with a strong defense plus a high curtain wall with D-shaped towers which allowed effective crossfire along the exterior wall. The Inner Bailey had the extra defense of wall cut ditch running around the curtain wall.

Well, this is what remains of the curtain wall, the D-shaped towers which is half demolished, leaving behind ruins of this mighty curtain wall.

One thing's for sure, getting to a castle is rather difficult since it's located on a hill. The curtain wall is already located high up the hill already, and getting there is already quite tough.

I believe this is the ditch which they build to shooting arrows from. It's a very effective design. You can cover a large area just shooting through this small hole without getting shot, because you are only expose to arrows through a small slit. Amazing design indeed!

Walking up to the castle is another uphill road. I actually tried running towards the castle but I found myself really, really slow...it's kind of demoralizing as well, having used so much energy to run but moving so slowly. I guess this road was deigned to demoralize enemy troops attempting to charge towards the castle, imagine having to travel this route with arrows flying all around you, in the state where any moment you may get shot dead.

So this is what remains of the castle, wait till you see the back part of it...I think one of the vulnerable areas of the castle was at it's back, because it hardly had any defensive walls, people coud catapult rocks from the land below and destroy it's structure easily...

Caution: Sheer Drop. This is what is left of the Moat, imagine water with crocodiles swimming in them, I actually wonder what they feed the crocodiles with...

This is what remains at the back of the castle..pretty much ruins and totally expose to the land behind. you can easily see the farmlands across the horizon. Shows that the enemy who devastated this structure had really good strategy.

Irfan asked: "Where did they store water?" I guess this is the answer. Using Valarie as a reference, you can tell that this is a huge well, and yes it's deep as well. How deep? 3 seconds reverb when you clap, and if you were to drop a stone, it would take I think 12 seconds till it reaches the bottom. I believe it would be deeper than that since many have probably thrown stones down this well. It would probably be full of rocks the next time we return...

And well, interestingly we found a great vocal booth for us to record vocals in here. surprisingly, even though this was made up of stones (of which I would expect slap backs), it is actually quite tight. I wonder if they used to record vocals here...

Llwbr Pyg Track

Well, if you love hiking treacherous roads and love sceneries and stuff, this is the place to go. The Llwbr Pyg Track is said to be the most challenging route among the six hiking roads in Snowdonia. I guess for Michael Spicer it was simply 'no kicks'. One thing about this place is that you have to carry your litter around the park, they have no dust bins one the way because they fear that litter may destroy the environment.

The roads here is pretty steep, almost all the routes we walked in our direction was uphill. So many of uswho weren't used to hiking had to stop for a rest. It's really tiring when you first start but once you gain momentum, it gets easier.

It is best you get proper hiking shoes for this expedition. The route here is not like the normal walk in the park with furnished stones pieces or pavements but it's more like pieces of rock, of which some of them are insecure and can break off easily due to erosion and weathering. It can get slippery at times - I slipped a couple of times in this route because I wasn't wearing proper shoes.

It is good you carry as little thing as possible on this route, and empty your pockets, you will need to stretch your legs out quite a distance to reach out for the other rocks. The steps here are pretty steep at times. I certainly had to empty mine because it proved difficult to climb up rocks such as this.

Although the walk was pretty much a very painful massage, it was still very rewarding because the scenery was just majestic, plus the weather was cool and windy, perfect for someone sweating from the hike.

Walking from the big view of valleys...

To the smaller streams...

Seeing sheeps along the way...

We reached our main destination - The Lake

A beautiful sight indeed! Well, we actually planned to continue to walk the route down to the stream as some of us actually wanted to swim in it...but because it was another long walk, and majority of us were already exhausted. We decided to turn back and walk back..

Walking back felt much faster when we first came as usual, because you are used to the distance you traveled and it's also down hill. Though it was less strenuous, it was actually more tricky because you had to choose the right rock or otherwise you might end up sliding and rolling down. Well, that was also where my sole broke off and caused me to slip. So the moral of the lesson was to get a better shoe next time.

Well, after the hike we had a strange craving for chips, so we went down hill to search for a place to eat..as soon as we smelled chips (because we opened our windows), we pulled over at the nearest carpark. Mike and Cass then went to search and trace where the chips smell came from, while we waited around the carpark area.

So while walking along the grass area, we saw a dandelion, and since valarie has always wanted to blow a full dandelion, she picked it up and tried to blow it...but things didn't turn out the way we expected...the video will explain why..

Well, I guess that's all for now, going back to my room to sleep first...I think fatigue from the hike is taking over me..sigh, hopefully a nap would do the job.

