JRock Gathering 4: A Tribute to ONE OK ROCK

JRockの集い JRock Gathering 4: A Tribute to ONE OK ROCK

Time and Date: Sat, 23 February 2013, 2:30 pm - 6.00pm
Venue: Studio Lounge, Sunway Pyramid

There has been JRock gatherings organised by JRock no Tamashii every month since last year October, which I've attended their first gathering (for blog post click here). Gatherings after the first were all tribute to some JRock bands, where local bands get to perform tribute songs for tribute band's fan, it's an event held by fans for fans~

And for the month of February this year, it's a tribute to the ever amazing band One OK Rock! I personally liked several songs from them because I find them rather different from other jrock bands as their music are quite western influenced. Really good for them because they captured even the hearts of many non-jrock fans and Taka's (One OK Rock's vocalist) voice and english sounds great too.

So Acap and I were usually chatting about how we wanted to join up both me (as a featured vocalist) with his band - Osiria Rose for a performance; Since his band was invited to perform for this tribute we thought that this could be a great chance since his band loves and usually jams One OK Rock songs and obviously I like the songs as well. Then I started becoming FB friends with Osiria Rose members, (thats always the routine to know someone right? lol).

Members of  OSIRIA ROSE (do visit their page and give them some support~) for this tribute performance:

Amir As Blood - Vocalist

Najmi - 1st Guitarist
Amzar- 2nd Guitarist
Fauzan - Keyboardist
Acap - Drummer
Mosh - Bass Sessionist

I've joined their band for jamming twice, at ICONS puchong jamming studio. Studio was really great and cozy and cheap, good props (I don't have to keep setting the mics' EQ like in all other studios); too bad my band members stay rather far from Puchong, if not I would definitely recommend it to them. Jamming with another band feels different (duh.) but I'm glad that Osiria Rose members were friendly and easy to talk to. However joining another band's jamming made me miss my band a lot, as I have not seen them since new year eve countdown (around two months), was really hoping to see them soon~

To be honest song choice was one of the hardest thing to decide as most One OK Rock songs are freaking hard for a girl to sing, especially when mine isn't those deep low kinda voice. "Wherever you are" was a must pick since it's the easiest for me to sing, Amir will be doing a duet with me so it suits the feel of the song. Other than that all other songs were all rocks, which I agreed to singing "The Beginning" (backing harmonies + bridge part), and half of "Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer". Was pretty happy that we all chose Dreamer because ever since I've listened that song it has been a little dream of mine to perform it on stage (coz I can't perform it solo and i doubt my band would want me to do that song lol).

Performance day!

Studio Lounge is Sunway Pyramid, not that hard to find but I seriously didn't know that place exist even though I've been to Sunway for like a zillion times haha. The interior for Studio Lounge was kinda cool, typical bar-like ambience; with mostly purple and yellow lights:

 

Caption: Not bad right? mirrors like these were around the venue...

While the sound engineers and stage crews were busying with setting up the stage, Osiria Rose and I were chilling around near the lounge, chit chatting and trying not to be nervous (especially the band members lol). I did not feel much nervousness probably because I was performing as a featured vocalist and it's more of a coordination thing rather than just me alone.

And, I had a nice surprise (not really surprise la, I knew about it the day before)....

 

Huge thanks to Josh Lemphek, a DJ from Australia who took the trouble to watch our performance (when he could have go visit other places during his vacation)!! A day before Lemphek and I were chatting and I found out that he will be in Malaysia for few days before going back to Adelaide. So I asked him if he is interested in watching the performance and so he cam to support~ He is just super cool: he actually travels for more than 3 months from Aus to M'sia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and China! Alone!! And he is like super young, still 15/16 something like that. It's currently one of my dreams is to leave home for a month travelling alone! Gonna keep quiet on that since it's still on planning phase lol.

By the way my OOTD is: Berska Limited Gothic Collection Dress; Black beret with white pearls; Metal Cross necklace; black and white crystal bracelet; ribbon tattoo stockings; Neko design wedges. Oh yeah and my punk coffin cross bag.

We were the first performance of the day, so while waiting, everyone poses for the camera haha.

Acap - Drummer

Vocalist - Amir

 

Keyboardist - Fauzan

The two guitarist of the day - Najmi and Amzar

Bassist (sessionist) - Mosh

(Sorry I forgot his name lol) and Lemphek. Don't know what are they starring at lol. Can see my hat in this picture haha.

Us posing for the camera but I think it's too dark.

 

When it's brighter Lemphek and Amzar not posing anymore =_=. Left me alone..

Oh yeah, before I forget, when I(we) first saw the stage, we were a little worried, because it was reallllllllllly small. We keep thinking about how to arrange ourselves so that we won't fall off the stage lol, as it's kinda difficult to fit all 7 of us on stage. So yeah, we ended up standing stiffly, dare not move too much scared we might hit someone and he falls off the stage haha.

