carlosguitar35

[carlosguitar35]

EOY Recital Preparation

My music school organized an EOY recital. For one of my students, we decided to arrange an acoustic guitar arrangement of the Nahida Theme: Boundless Bliss from the Genshin Impact OST. It was really a great experience for both my student and myself as it is something that we transcribed and arranged ourselves.

Below is the score for the arrangement and the audio is a recording of one of our lessons.

This is also the first time this student has played melody on guitar. So its a great achievement for him!

I've learnt that motivating a student can come in many forms, like overcoming a challenge. Hopefully this will spark my student to be able to practice more

[carlosguitar35]

Overcoming stage-fright and nervousness

Recently, one of my students was ambushed by his mother to play the guitar for her. He is generally introverted and tends to panic whenever something is asked of him by his parents. Unfortunately, I received feedback from his mom that he got nervous and was quite affected by it.

He is actually able to play the guitar if he's more calm and collected. This is something that is common with budding musicians and may have been an oversight on my part. To improve this I made him practice taking a video where both him and I play.

Sometimes with low confidence, students tend to cut themselves short of their actual capabilities. I took this as a learning experience to also ensure my students are able to overcome playing in front of peers and family.

Wonderwall was a good song to use as the chords used aren't as complex while having a good rhythmic hook with the strumming.

Hopefully this will result in a boost in confidence. I also instructed him to have 3 or 4 songs to know by heart in case he ever gets pushed to play the guitar out of nowhere.

[carlosguitar35]

Exam Preparation for Student

This is one of my students who recently undertook his Trinity Grade 2 in Acoustic Guitar. We roughly took 6 months to prepare for the exam. Ultimately the effort was worth it as he was able to get a distinction for his exam!

One of the main challenges was getting the student to be able to memorize the repertoire, it always a challenge getting working adults to progress quicker due to them having more commitments as compare to when they were younger. However, towards the deadline we were able to pull through. Still much can be improved but I feel the result was worth it!

[carlosguitar35]

Gig @ Lenoir MBS

I usually play with the Fleurist (Consists of Marcus on vocals, Daniel on drums and myself on acoustic guitar) on saturday evenings.

The repertoire includes mostly English Top 40s as Marina Bay Sands is a tourist spot.

Things I have worked on overtime while doing this gig is my stagecraft and memory of songs. My initial struggles was always having to remember which key the singer sang in as we didn't really have time for rehearsal. But overtime, I became more familiar with the repertoire. Last but definitely not least was the skill of adaptability when on stage.

[carlosguitar35]

Tackling students with rhythmic difficulty

My student has general issues with harmonic rhythm and rhythm in general. Most of my students are generally okay but in particular this one does have some issues internalizing rhythm My attempt to remedy this problem was to go through how to read rhythmic notation. I started out with the your semibreves all the way to you semi-quavers, ensuring that he knows the values of each type of note in a 4/4 bar. I would go through sight reading and an exercise that I created on my own using Musescore. I would then ask him to label each of the notes and learn how to clap them in tempo.

It was generally a fun exercise that forces the student to engage. Rhythm can be a bit polarizing as from my experience, there are some students who have a stronger sense of rhythm than others. The challenge is always for those who do not get it instinctively. Which is why I feel learning your notation does help.

[carlosguitar35]

Back to Singapore

My usual work outside of school would be teaching and gigging.

I usually work at my music school, Alternate Tone, as well as privately freelance.

Here's a summary of my weekly schedule of teaching and gigs:

[carlosguitar35]

Global Conference / Romania Exchange @ UNATC (Part 4)

This was our final presentation for the conference, where a week's worth of collaboration between UNATC and LASALLE.

Soundpainting was the perfect medium between all disciplines. It was really eye opening how different art styles were able to cohesively prepare a performance like this. I was quite glad that Dr. Tim was able to teach us this form of composing as it really forced me to open my horizons. Thinking in textures and emotions rather than a certain key signature, style or tempo.

There was a point during rehearsals we were trying out improvised dance with improvised music. Daniel was the dancer and my role was to react to his movements. I initially had struggles as I was too caught up with the structure of the music rather than letting it flow. Things finally clicked when I turned off my theory for a bit. When he would gently move his body downwards, I would mirror his movements using the notes on the guitar. When he started replicating death and was moving erratically. i attempted to mirror that with dissonance and a chaotic structure, to an extent even wailing with the guitar. It was quite a breakthrough for me and even Dr Tim was curious with my thought process. This is still something I am unable to command and control, but I believe it something I can add to my own craft.

The final performance was a rendition of a tale of two cities, where lovers would meet every year between. With each passing year, the music would change from more harmonious and structured, to more frantic and chaotic. I am personally honoured to have been part of this project and I felt there was a change in my perspective of how music could actually be performed and how it can interact with other disciplines outside of the music theater norms.

[carlosguitar35]

Global Conference / Romania Exchange @ UNATC (Part 3)

Trip To Sinia!

We went to the town of Sinia as part of the cultural exchange programme procured by UNATC. Mr Thomas was kind enough to accompany us and be our guide. One of the highlights of the trip for sure!

Peles Castle

The biggest take away from this experience, aside from the luxury of being a tourist and seeing new things, is really seeing the cultural heritage of Romania. How does the historical context affect how art is expressed. There have been numerous artists, composers from days of old from Romania. There's a rich history where even the current creatives in Romania draw from. This history is something exciting, filled with both the great highs and the harsh lows of the country. I believe this reflects how as people the Romanian's express their art. Much of the sentiment of current Romanian's is that they blame communism for how Romania as a country fell off from it's golden ages of castles and kingdoms. This is something that can be felt when I was in UNATC working with the students.