Day 11& 12: Workshops, Stargazing

Thursday 29 September 2011, 8.30pm

It has been said that the UK has great weather, 3 days in a year, I certainly glad to have been privileged to experience one of those days today. The weather today is so warm that it almost feels like Singapore’s weather, only that there is more wind. I was and still am comfortably dressed in my Singaporean attire for the whole day, one polo shirt and one jeans was already making me sweat.

I really starting to like this place…only issue I have here is the cost of living, it seems like I may face some financial issues on the last week, so I have been spending less, but I trust that the Lord with provide, so I’m not worried..

Well, these past two days were mainly focused on our workshops for the Keele students – The Music and Performance students (on Wednesday) and the Music Technology student (on Thursday, today).

I guess part of the reason why we’re sweating is because we have to setup our equipments for our workshops and tear them down totally after that and the next day setup and tear down again, this was because the Lindsay Studio was being used by an Orchestra for their rehearsal, they’re gonna need all the space they can get in the hall..

One thing that sure distinguished the two groups of students from the two courses were their choice of instruments. You’ll see that Music students would rush to Irfan’s station to get their hands on the dulcimer and Doltali or otherwise ‘scramble’ to play the sound sculpture while the Music Technology students would head to Valarie’s station for the airFX, or Chris station with the EMS synthesizer and the Guitar synthesizer. Well, thankfully there was no ‘fighting’ involved since the number of students who attended our workshops were few, numbering to about 5/6 Keele students.

So the video will show you a tour around our instruments, basically a showcase of our instruments we did today…

Basically what our main goal for this workshop is to teach improvising skills by forming a group of performers with the Keele students for our upcoming performance next Tuesday evening…so basically, students would first go around a tour of the instruments to find out which instrument they wish to play, then once they have selected, they will be randomly assigned a group- made up of one student from Keele and then the rest of us depending on group size..

As of now, we have 6 groups I reckon, some of us will have to play for one or two groups from the Music and Music Tech, others- like myself – don’t have to play. Well actually I do need to play with the mixer, so that makes me part of every group! HAHAHAHA..no wait, that means more work..sigh.. :P

Thursday 29 September 2011, 9.50pm

Just went for my first stargazing with Michael Spicer, along with Gabriel Clara and Valarie. It’s really an magnificent sight to see yourself being surrounded by a dome of stars. I never felt so small in my entire life. It’s like you - a small microscopic dot - looking up to the wonders of the universe, this huge place out there with so many other galaxies apart from us in the milky wave.

Well, apart from planes and a bunch of weird goose flying in a v-shape formation at night, we saw Pleiades, Ursa Major (Big dipper) and Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), and the North Star, Cepheus and Hercules and probably Saturn or Jupiter in the horizon.

There was were many more out there which we couldn’t see if our eyes because of the street lights and other distractions such as planes and clouds, the mist was also just about to set in so that didn’t make things any better.

Michael was sharing with us about how he used to go Stargazing back when he was in Australia, it was very easy there simply because you had clear skies at night. Because it is a desert you hardly get any clouds due to low humidity, so you could really see the stars even at the horizons. Oh well, I should be content, you don’t get to see much stars in Singapore to begin with… so this is yet another incentive to live in the UK.

If you think about it, star gazing is looking back in time, because you see these stars the way they were a from a thousand to a million years ago, even when we see the sun, we are actually seeing how it looks like 8 minutes ago, so in a way, you are looking back time…

Indeed as Incubus describes it: “The sky resembles a back lit canopy With holes punched in it”. And these ‘holes’ are really punched in a such a wonderful arrangement just for us to marvel at, and get our necks pain at the same time…seriously there bound to be someone behind all this that we see, whether it’s the stars, or on this earth, even ourselves are too marvelous, even if there were evolution, surely there must have been a starting point to all this, even if it was a big-bang, there must be cause for that to happen.

Surely this wonderful things we see now cannot be just a mere matter of chance, can it?

Day 10: Our First Performance...

Tuesday September 27, 2011, 7:03pm GMT +1

Sure am glad to have a half-day off to catch up on what’s been happening, although it’s one hour, it felt as if a lot of things has been done.

Today was the performance day, after all the rehearsals, today is our first and informal performance to the public of Keele. Well, for those who listen to popular music, it’s something that would be new to the ears, and in fact it will always be new every time we perform it to other crowd, because it’s improvisation…

Well, here’s the bunch of instruments involved in this mini-informal setup..

Irfan's station (From left to right):

1) "Doltali" (२ स्त्रिङ्ग्स) - meaning two strings though there's 9 strings in total; one melody, one drone and 7 seven sympathetic strings, played plucked, or bowed. This instrument was at first a guzheng prototype, before Irfan's modification.

