Rant: How To Make a Great Night of Music a Complete Turn-off

I played at Blujaz cafe for an adhoc band put together to support Ivni, a blind drummer (Yes! Blind! He has trumped all other drummers I know) who's a drum student at Ben Lee's drum school.

It was meant to be a great night of music, where students showcase what they've learnt in school. Our band was meant to take stage at 8.45pm--as of writing, there's a band that's been playing since and it's now 9.21pm. I'm not one to complain, but I really felt cheesed off by these young punks. They misunderstood the intention of the gig and made the show about them. Seriously? A night dedicated to music students, giving them the opportunity to experience a live gig, and you pull off this stunt?

"Hi, we're _________ and we're here to play some music for you tonight. Thanks for coming down to support us!"

No. We're not here to support you. If you had any integrity, you would have said something more along the lines of:

"Hi, we're _______ and our drummer ________ is actually learning drums from the school, we're here to support her. Let's encourage ________ !"

I believe the appropriate Singlish term for what I witnessed with this band is buay pai sei. How shameless can a band of young punks get? Let's see:

1. You certainly took your time setting up. Oh yeah, I was counting. You didn't need to bring your three electric guitars, massive pedalboards, your MIDI-controlled keyboard and sound module. Could you not have simplified the setup for this gig, especially since there were many students waiting their turn to perform? Can't you tweak the existing setup that's there?
2. You were all fancy-smancy with working the crowd. I get it that you're a young band. I get it that gigging at legit places is hard to come by. But you didn't have to do the long introductions, regale us with the story of how your band met, and give special thanks to your parents/girlfriends/significant others/cats/dogs/hamsters for inspiring you.
3. And when you finished your jaw-dropping performance (again, I don't normally bash bands or other musicians, but you guys were not as fancy as you made yourselves out to be), you took your time tearing down your equipment. Hurry up!

By the time we took the stage, it was nearly 9.40pm. This band played something like 5 long songs complete with dual-guitar solos and keyboard solos.

Wah lau. Sibei puay sai lei you all! Come back when you're old enough to see that performing isn't all about you all the time.

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OAC? Not Quite.

I found a cafe in HK that used the same stock graphic as my band. That's coincidence for you!

It was a bittersweet moment at this cafe as I started thinking about my musicianship. What do I do with these dreams and ambitions of playing professional music? It's amazing that 15 years have passed and I'm still a hopeful dreamer that someday, somehow, God will permit me the opportunity to use my musical gifts in the marketplace.

Many are quick to jump to the conclusion that I seek fame and fortune. I don't. I really don't! And don't take my word only, look at my life and try to arrive to that conclusion.

"Well, OAC was marketed fiercely."

Of course it had to be! I was managing a brand. As it is with any enterprise, you have to push selling points and can't expect clientele to "magically appear". Since no one was going to do it, I stepped up to the plate. Would anyone else have done it differently? I don't think so.

My observation is that so as long as the band isn't identified as Christian (and by that I mean a band made up of Christians who are active in their faith and unafraid of sharing it), it can pursue any material end by any means and it will still be deemed socially acceptable. "Oh yeah, that's what they have to do to survive. It's a tough market."

But alas, if the band is "Christian", all of a sudden, the same things that help promote the band, the publicity and marketing materials, the campaigns for gigs, any kind of merchandising--the band is seeking "fame and fortune" that is "against their beliefs" and are hence "hypocritical". Where is the hypocrisy? What beliefs am I going against? Does the Christian faith espouse a belief (or a set of beliefs) that deny a band from engaging in contemporary marketing strategies? I'm open to discussion on this, but by and large, I am tasked by the cultural commission to be hardworking, to be resourceful, and to be a responsible head of my household. If that means having to make a living with music, I'd better find a way of doing it responsibly!

Why the double standards? Don't "Christian" musicians need to provide for their families as much as "non-Christians" do? Don't we "Christian" bands need to make a living too? I don't mean to sound like I'm ranting (ah, Christians cannot complain either), but it cheeses me off to no end that there is such a divergent view on Christians attempting to live by their art. We're people too, with real needs and real families to take care of.

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Practical Tips for Gigging Guitarists

I'm a rusty performer. I firmly believe that 90% of the work behind a performance is in preparation (obviously, apart from memorizing your parts). You may be able to nail every single note down, but if you've forgotten to bring things that are crucial to your setup, all that hard practice may be for naught. My latest gig with While It's Day helped to wake me from my slumber. I made so many mistakes that could have been avoided if I was just a little more careful with preparation and planning.

Here are three tips I'd like to present:

Pack the night before the gig

Common sense, right? Unfortunately, possibly because I've been playing for so long, I assumed that I'll automatically bring everything I need. That was a big mistake on my part. Here's what happened: I lugged my pedalboard onto the stage, I took it out of its case, propped it up and started making connections...and then I realized I forgot to bring the power supply!

Maybe I should have spent that 10 minutes the night before to run through what I needed and pack accordingly. I realized that this wasn't the first time I forgot to bring stuff because of my erroneous assumption. I've forgotten capos, cables, picks; it seems that the smaller the device, the easier it is to forget to pack!

It never hurts to have spare equipment

So now I had a giant pedalboard that was ready to rock but there was no power supply. Thankfully, we were playing at the Woodlands Civic Centre, which was quite near the Woodlands outlet of Standard Value. I hopped into a cab, made my way to Mike's shop, met him there (catching up over a one-minute conversation), bought a power supply, and came back in time for sound check. This incident may just be the most dramatic pre-gig experience I've gone through ever!