I ask myself how can I can take this phenomenon and learn from it? It's something I've yet to fully understand but I believe Singapore in comparison is still a young nation. Hopefully one day we can reach the heights of art that Romania currently has.

Waiting for our train to Sinaia

Old vintage railway system

View of Sinaia from Monastery

Inside of Orthodox Church

Murals inside Monastery Orthodox Church

Armory inside Peles Castle

View from train on the way back to Bucharest

[carlosguitar35]

Global Conference / Romania Exchange @ UNATC (Part 2)

The next few days of the Global Conference in Romania touched up a bit more with music.

Quick selfie at the subway!

Group photo of all the students from both LASALLE and UNATC (Pls dont mind my closed eyes)

Our student group playing Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love"

During our breaks in between various speech, movement and acting workshops, we would sing and play songs together spontaneously. It all just started with us just idling around. I'd pick up the guitar and just noodle around, then I just asked both Gina and Hani to sing any song while I played for them. One thing led to another and everyone wanted to sing and play music together.

It became a daily routine during our breaks and it was easily one of the most memorable events in the whole trip. It really summed up what music was about and why I pursued it as a career path. The way music is able to connect people despite having grown up in contrasting cultures and upbringings which were literally thousands of miles away from each other was just beautiful. Although the students from UNATC were theater students, music is a huge part of their art culture and lifestyle than many of them could sing and play instruments.

This really helped everyone bridge the language barrier and break the ice between the Romanian students and Singaporean students. This served as a big reminder why I do do music. On the flipside, I believe this situation taught me the importance of a collaborative mentality. With Gina and I actually being musicians, it would have been easy to segregate ourselves from the rest. Some musicians have been guilty of having an elitist attitude towards non-musicians or even other musicians. It's the same ego that pushes us to perfect our craft to the best state it can be. This social situation could have been different if the individuals who held certain authority in music divided rather than include. Acknowledging this possibility and having seen it in other scenarios, I am glad with the outcome of the sing alongs and jams I had with my fellow students.

A special mention goes to both Victor and Daniel, who were Romanian students who are passionate about music and it showed whenever they sang or played their instruments. They helped to inspire me further in how music can connect people if varying backgrounds.

[carlosguitar35]

Global Conference / Romania Exchange @ UNATC

I was selected to be part of the group to represent LASALLE College of the Arts at the Global Connections Conference in Bucharest, Romania between May 22, 2023 to June 4, 2023.

This was a very exciting opportunity for me as I've never actually been to Europe. Even more exciting was the prospect of being able to practice my craft in a new and unfamiliar environment and culture. Our main environment of work was at UNATC, National University of Theatre and Film "I.L. Caragiale". As the name suggests, this school specializes in theater, film and other related art forms.

Although this is a school opportunity, my personal objective for this project was to experience alternate perspectives in art forms. Soundpainting workshops were scheduled so it would be a good learning opportunity to see how other disciplines would collaborate.

People's Palace / Palace of Parliament in Bucharest

The Singapore group consisted:

School Heads/ Lecturers - Dr. Timothy O' Dwyer, Ms Melissa Quek

Music - Carlos & Gina

Musical Theater - Hani & Ho Xuen

Acting - Marwin & Riqi

The student group outside Peles Castle, castle of the first king of Romania.

With UNATC mainly being a university for theater and film, it was quite a thrilling yet nerve-racking thought, having to go through music theater and dance classes whilst being a music student. Although there are overlaps in name with both art forms, they were dramatically different in approach.

UNATC - Bucharest

During our first workshop, we started out with a introductory dance workshop with Melissa. It was our first time meeting the Romanian lecturers and students, the intermingling of polarizing cultures was something I've never experienced to this extent. We started with some movement improvisations.

This was something completely new to me but I decided to come into this conference with an open mind. A completely foreign art form compared to music, it was a strangely refreshing experience, having mostly expressed myself through music for most of my life. We were taught to translate thoughts and words into movement, which was much more in touch with emotions and perspective. In comparison to music, which in contrast had, to an extent, rules of theory bound to it, it was a much more free form art. This is something I may have felt was lacking in my own craft. I had a tendency to play within certain theories and rules in music for it to sound good. This is something that I feel would take time to change. Ironically, experiencing other art forms has helped me to gain an alternate perspective.

Fellow students doing the movement exercise

We also went to see a play in the "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre, which is one of the oldest theaters in Romania. I later learnt from the lecturers from UNATC Ioana and Thomas that it was renovated recently as its previous architecture was symbolic to the communist regime prior. Much of this trip has taught me that much of the Romanian sentiments post-communism have been about recovering from those dark times. I believe it reflects in the way they approach their art forms, whether its music, dance or theater. The artistic expression is strong in Romanian culture and I believe it is a learning experience of what the creative industries in Singapore can learn from.

"I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre

Our student group outside the National Theater on our first day!

The theater around 30 minutes before the show. However, 5 minutes before the show the theater quickly filled up to almost maximum capacity.

We went to watch this Romanian play called "Exil" directed by Alexandra Badea. Although I could not understand Romanian, I was able to infer the plot elements from the play. What I felt was a unique characteristic of the play was the usage of a film camera in a first person perspective which was transmitted to a projector. This allowed the audiences to see from the perspective of the main actress. As someone with little experience in theater, it was actually quite eye opening that creative concepts like this existed.

To sum up my feelings from the workshops and the performances I watched in the first few day, although there wasn't much music, just experiencing different forms of art expression gave me a bigger overview of what art actually is. This has led to me to ask myself how attempting different approaches in a more flexible way in music would help to improve my craft overall.

Here are some other photos from our first few days in Bucharest.

Fresh Strawberries

Falafel in a turkish restaurant

Halloumi

Graffiti near hotel

Trolley Bus in Bucharest