2) "The thing with the string that goes tinkling" - it has a string but doesn't go tinkling, more of boing, basically played by plucking and pulling the screwdriver attached to var the tension of the string

3) The tin whistle - also called the penny whistle, English Flageolet, Scottish penny whistle, Tin Flageolet, Irish whistle and Clarke London Flageolet^.

4) PVC Flute, played like the chinese xiao, only without holes, made by him as well.

Yin liang's instrument, a Novation X-25 midi controller with a digital synthesizer called omni-sphere. Gives you cool sounds. He also plays the classical english flute once in a while...

Chris's Station: 1) EMS Synthesiser - The analog synthesizer I was talking about in my previous post 2) Home-Grown Electronics Synthesizer - Basically a light dependent resistor controlling the frequency of the oscillator on a circuit board. He uses the iPhone LED flash along with this with a app which allows you to strobe the LED flash.

3) Guitar Synthesizer, we call it the guitar that produces the rodes sound, because of an occasion where Chris played the Guitar Synth with a rodes tone.

4) Feedback Delay system - similar concept to my instrument except that the feedback is created with the delay pedal (many people keep mixing the sound of the instrument with Chris's). You can also create a fake snare using the dome mash (forgot the name) and the distortion pedal and the delay I think...

My station (or rather it has become Michael's). The feedback synthesizer, modified by Michael Spicer to his preference.

Zheng Jie's station (Gabriel's playing it in this picture): Basically a midi controller controlling one of the drum synthesizers in Logic Express 9.0. Similar in concept to Yin Liang's system only that the keys are replaced with pads...

Valarie's Station: A Popular station for electro-musicians, from left to right:

1) Alesis airFX, basically a digital wavetable synthesizer/controller that has sensors that detects hand movement and playback sound, in accordance to what we play. You can play this without even getting into contact with it....

2) MIDI Wand, two dimensional spacial controller build by a client- Jimmy Sorson. It's basically a X and Y controller using 2 ultrasonic speakers and one ultrasonic microphone, and later map it to different control information. In this case, we used to control a digital synthesizer - ChucK.

3) The iPad - which is actually the Crystal Garden interactive music performance software, which michael programmed - was played by Sandy, she shares the same station as Valarie.

4) A Melodica aka. Melodion (Suzuki), Melodika (Apollo), Melodia (Diana),Pianica (Yamaha), Melodihorn (Samick) and Clavietta.

Johanne's Station: The bass guitar into an bass amp, how much more simple can this get..

Anna's station: The Rhodes MK1, probably the oldest instrument here, a lost art that was popular in the 1970s. Now we bring it back along with chorus, delay, wah wah, and distortion. This setup is capable of replicating a electric guitar, that's why it's also known as the piano that sounds like a guitar.

Sandy and many others' station: The sound sculpture, now modified with other chimes and ornaments to give more timbre possibilities..

Other instrument are:

1) Simon's plank, basically a piece of wood with a contact mic, you can make wind sounds by rubbing it with your hands and playing around a wah pedal.

2) Trumpets - played by Gabriel and Clara.

3) Classica Flute, Saxophone, and Piccolo - played by Michael Spicer

4) chinese mini drum played by Simon, a small toy drum that you can get from a pasa malam every chinese new year.

and lastly but definitely not least,

The mixer (submix in this case), managed by valarie. This basically works as a router to group our instruments according to who's playing them on my mixer board, making it easier to pan them left, right, front and back on my end.

You may not know this, but the mixer is considered an musical instrument, because it manages the music that comes through it. Playing this would mean being like the main performer of this entire performance.. cus you can mute a performer if you dislike him and that totally changes the piece...

Today’s performance wasn’t too bad for a start, one thing for sure, there was no feedback throughout the show (yea..of course excluding the synthesizers). It’s funny being praised for doing things that you do not know what you are doing; everything I did on the mixer board – panning left to right, front to back, fading, and adding reverberation - today was totally on the spot. I was too busy to figure out why I did this or that; everything was just in real-time.

I think I might have had too much movement though in terms of panning, but "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" -Michael Spicer :P.

I guess the days PArts as a live soundman really help me to do everything fast on the spot, but I have lots more to learn…

Well, will be uploading the video of the show if possible, it would be hard to cramp one hour of show into a single video, but I will see what other alternative I can do, either to show segments of the performance or to split the video into smaller segments so that so guys can see the part of the performance while waiting for the rest to upload.