Selina (Flying Pan) Making an announcement on stage.
And then it's our turn to set up the instruments and get ready to rock on!

Mosh and Seikan set up the amps.

 

As well as Fauzan and Amzar..

Of course the drummer Acap too doing his work to make sure everything's fine for the performance.

Najmi and the rest working. Lol I'm running out of caption, but basically everyone is busy prepping and setting up their instruments. I like the view from down stage (2nd pic). As you can roughly see, everyone is gonna be standing side by side, the stage fits justttt nice with all 7 of us standing straight.

In case you are wondering what I'm doing during preparation, I have to say that I'm the most free one among all other members because I have nothing to set up lol. There isn't even space for me to walk around on stage, so I figure I'll be just a nuisance if I stand there blocking their path while they are busy working. So I just pose for the camera haha.

Those who finish setting up early poses as well.

 

Done as well!~

The first song is by Osiria Rose only, without me. Let the main band heat up the crowd! In this picture: Dante the emcee introducing the band and they are ready to blast their first song!

First song they did was 'No Scared'. Song with loads of screaming.

Fauzan was the back up vocalist~

And....after the first song it's my turn~ 

 

 

Set up; and stand firmly on a spot securely (you can see for yourself how much space I have lol).

Started my performance with 'wherever you are', a super romantic song so we did a light rock duet!

Initially I could sing this song full of emotion but the band just had to spoil it lol (but I did ok during the performance la). During the jam practice Amir accidentally sang the chorus as 'wherever you are, i'll always make you cry', and i spotted that. Since then everytime we play that song we have to control our laughters =_=. And I had to focus a lot while singing because I was so used to the joke I may make the same mistake as him haha.

 

For our 3rd song we did 'The Beginning' and the last was my favourite 'kanzen kankaku dreamer'. I'm letting the pictures to speak for themselves:

 

I have to say,the audience were great!!! They were so supportive, and it was probably one of the best crowd I've ever encountered. They screamed, sang along and cheered for us throughout our entire performance. The front row even headbang with us; made us feel really appreciated ^^ 

One last picture of the full Osiria Rose band and me~~

I don't know how well I did on that day because none of us could hear anything we sang/played (plus there's no video recorded because the one who recorded for us lost the file - don't ask me how it happened), most probably due to the stage size and sound engineering settings. But with the crowd enjoying and cheering so much for us I guess it doesn't matter anymore.

I'm really glad to have joined Osiria Rose for this performance and am grateful to them who accepted me as a featured vocalist and treated me so kindly. I do wish to be able to perform even more this year; solo, duet, with my band, or collaborating with other musicians. Nothing beats seeing the audience cheering and supporting your stage. 

 

Max satisfaction.

First time posting from phone

So yeah, I know being awake at this hour is nothing unusual for me; but recently I have more classes than ever until the end of my exams, and they are all packed with full day classes (more than 10 hours usually). This made me feel incredibly hard to cope with my biological clock and really started to realise I'm having a serious non travel 'jetlag'/sleeping issues, omg.

Usual once a week class is ok because I only need to deal with lack of sleep for a day instead of few consecutive days like now..So yeah here I am blogging with my Iphone Blogger app while trying to drain all my battery (hp batt + body energy) down so that I can go charge them real soon and start the dreadful day again.

**I don't know how the layout will turn out since it's my first time using the app; if there's anything weird I'll re-align them when I'm back to com.

The Face Shop T.O.P. Girl

 

So yeah, I've somehow joined this campaign, "The Face Shop Be The Lucky T.O.P. Girl" yesterday; just filling in some questions and upload a picture, process was really easy. All applicants will get a TOP girl kit, so it would be great for any girls to just go for it ^^. I don't think I could even be called up for audition (coz i'm not even close to pretty), but it would be sad to have really few votes (since I'm not bugging anyone to vote). I know this blog doesn't have much readers, but if you ever feel kind enough to vote for me, I'll be really happy~

 

Here are the steps:

1. Like the Page: https://www.facebook.com/thefaceshopmalaysia
2. Go to the App: https://apps.facebook.com/tfs_topgirl_mal/
3. Click the "Go Vote"
4. Find "Ng Swee Yin" and click "Like"

 

*you could go straight to step number 2 since you could like the page there as well*

 

As you can see, I kinda accidentally used my real name for registration lol. I thought the name has to be following IC but after seeing other contestant's name I really regret using it, since not much people uses or even know my name these days. But anyway, do vote for me and spread the word (if you are kind enough to help)~

 

Thanks a lot xoxo

 

 

Serdang Countdown 2013

31 December 2012

Around the beginning of December last year I received a call from my cousin who was the counsellor of MPSJ to do a band performance for their Serdang Countdown event at Seri Kembangan. After several discussions with our band members, we decided to go perform, but with a slight member change: Rhythm guitarist was Raee (Daniel's friend) and Drummer was Milo (borrowed from Dustin's band).

