En Passant

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 11:38 PM | Posted by Juwen
All this intense bass playing over the pass few weeks has clearly been paying dividends. Fingers getting more callous, starting to play more complex stuff with some sort of continuity and all round awesome feeling when you finally nail it. Only thing that I need to work on more is to improvise more and get myself playing at faster than usual tempos.

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In other news, people in my project are dropping in and out of which is clearly impacting on the project. Some more than others like a colleague who got involved in an accident means that debugging a server with very minimal knowledge transfer can be exceeding frustrating. As much as I like this project, I am quite over it right now and I just want this to be done and dusted.

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Yet another engagement and new babies. Getting desensitised. My cover: hit the Like button on Facebook. I suspect this is nothing new to people.

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Auld Lang Syne

Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 10:14 PM | Posted by Juwen
Given today's sermon in Joshua 10, I thought this was pretty appropriate.
Should nothing of our efforts stand
No legacy survive
Unless the Lord does raise the house
In vain its builders strive

 To you who boast tomorrow's gain
Tell me what is your life
A mist that vanishes at dawn
All glory be to Christ

 Chorus:
All glory be to Christ our king
All glory be to Christ
His rule and reign we'll ever sing
All glory be to Christ

 His will be done, His kingdom come
On earth as is above
Who is Himself our daily bread
Praise Him the Lord of love

 Let living water satisfy
The thirsty without price
We'll take a cup of kindness yet
All glory be to Christ

 Chorus

 When on the day the great I Am
The faithful and the true
The Lamb who was for sinners slain
Is making all things new

 Behold our God shall live with us
And be our steadfast light
And we shall ere his people be
All glory be to Christ

 Chorus

Meanwhile, in the other sermon of 1 Peter, there are many other things for me to think about.

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Music ≠ Thinking

Friday, May 10, 2013 at 12:57 AM | Posted by Juwen
One of the jamming sessions that I've had today, I've learnt something so counter intuitive about playing music that it's actually very liberating. I think most music teachers won't have the gall to do something like what has been done today and even more might be rolling in their graves.

 In a band of four, we all just played a regular 4 chord progression of an instrumental section of a song and we took turns swapping instruments but we all must have a go at playing a melody freestyle on the keys. No instruction on how to play a melody or even construct one, just freeform and almost random according to your own measure of where the music is taking you. What I thought would be an epic car crash of just horrible melodies clashing with the underlying chords turned out to be not so bad. In fact, it actually sounded good nearly most of the time. Even little ol' me who hasn't touched the keys in years nor have basic motor skills to play the piano was thoroughly surprised what I can spit out. What sorcery is this??

 The underlying principle is that we never actually really playing something at random, we already have pre-formulated ideas about what we are going to play based on past music that we have listened to. Not only do we have pre-conceived melodies, we also have pre-determined timings or intervals between notes of the melody. We bring all of this to the keys and we just let it flow. More often than not, it's generally "correct" and it's almost how you would imagined it in your head. Of course, it could be better with more practice and more knowledge but I am still pretty surprised at the base results.

 This goes against what I have been forcing myself how to learn new things especially on the bass. There is a way on learning how to make a bass fill or how to make the bass into a more lead instrument, it's just that I couldn't get it or I have found out THE method to get there. What this practice session meant was that, it doesn't matter what you play as long as you let go and you end up in the general direction that you want to be in. This takes a huge step further from the saying "Fake it till you make it" to be "Fake it, you'll make it". What happens after that is just a matter of refinement and not correction like what you have played is "wrong". So counter intuitive, so deep and yet so liberating.

 Only now do I finally begin to understand how some of the great musicians become so great. They are so good at being unconscious and unknowing of what they play, that it becomes like second nature to them and just follow where the music takes them. Great music playing/creation and creativity doesn't come from careful specific instruction but learning to let go.

 In some ways, it's a lot like life.

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Another thing that I thought was good was the fact that we spent almost as much time praying as we did practicing. It might be good for church, if only we can move practices to another day apart from Sunday itself.

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Heart of Worship

Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 10:18 PM | Posted by Juwen
Came back from the Word in Song conference for this year and it has been a humbling experience to see so many people being passionate about being in the music ministry in their respective churches. Met a number of people there that are still serving in the music ministry that are well into their 50s, 60s or even 70s. There were a few folks who are like in their late 50s or early 60s in the bass workshop and some have been playing bass for as long ago as my first memory. I also feel honoured that I can offer up some pieces of advice to some of these folks trying to improve their bass techniques. We are all coming together to learn from one another and learning how to serve more effectively in the music ministry. 

 I thought that the sermon was very good though could use a little more time to package it up nicely but the gist is there, which is on the topic of God's glory in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. It really put's a lot of things into perspective when we learn that the primary purpose is to glorify God and having a proper understanding of what does it mean to glorify God. Not to mention attitudes corrected just simply by understanding God's glory and it has certainly provoked me to examine my attitudes towards the music ministry.

 The thing that I don't understand is that no one else from church came for the conference. Though it was publicised some time ago among the musicians, apparently there were very few responses and decided that it was not worth it to come in as a group. It baffles my mind even further that there was a whole contingent from our church who went to last year's conference. Even more baffling was that everyone who went to the previous year's conference all thought that it was really good and it is really worth thinking about or even implementing some of the said things learned at the conference. And with one of this year's seminars was Playing in a Group of Three or Less, which is directly applicable to the current church setting, how is it that no one wanted to go? I'm not going to even mention the heaps of other topics that are of great use to us, like Evangelism in Song, Song Writing, Picking Excellent Songs etc. Why is that? Are we not proactive enough? Are we not passionate about the music ministry?

 Thinking about what has changed from this time last year to now, how has the music ministry changed in light of the conference. To be really honest, not a great deal once past the post-conference stage. I feel really sad that it has come down to this. I'm not expecting for church to become like the next Hillsong or Planet Shakers, but it's got to say something when we still have the same lukewarm attitude towards approaching music. If the music team is supposed to be helping the congregation to sing praises and given the lukewarm behaviour, what does the congregation think about the one aspect of worship that is singing songs? Do we lack discipline to hone our craft that we can serve better in the music? Do we lack preparation?

 It is perhaps that I am overreacting to it all. Perhaps I do not know the whole picture or reading too much into things. Maybe my vision has been clouded with bias. You tell me. Because after two years of conferences and meeting the many people who are much more passionate about serving in the music ministry than I am and looking at our ministry, I can tell you that something doesn't add up. It's not about comparing between other churches and ours because some of these people on fire come from churches smaller than we, but the hearts of service should be on the same page with one another.

 So what am I going to do about it all? After the conference, I am humbled by the message and listening to the suggestions and struggles of others. And really the only thing that I can bring is to extend encouragement to those who are in the team that I am serving with. But I can only go so far if people still do not want to change.

 And of course, above all, to pray.

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Smash

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 1:03 AM | Posted by Juwen
On a more positive note, I really love my new mechanical keyboard. It's loud but the feel is very nice and typing actually feels better now. Not only that, the sound it makes when typing is also quite satisfying. For a lack of a better phrase, I might call it crunchy. The slightly better word would be in Malay, slightly "ranggup".

 Best of all, I am now rest assured that all the keys that I press registers. Perfect for the times that I need to type with my face ahlskdhfnlaweuyxqwuioymuxajumxfhslkuhcfq78iyr bo7atxnadyfugaksmefoqwgiydufxntmnfytealoxysmfyjfgsayjalEGTCWYURfhalnxajdh....

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