Day 9: The Quad Setup

Monday 26 September 2011, 10:00pm

Having a break right now in an extremely stuffy place with a terrible headache due to the severe lack of oxygen. Everything is back to practices and rehearsals back at the Lindsay hall, after all, there is going to be a performance tomorrow that we do not know what we will be playing, now that’s improvisation!

Today, it’s back to rehearsal again, after 2 free-and-easy days of resting and fun, it’s time to get back to work. Well, the routine of breakfast → rehearsal →lunch→rehearsal returns.

The major thing that happened today was setting up the quad setup for our performance tomorrow. What is a quad setup? Essentially it is just four speakers setup up at the 4 corners of a rectangular room facing one another.

To better explain this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound

It’s actually really fun mixing live sound with this method. Setting this up takes quite a while though for these guys in Keele it was almost instant a sthey normally have a 8 speakers setup, so four speakers to them was a piece of cake.

It’s really fun have four speakers to play around with, you have two more areas on sonic estate to play around with since you have an additional 2 speakers behind, the fun part is, you can move the sound around the room just by playing with the pan knob and grouping switch. It’s sure going to be a fun time doing sound and performing on the mixer tmr… okay, will need to rest now, will keep you guys updated of more from sonic escapade.

Pictures:

View from Front left speaker...

View from Front right speaker...

View from rear left speaker...

View from rear right speaker...

Now, that's four speakers indeed!

Day 8: Trip To London

Friday 23^rd September 2011, 8:44pm GMT +1

The London experience sure is a strange one today, I see almost every single nationally and races in this place except English men. You see, Germans, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Indian, Russian, Americans, maybe Japanese here, but hardly any of the locals here. Maybe it’s just because we were in the town area of London.

London as compared to Keele is a rather densely populated area I would say, London is like comparing Orchard Road in its peak period while Keele is that of Ulu Pandan Road.

The weather here is actually warmer than that of Keele, all you need to comfortably walk round London is probably a long sleeve shirt and a pair of long pants of jeans, no jacket, gloves, no scarf required. At least for me that what I ended up wearing in London.

Today was mainly touring London to look for an area with lots of music shop, this particular street in London has like the most number of Music instrument and Sheet Music shops, it’s like musicians’ paradise. I was basically too busy buying things I forgot to take pictures…oops, oh wellz.

Well, we were mainly traveling on foot, it’s a long walk but great exercise, we started of at Earl’s Court Road Station where most of us were in need of a toilet. Well, but to our surprise, and for some horror. The toilets here weren’t the same kind of toilets you will expect in our MRT stations. The video will explain why…

To excess the train, you’ll need tickets, otherwise an Oyster card if you are a resident in London. They also have like zones for the different areas where the stations are located. This implies that if you get a full-day Zone 1 and 2 train ticket (for £6.50), you will be permitted to travel on board the train to any stations located in Zone 1 and 2, which was what we did as we were going to Westminster to see the Clock Tower.

One thing about the train transport system here (which I am amazed), is actually the number train lines and train station there are here. You can walk from one station to another on your own, if you like because the train stations are everywhere, every turn of a street you see one (that is if you are observant), blending in with the shops till I couldn’t recognize it myself until Irfan pointed it out to me.

Train lines here are way more complicated than that of Singapore’s, until, I still don’t quite understand the map. It’s interesting to know though, that in an interchange, unlike Singapore where trains on a different line comes in a different platform, here trains of a different line shares the same platform, so occasionally, you might find the train coming to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, not because the tracks are faulty, but mainly because they have to queue up for the same platform.

The design of the train is also different I would say. One being that there is no air-conditioning in the car, of course you won’t need that, you have air conditioning on the outside! And secondly, unlike Singapore MRT, you cannot travel from car to car directly, the cars on the train here are separated, wonder why though. Another thing I realized, the platform where the train stops is not always straight like the ones in Singapore, they can be curved, giving rise to the uneven length of gap in between the train and the platform.

They are allowed to eat in public transport, on the way back to white city station I saw a guy eating peanuts, in Singapore we get fined for doing that. They might allowed to smoke in train stations as well I think but not in train cabins, in Singapore we also get fined…haha…really different, though in some ways similar.

After we got out of the Westminster Station, we were approached, rather stopped by a bunch of ladies, asking for donations and selling little pocket flowers. They approached me a gave me a flower asked for donation for homeless children (though according to my friends they were asking for donations for a hospital), I thought oh I could be nice and donate a few pence.

I took out my wallet to search for some coins only to find that I had spent it all on the train tickets, leaving only 5pence, so I apologized to them and offered five pence. Well, in Singapore, ignorance or decline would suffice in such cases, in fact one will be contented if someone gave 10cents but in my case they insisted that I donated more, 5pence was simply not enough, they wanted me to give notes (I guessed they saw some notes in my wallet), they would give change for it if it’s too much.