December was a really scary month for me last year, as half of the month I was occupied with my studies, and after that I went for a trip to Singapore, relatives came over to visit for Comic Fiesta and a 3 days continuous performance to end my year. Looking back it was seriously pretty hectic, I don't even know how the heck I survived. So back to the Countdown performance topic, our band was supposed to perform for a set of 45minutes. My cousin prefers a performance with mix of languages, so we decided to perform 2 english, 2 chinese, and 2 japanese songs for the countdown.

Event poster:

Preparation and Jamming

I couldn't recall how many times we jammed for this performance, maybe at most 3 times, since it's the CrestFall curse lol, we were always pretty rushed for almost everything. The final jamming was the night before the countdown event, which I have to go jamming right after my Christmas busking performance at sunway pyramid (see how messed up my schedule is--i'm copying what David always say haha).

As you can see from the pictures below, I was still wearing my performance outfit, the green mori-styled dress. For the final jamming, my sister decided to come along to listen (if i'm not wrong she joined us for two jamming sessions while we were preparing for the countdown event); and Acap came along to support too~ He went to Sunway to support me and Carlson's christmas busking during the day, and joined our jamming session at night. He even went to the Countdown event that day to support us, thanks soooo much! Carlson joined the jamming session helping us take pictures too~ It was the only session that has so many people joining, the merriest jamming ever.

 

Discussing some stuff..

Resting while discussing on our performance outfit

Group shot without flash

With flash

Performance day - Before performance

My mum and I went to the venue early in the morning to make sure we got the place right (plus testing out our new GPS). At that time the place was still really empty, and I thought it was just a really small event, nothing to worry about. But after reaching there, I knew I was kinda wrong. There was a huge crowd there, I couldn't even see the end of the crowd from the stage, haha. Apparently the whole street was closed for the event.

We all reached there rather early, but I somehow still felt really rushed. Probably due to the sound engineers being late, so we were unable to do our sound check on time. And when they did came, all other performers wanted to do sound check as well ==. Seriously can't believe that sound engineers could be late for their jobs; and not just that! Their knowledge with the props is seriously speechless--they plug on the cables wrongly ohmygod. And at first they don't even bother about us, trying to ignore us when we asked for help on the sound check. Many problems with the props for example there were no keyboard amps, the guitar amps did not have distortion, no monitors, many many more..i could use another blog post for that lol.

It was pretty much a huge challenge to perform on such a stage where everything is insufficient (even the cables were extremely short so my band members have to be stucked behind haha). I was kinda panic before performing arranging slots to do more sound checks because Daniel realised the problems on the cables, and also thinking how to drag our performance for at least 40 minutes hahaha.

The Crowd:

 

My parents were in this picture, my cousin too ^^.

View from the stage: you guys don't really get to see this view unless you are a performer lol. And I personally love seeing this from up the stage, sort of my drive to perform ^^

During Performance: 

To me, my time on stage always flies by so fast, this time was a little harder because I was seriously working hard on dragging our performance to fulfill the time slot given. The organisers wanted us to perform longer as they have not much performance left for the night, and they wanted the crowd to stay until 12am for the fireworks display. I asked help from the emcees, to chit chat with us during our performance break, and it kinda works lol.

 It's really hard to find picture that has all of our band members in it. I've been digging hard from my picture album and gotten a few to show ^^.

There's no me in this picture because I was standing further in front. The stage was really (really) huge BUT the cables were short ==. So you see our band lineup all behind hahaha. And Raee was covered by the smoke, can only see his leg.

One more thing about the performance is the smoke and spotlights. It's really cool since it was my first time performing which those effects and it looks kinda amazing haha, feels like a super star. I couldn't see the audience at all since the smokes were everywhere (but i heard comments from the audience and they said they could see us clearly haha), I guess it's good for people who wants to perform but has stage fright. The spotlights were really hot, but I'm kinda used to it because some other stage has it.

More pictures of us in action:

 This was when I was chatting with the emcees (to drag time). We talked many lame stuff, and I feel kinda stupid, but whatever works well works ^^. During the break Joee played To Zanarkand from FFX, and after that the emcee talking session for around 3-4 minutes.

 This was the guy who gave me that red flower lol. And I forgot the next line of lyrics hahahaha. but no one realise I guess so it's fine ^^

Song list:

1. Hirano Aya - God Knows : This was cool coz when we started off the audience faces was epic, all like "HUH?" hahaha. I purposely chose Japanese as the first song to give people a shock.)

