At 3:30AM in the morning.
All 4 of us are still online.

I love my pw group :)

Its supposed to be promos mugging period now, but I'm spending more time on the computer T_T hongrui! control!

One of my favourite pastimes is to watch little cellists on youtube. Sometimes I see these young talents play and I start feeling zibei. At other times, I feel a little more motivated.

Today, I just stumbled across another jewel. Matthias Balzat.



I'm going to learn and play this piece for my CT1 next year, but this 8-year old kid just rocks.

So do all the other kiddos. Oliver Aldort (awesome pianist too), Tessa Seymour, Daniel Hass, Nathan Chan.

Daniel Hass has the best technique among them in my opinion, but I simply love Nathan's expression and interpretation.



I think to be a good performer, you really have to start super young and get everything right. Maurice Gendron wrote in his book The Art of Playing the Cello, that a musician's muscles will start to lose flexibility when he reaches 18 years old. (That's like next year O.o) And mr. gooi did tell us before that if you're going to be a professional performer, by this time you should already be reaching roughly jonshin's standards. Small kiddos, with the right guidance, can become virtuosos easily in perhaps 5 years, but an adult might need to learn for like a few decades, but he still won't be on par with the kid.

And so, I'm a compo major :)
And I've decided that I'm not going to try for YO anymore.. Painful decision, esp when annie posts something fun about YO on almost every single one of her blog posts, and you find that you really want to be a part of it. Sigh I've been catching every single concert since sec 2.. but there's no way I can make it in time for the october 24th audition, and I don't think I would want to try it next year. Oh well..

This is freaking AWESOME :)



Haha I wonder if I can do it for MEP as an ensem item lol :) And the cello has 5 strings!

I just realised today that promos ends earlier than i expected. I always thought its going to end on like the 9th or 10th, then today dennis reminded me that it ends on the 7th :) Which means I can catch Nina Kotova's concert on the 9th with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and premiering Theofanides' cello concerto!!! :) Whee anybody wants to go with me? Cheapest ticket is like $48 though D: that's my wage for a one-hour lesson.


Today, we won interclass games :) mark's the man haha, so pro omg. bonny was super good too. (I can't believe shanin thinks brent is mark hahahaha) Anw I think I played like crap today D: I didn't defend properly, and that guy in the team raffles shirt kept fooling me with a basketball lay-up move, making me jump earlier than intended and end up not catching the ball because by the time he really does throw the ball i'm already in midair falling down. Stupid basketballer -.- And i'm sure the entire 3I booed me when I stole dunno-who-that-girl-is' ball. It was quite funny though, michelle was on her right, dennis was on her left, and i was right in front of her waving my arms about haha.

I haven't practised my cello since prac ended on Wednesday. ugh I feel so guilty D: A 5 day break after an entire month of practising at least 2 hours a day makes me feel funny. But I've been obsessed with pw and music compo, and i'm super demoralised now because I realised that my bach 2-part writing, which I spent like 10 hours on, has like an entire 8-bar passage full of consecutive fifths. Aaaargh

Lol looks like my posts are coming monthly now.

Life's been really busy D: Especially with music. It's the most taxing, most time consuming, but also the most fun and rewarding subject in the entire JC syllabus.

I think Mr. Yu is a super unique teacher. Sometimes he's whacky, sometimes he's strict. When he first took over Mrs Chee and did his first lecture with us, I think everyone just kind of hated him because of his overly stringent schedule and pickiness with punctuality, while being inefficient at the same time :P Then he tried to show off a bit by trying to improvise based on 4 notes, and everyone was like "huh o.O jon shin can do better"

But i'm quite sure he was a little nervous on his first lecture and things didn't go as well as he planned.

Then harmony lesson using games (the hilarious guys vs girls showdown) portrayed him in a totally new light and then impressions started to change. Thereafter, during lectures, he still continued his strictness with time, but this time we're starting to conform into his schedules, which are actually pretty realistic in retrospect.

What impresses me the most is his imagination and the way he play with chords as if they are like toys. After his first failed attempt at improvising on his debut lecture, the rest of his improvisations and on-the-spot compositions in class were just like wow :O And he can always link it to some movie/show/random context. He's creativity and imagination is just super super wild. I thought I was crazy enough already, but he just owns me hands down.

And today I just had like a half an hour session with him where he reviewed my awesome compo :) First two movements were okay, when we came to the elegy, the third movement, he showed me how to manipulate the cello melody into something super dramatic. And to show the effect, he actually sung the revised melody. It's really crazy, he hit the high E ten notes above the middle C, and his voice was really powerful (i thought usually falsetto notes will be like softer or less resounding). Not only that, the note had VIBRATO. subtle, but evident. And it's one of the purest vibratos I've heard in a male voice, much better than Ben low.

Yeah basically he's just a super crazy teacher with a lot of hidden skills that we still don't know (such as knowledge of Chinese history and literature ><) And anw, compo has been a fun experience, and I think I'm more or less going to do compo major for A-levels :)

Okay i shall stop now, maybe the next time i blog will be next month...


And here's an apology to Charlotte for banging into her during PE yesterday and bruising her entire right kneecap. Sorry! :P