Then I got really suspicious and decline, passing them the flower they gave me, I declined to donate. But they continue to insist that I donate, they cornered me and shaft the flower in between my collar, persuading me to donate because all my other friends were donating. Well, angry that they took things too far, I stood firm and decline them while trying to keep my cool, I was on the verge of declaring them daylight robbers. So it was the battle of insistence, until I said the magic phrase, “No, please.” that they let me go, without a thank you or anything.

I thought about it after that while walking to Buckingham Palace whether I did the right thing by opting not to donate. I was not angry that they did not thank me or bid me goodbye, I wasn’t angry that they just stopped us while we were following Michael Spicer, I was angry that they did not have the attitude of contentment. Well, 5pence is not much, but a 100 of 5pence would give you 5 pounds. If they were truly desperate to help needy homeless children, I believe they would have rather 100 people donate 5 pence, than to insist and blackmail someone to give notes. Clearly they wanted money real fast, but I suspected it was not for the love of homeless children but for selfish gains.

I may have been a little stingy on my part, I was not willing to give my 50 pounds to them since I needed them for lunch, for some musical instruments as well, as the rest of the week. I know on my part I acted selfishly as a way to defend myself from being cheated. I was just too intimidated by the method of approach these ladies used, but that doesn’t justify my self-centeredness. It was just a prompt to me that I should be avoiding these people.

Well, so my friends and I were discussing about that and I was kind of convinced that it was just a cheat after all, apparently, the lady gave another rationale behind the donation, which was for a hospital instead of homeless children. So we really got very suspicious that they were cheat.

Well, whether or not it was a cheat or not, I don’t have a say in it. But if it really a cheat, then I pray they will repent of their ways and follow Eph 4:28, not longer stealing and doing honest work. And if they are doing honest work for these children in hospital, I would affirm them and perhaps get them to consider Phil 4:11, and their method of approach people, especially Singaporeans.

Anyway, so continue on our journey to the Buckingham Palace, but we didn’t get the see the queen there…because “I(We) forgot to inform her that we’ll be coming” - Michael Spicer. LOL! But nevertheless I got some pictures. And again without me, cus I want this documentation to be mainly in my point of view.

So after that, we made our way to St. James’s Park because some of us have been holding our bladder since the time we got off the a££ord van after a 3 hours drive south. And then we proceeded on in the direction of Chinatown point and the district of music shops we were planning to go to.

One thing about the birds here in London, and probably the whole UK, they are huge! Pigeons here are way fat and densely populated here, Crows are like 1.5 times bigger than Singapore’s to the point they start looking like Ravens. Ducks here can be as tall as the height of my waist from the ground.

We had our lunch at 3.05pm, at a place called Nicholson’s. Pretty awesome food there, you should try their Fried Brie with Jam. Cheese lovers will melt at the taste of this. This is also where I had my first cappuccino, never drank it till today. Truth be told, even though I hate coffee, cappuccino is really nice!

The catch about this place is the waiting time for your food, if it’s the peak period, your food can take close to an hour to come, in fact Anna (whose food came last) was still eating her meal at 4:05pm, we spent like an hour here sitting and eating.

After lunch, we headed for the music district, of which I forgot to take photos, I’m sorry. So describe it, think of the music shops in Peninsula Shopping Complex, plus Excelsior plus Parklane Mall and Brash Basah, and an additional store selling saxophone.

Well, most of the shops here are guitar shops, like multiple Swee Lee, Davis Guitar, Guitar77th, SV Guitars around here. The equipments are generally more expensive as compared to Singapore, but you get to see the good stuff you don’t see in Singapore.

So I bought some souvenirs as well as 3 other instruments - Jaw Harp, Ocarina, and a tin whistle. Instruments you hardly find in Singapore.

There are of course other things you can buy from here, including J.S. Bach score sheets and Rachmaninov piano scores and dream theater albums. Guide books that teach you how to play an instrument from scratch, from saxophones, to guitars (including bass), to tin whistles I think.

Lots more stuff I could have bought if we spend more time there. But I guess 2 hours was enough for us. So we opted to walk around the town area to see other things as well, from Chancery station, to Oxford Circus station, right down to Marble Arch station where our feet were wobbling, where we took a train back to White Estate to meet Mike.

But because the jam didn’t allow him to enter the town area, we went somewhere else, where Michael Spicer used to reside for 4 months in London. And so, right now, he’s fetching us back to another place outside London for dinner. So yea..I guess it gonna be a long ride back to thishostel after this..will continue to update you guys on what's going on here...