2. Taylor Swift - Sparks Fly

3. Sun Yanzi - First Day

Break: To Zanarkand (Joee's Solo)

4. ZONE - Secret Base

5. Rainie Yang - Yu Ai

6. Aerosmith - I don't wanna miss a thing

Members:

 Lead Guitarist - Daniel

 Rhythm Guitarist - Raee

 Bassist - Dustin

 Keyboardist - Joee

 Drummer - Milo

 Members playing~

And lastly, me the Vocalist ^^

It was a really great experience for us, and I really hope we could get more chances to perform in future. Thanks for reading such a long post~ Just wanted to write down whatever I could remember for the event, so that I could look back in the future ^^

Here's the performance videos:



Sunway Christmas Busking for Charity 2012

29 and 30 December 2012

Around end of November last year, I somehow saw an email newsletter by Sunway Pyramid asking for Charity Buskers for Christmas, while so happen a friend of mine informed me about the same thing, and this is how I decided to just try applying to see if I got accepted to perform. To apply, we were supposed to send in a performance video related to christmas. I put "we" here because at that point of time I feel that a live acoustic performance would be better than a usual karaoke-backing solo performance, live performance is somehow warmer and has more christmas feel~ 

My first step(and problem) was to find a partner to either play the acoustic guitar or keyboard for me. It's definitely hard as most of my friends were busy towards the end of the year, or they have made plans etc etc. But! I was lucky enough to get an OK from Carlson and together we made a christmas video for event registration:

White Christmas - Soulful Version

White Christmas - Strumming Version

We did it this way: Carlson recorded some clips for his guitar parts, and I matched my voice recording to his guitar and finalized by adding my video clip beside his. I don't think I did a good job at the video because for some reason the video always got blurred after rendering, and this was my first time editing a video so I'm still pretty much blur about it. Carlson recorded two versions of White Christmas, and I ended up doing both because I couldn't decide which is better lol.

It took a week for Carlson for his videos to reach me, and plus another few more days for me to record vocals + video editing. We had to seriously rush for it because it was super near the video submission dateline, and we were busy with our own stuff (exams for me, I forgot what Carlson was busy with that time). After Sunway management saw our video they asked if we could perform for two days instead of one. And we agreed to just die die go for it, just for the sake of youth lol what a thing to say.

Our performance was set at 28 and 29 December 2012, 3.30-3.50pm and 4.00-4.20pm. We haven't got much time for practice because half of the December I was pretty occupied with my exams, and after that Carlson has camps to go, and many other activities as well. Our first meetup/practice was at MidValley, we found a nice cafe that was quiet and open air so we could strum and sing as we like haha. We didn't get to do much that day other than to go through what has to be done and decide on song choice for the event.

Our 2nd practice (which was our final practice =_=) was at Taylor's Lakeside, where we went into an empty classroom to practice. Practice that day was relatively progressing well, but there's still many hickups and stops along the way. Days before the performance we tried practicing through Skype, which I think was epic failure because we cannot play and sing at the same time lol. Meaning when I start singing the guitar sound won't be able to transmit to me, and when he start playing he can't hear me sing haha. Kind of a disaster. But we did discussed what to wear through skype, thinking of what accessories to add to have that christmassy feel.

On the performance day itself, we went Daiso to prep up ourselves, including buying a toy bell lol, safety pins and I can't remember what more. And after lunch we went to find a place for our final preparation.

Carlson took this picture while we were practicing lol

Here are some pictures during our performance:

Day 1: Main Concourse

Day 1 Ground Floor Water Feature Area

Donation box ^^

Day 2 Ground Floor Water Feature Area

We really loved the stage decorations at the Main Concourse, it was definitely one of the most beautiful stage I've performed on. The theme last December was Spanish Antoni Gaudi ceramic mosaics, I felt particularly amazed as I just went Spain for a holiday last July and saw many of Gaudi's work. The people working back stage were really friendly, they helped us a lot with the preparation and set ups, so that we wouldn't have to worry about any of those stuffs.

Overall I think we did an average job, mainly due to the serious lack of meetups, and of course, Carlson's busy schedule. Lots of funny and panic moments when we were on stage but we managed to survive at least lol. It was our first time pairing with each other, and yes I did enjoyed his company. Nevertheless we did have loads of fun performing, and it was kinda touching seeing people gave donations during our performance, we felt like we were contributing something to the society ^^. And of course some of our friends(and my family) who came over to support us for both the days, thank you very much as well.

Fashion wise; For day 1 I decided to be seriously on Christmas mode, so I wore a bright red knitted top, paired with full lace shorts + black leggings, while day 2 I wore something very mori-styled, a new layered green dress my mum bought for me on my birthday ^^. Carlson wore different for both days, but I guess there isn't much difference to be seen from the pictures lol, thats how guys usually wear ==. But he did put on a cute santa pin I bought from a christmas fair, and he is still keeping it now haha.

Our commemorative picture at the end of our performance:

I'll end the post with some videos taken for the two days, do enjoy~