This led me to write a staple list of things that should be in my gig bag/pedalboard bag:

• Guitar strap
• Picks - the more the merrier!
• Capo
• 2 cables (for my guitar and from the output of my pedalboard)
• Spare patch cables in case of cable failure
• Spare 9V batteries, in case my ebow runs dry, or my bassist friend needs one for his active preamp
• Spare power supply (now you know why!)

Know your gear

By the time I hit the stage with the band, I was a little frazzled. I have a Budda Bud wah which doesn't have an LED to indicate its on/off status, and when I used it for a song, I forgot to rock the pedal all the way front to disengage the wah. I remember our stage volume being quite loud, so I think I couldn't really hear that my wah was still on. I only realized this when I came home and starting running A/B tests between my power supplies, and was wondering why there was a nasty spike in the mids that just won't go away. If the wah was on since the first song, that meant I played the next song with the wah on the whole way through! My apologies to Leon (our soundman), I'm sure you were wondering why my tone was so honky!

I wonder if I'll have another gig with this much drama. But on the whole, I had a fantastic time playing with such a wonderful band.

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A New Addiction

I'm addicted.

No, it's not a substance, or a new band, or (heaven forbid) new gear--I'm in love with the bass. I acquired a 4-string Fender Jazz bass, and have effectively replaced my practice time usually reserved for guitar with bass DVD's, bass e-books, and bass articles. I've played for two services so far (first ever at a Chinese worship service for New Heart ministries, and the next at AMK), and the response has been encouraging.

Some material I've been working on:
Dave LaRue's "Essential Bass Concepts"
Stu Hamm's "Fretboard Fitness"
George Urbaszek's online videos
Trying to study players like Pino Palladino and David LaBruyere

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Analog, Digital...Does It Matter?

I've been playing worship sessions at a nice cosy church every last Friday of the month for a couple of months now. Hosted by Shalom Baptist Chapel, JAR @ the Well (acronym for Jam and Refresh) intends to deliberately bring worshippers from out of the hustle and bustle of city life and simply enjoy God through worship and music, and it achieves this aim very well because of its location: it's near Tengah Airbase!

The acoustics are amazing; there's a high, tapered ceiling, and the floor's nicely carpeted, which produce nice reflections with not too much pre-delay (carpets absorb sound). Whenever I step into this church, I feel inclined to be silent, to be meditative, and to be wary of my speech because of how small I feel.

My rig for the night was an experimental one: full pedalboard (the one I have mounted on a PT-3) into a Line 6 Spider III. It's a 30W amp with a 12" speaker, which is my preferred wattage and speaker size. I ran it pristine clean with no EQ and no drive to experiment with the concept of relying purely on the pedalboard for tone.

So the night went on, with powerful worship, amazing moments of pure adoration through the music, and all the while, just genuinely having a good time with the rest of the band.

The worship leader came up to me after and asked how much my amp was, expecting it to belong to the "expensive" category. "I love your amp" were her specific words. I guess she wasn't expecting that I paid $150 for it, and that it was a solid state amp.

So, which component was responsible for good tone? The amp? The pedalboard? The fact that I used analog pedals? The more I contemplate about it, the more I think that from a listener's perspective, it doesn't really matter if I used digital or analog. Both types of gear are thus a means to an end: undistractedness in playing. Perhaps the mark of good gear is not just that it sounds good, but it doesn't distract you while you're using it; it becomes an extension of your creativity, and you don't need to fight it to get good tone out of it.

What mattered lay in the generic rather than the specific: did I keep good time with the band? Did I play wrong chords? Did I use the right scale over the right progression?

If you insist on getting a particular piece of gear, by all means, save up, buy it, use it, and don't be distracted by it. Let the gear do its job by helping you express what you want to play.

Photo credits go to the amazing Chang Ning.

Due thanks to the amazing Yi Xin, whose heart for God and worship inspires the rest of us in the band to give and play our best.

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Possible Band Names?

YFC's Performing Arts ministry band needs a name. I know my brainstorming sessions for band names don't really have a lot of scriptural backing to them (like attaching a verse directly to them), but I do keep them biblically sound. Here are my suggestions:

Return

This name came about after checking work emails for the umpteenth time, and thinking about a name which revolved around the idea of turning.

When you read your emails, the subject header is the most important part of the message. If you don't get any of what was said in the main body of the email, at least remember the subject header. Likewise, Christians have the most important message to share: the Gospel. If nobody understood the music that was played, or if no one remembered any song that the band dished out, may the listeners remember that the Gospel was shared.

The concept of turning needs no detailed explanation. Responding to the Gospel of Jesus Christ involved a 180-degree turn (maybe the arrow should be halved instead of a full turn?) from my godless ways.

Afterthought:

This sounds like a Korean boy group. In fact, running a search on Google yielded a hit on an existing band with this name--some Norwegian power ballad rock band. I can't pronounce the band members' names.

This Way Up

I thought about this while contemplating ordering a guitar from the US, and hearing the horror stories of how guitars come chipped and knocked about because the distributor didn't package the guitar properly.

A box containing fragile items needs to be oriented in the right way, otherwise, as it moves through two points, you'll end up damaging its contents. We all try to move through life living our own way apart from God, but the truth is, Jesus really is the truth, the way, and the life. No one gets to the Father except through Jesus.

Afterthought:

There's a four-piece party cover band of the same name on Facebook. Sigh.

Some rejected ideas:

• Driftwood - Named after contemplating that a piece of dead, fallen wood in a river can only be picked up by a lumber, who will use it for nobler purposes like furniture or river dam construction. I thought it was cool, but it sounds like it belongs to a metal band.
• One Step Closer - Whether Christian or not, we're all taking one step closer to our eventual eternal destiny. Rejected due to a Linkin Park song of the same name.

What do you think makes a good Christian band name? Let's hear it!

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