Salut Salon Competitive Foursome

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=268457760002594&set=vb.182521798596191&type=2

Salut Salon "Competitive Foursome"

what did i just watch !!!

incredulous. cant believe my eyes, so much fun watching these insane ladies play!

brings me back to the days of messing around in rehearsal haha. my earliest memories are probably in Sha Tin Junior School Orchestra ... this boy Mike (who's now a final year Geography undergrad at U of Southampton in the UK) used to sit just a bit in front of me as a Violin 3 (lol yeah the best u can do without any violists ... remember this is just primary school and international schools aren't competitive, we never went to MusFest or other competition crap. basically if u knew how to play an instrument and you could do the most basic score reading (not even sight-reading, mind you...), then basically you'd get invited into Orchestra. Still rmb I spent the first three years of junior school sulking and becoming progressively more and more jealous of all the kids who got "invited" into the Orchestra hahahhaha. Since you couldn't just "join" it as an extra-curricular activity, you had to be "invited". ew.

Anyways, in P4 ... i'd just learnt cello for a year in Music Office, i think. And somehow or the other my music teacher (the dear old lovely Ms Chiam ... one of the kindest and nicest and biggest hearted teachers I ever had the pleasure of knowing!!) found out that I played cello, and invited me to Orchestra. (YES!!!)

Ofc at first I didn't know what to expect. And having always been an introvert, and shy, and nervous, and socially awkward ... I was so lonely that first day at rehearsal. Scared out of my wits. And I think there were only 1-2 other cellists only. Can't rmb who the second one was. But the first was my senior by 2 years, a lovely lady, Audrey, who eventually also played with me in YSO for 2-3 years. (lol somehow she was also a student of Ngai sir ... somehow over half the cellists I met in junior school, high school, JCE, and YSO were at some point or other his students ... coincidence?! Though not really ge ... as he did teach a lot of cello in Music Office before he left to go freelance and eventually open his own 琴室 Cellistizzimo~ and as an alumni of YSO ofc he'd recommend his students to go for orchestral training there~).

ah. watching music clips on FB and YT always trigger good memories and I just go ranting on and on about how great my musical experiences were growing up. Though it was not always smooth and successful ... it was most definitely always happy. :') and even if others weren't happy, I learnt to be happy through my own playing. :) though it wasn't always "good". or up to "standard". LOL. yeah i was a happy kid as long as i got to play.

oh anyway. back to that kid Mike. anyway he was quite naughty and used to play bow fights with all the other kids who would oblige to play with him. and somehow one day he started a bow fight with me and somehow I was feeling a bit mischievous too and so we started a massive bow fight. Thank goodness in those days I still used a cello rented from MO and so it didn't really matter that much if I caused a lot of damage. (sorry ... i know it's wrong, but as a kid you dont really think much about these things xD). And we'd switch bows. And at one point instruments.

And after that my first few years in YSO with my other high school friends. (3 violinists and another cellist).
We even switched mutes one time HAHAHAH. and we'd play high up on the fingerboard and get the rosin dust smeared all over the neck 五把位 area and had a hard time clearing up the mess. Got our fingers all sticky but it was fun haha~

and we'd hold our bows the way bassists do. or erhus.

and afterwards, in high school, there was a period i think in Year 10 (Form 4), for GCSE music coursework we had to create our own composition. The topic was "experimental music". We could choose between minimalism and this, I think. And i rmb i didnt like minimalism. Even though the music as a product could be pretty cool (ref Jade Kim's "Raindrops" wow at that time I didn't appreciate it that much but after a while, and listening to it a few weeks ago really made me smile again!)

Anyways, experimental music. If you've ever watched Ethan Winer "A Cello Rondo" ... you'll get what i mean. This was the demonstration video shown in class. And I decided that I'd give it a go. I even performed it in the "Composition" category of the annual Young Musician's Festival. Even though it turned out terrible. HAHA. Cos I believe I mixed in too much, trying to fuse in everything, from baroque to classical to 20th century to Ethan Winer to chopstick slapping to glissandos to harmonics. to. everything and anything you'd ever imagined possible on a cello. haha, though the techniques were fascinating and i had the time of my life creating that composition!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve4cBOnSU9Q Ethan Winer "A Cello Rondo"


And after that. just jamming during rehearsal. or one of our own ensemble rehearsals. can't rmb. either way, we started messing around as we always do ... multiple bows on a single string.
guitar strumming.
playing my cello like it was a violin, and never fearing that it would be too damn heavy and drop LOL.
screeching the notes out beyond the bridge and trying to figure out what note it was.
bowing ON the actual bridge.
at one point i was also obsessed with col legno.
and for a while i never got around to figuring out what senza sordino meant. HAHAHHAHA. even though i knew what con sordino was. eek. stupidity and ignorance at its finest.

yeah. basically this vid just suddenly activated a whole FLOOD of memories. and reminded me that you can legit mess around with your instruments. not just as kids. :') thanks girls for reminding me~!