Chinese songs

Recently, I was asked to type chords for the Chinese service on the soft copy from the hard copy. It's quite interesting because I tend to pause for each song to read the lyrics which are so meaningful and beautiful. The organ was used a lot by the Chinese service and that's why, even though there were proper notations, some scores still had the cipher notation (thanks to Lynn, I finally know the proper term for the 'numbers' I usually call it. :) ) written above the black notes! Haha, I saw one score which even had a term similar to con brio , it was written in brackets; 坚定有力地.

Chinese is cool. :)

Music

"Without enthusiasm nothing real comes of art."

Robert Schumann
Rules for Young Musicians

"Always play as if a master heard you."

Robert Schumann
Rules for Young Musicians

Tuesday

... just a random note: just now I was cracking eggs to scramble and 3 of them had double yolks! No wonder they were big eggs, my mum was saying maybe its ivf or something. :) She bought it from the market nearby.

Ok, getting back to my main post. Today I had piano exam in the morning slightly earlier than 10.59am, the stated time. Thank God for a nice examiner who's an elderly Scottish and was very friendly and gave quite a number of hints. On commenting on the texture of the piece he played for me for the last part of aural, I said the texture was homophonic. There was a pause and he played a part of it again, more audibly emphasising the imitative texture of the piece, to which I immediately realised my error and responded that the texture was polyphonic. Giving a smile of relief (it seems) he heartily voiced a "Thank you!" confirming that his hint had got through and I had responded correctly. Oh my, I was quite ashamed that I couldn't pick out the texture especially if it was a Baroque piece. Sad to say, my pieces did not go without slips, including scales. Double sigh. Aural was unexpectedly quite ok, I thought I wouldn't be able to identify the modulations and chords at all but God enabled me. ( I had been worried about it and prayed about it... He answered! :) ) Thank God too for the prayers by my family and friends for my brother and I who both took the same grade exam consecutively today.
...I sincerely hope though, that the kind examiner would have better players than me to listen to... :D... he was really patient.

With piano exam done (unless I have to retake), I can focus more on violin exam coming up and music theory (I've forgotten quite a lot of grade 6 stuff already). Taking music exams and learning music is costly and I don't want to waste the opportunity given to me... so even though I've felt like giving up so many times and stared at my violin bow with agitation, with God's help, I'll press on. It does become easier though when I've crossed the challenge of mastering something but I've realised that in order not to lose the skill, I must not stop practicing and of course, practicing should not be a dead regime as well.

Chopin

Now, I understand why Chopin used to be Joo Ye's favourite composer until Beethoven's works began to intrigue her.

We attended a Chopin celebration concert by the NAFA piano faculty (played by the lecturers of the faculty) It was quite an adventure getting there because we didn't know how to walk there from bugis mrt. Although we were armed with our maps, one printed out from the internet and the other printed on the book I received from their open house last time, our map-reading skills were poor. At least, mine was. Despite instructions from my mum beforehand, they didn't register in my head and we were lost. Time was ticking away-made shorter due to Joo Ye coming 30 mins later than meeting time but it was ok, the time allowance was still rather fine then. Well, to cut the story short, we managed to ask a lady whose destination happened to be (thank God) en route to nafa campus 1 (we were headed for campus 3), so she walked with us and gave us directions after she reached her destination. Thank God, we found campus 1, seeing familiar landmarks printed on the map (we were quite exhilarated actually, like, look! this is there, and that building is there! we're near!!!)
Rushing to campus 3, we plopped down into our seats after showing our tickets, in the nearly full hall. We sat at the 2nd row on the right hand corner of the hall. As it was free seating, those seats were not too bad except that we couldn't see the players' hands, only the full view of the black casing of the grand piano and the expressions of the players' faces. The sound was good.

We heard some of Chopin's nocturnes, ballads and marzukas being played and I enjoyed all of them. His works are really fine works with many details and extremely romantic. Exquisite. The players brought out the tone and shape of the music well at the same time, conveying the feelings of each piece. Chopin's pieces are of great depth and beautiful; melodious. I've never played his pieces before, maybe I should try... the challenging part is the romanticism in the piece.

Aside from Chopin, although I'm no fan of anime music, I happen to know of Totoro (having watched it before when I was young and also from music classmates playing the piece). I'm not addicted to it but after hearing the duet the past year quite frequently and just recently, I think I quite like it.