Karaoke Time!

This afternoon I caught the train with Andrew into the city to join a few others for some karaoke! It's been a while since I last caught a train and probably one of the first times I've used the new AT Hop Card!

The platform was actually a bit busy because school had finished, but fortunately there were seats for Andrew and me!

We got to the karaoke bar early and so we went in and got started before Tsun Hei and Stephanie arrived, and later Laura and John.

We all took turns singing songs. Most of them were Chinese songs.

There were actually some nice Chinese songs! I had to Sound Hound them so I could try find them when I got home.

I did try sing some Chinese songs, but I had to search up the pinyin for them!

John and I were the only two who couldn't read the Chinese, so we managed to get a few English songs in there too!

Pentatonix Power!

I have to admit to a new addiction in the past few days..Pentatonix! With all my free time I've been watching YouTube videos, and I've been hooked on their videos!

For those who haven't heard of them before, they are a 5-person acapella group, who originally entered an American TV competition called The Sing-Off and they won.

This is one of my favourite performances..

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_YcIaWirew)

They have even done a cover of Royals by our local heroine, Lorde!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9XQ2MdNgKY)

The guys who do the low parts and the percussion are amazing! Now I'm really starting to sound like a fan boy! I definitely wouldn't complain if they decided to pay New Zealand a visit though.

The Birth of our Worship Band

This morning our church held its first English service after break of just over a month due to the church's Mission month.

What was going to make this English service slightly more special was the fact that our 'worship band' would be doing worship for the first time! Usually our set up for worship is just the worship leader, two back-up singers and a pianist/keyboardist. Our group today consisted of me as the leader (and also playing the cajon - a drum that looks like a wooden box!), a back-up singer and two other singers on instruments, two keyboardists, a guitarist and a bass guitarist. We decided to use the first two English services to try out a few new arrangements and just see what we're capable of. I was to lead the first week, then Angie would lead next week.

The songs I picked to lead this time around were:

Blessed - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y383zE_8kYo)

Desert Song - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOgyohx_y4)

Unending Love - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDIuFrdKiXg)

How Great is our God - Chris Tomlin

 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXweftb7UU)

To Be Like You - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zneDiI1-09o)

I've been struggling a little in the past couple weeks with a bit of a cold and a cough, thanks to overnighters trying to finish assignments, and I thought it was coming right just in time yesterday when I was just able to sing that last song To Be Like You, which goes up really high! However, I woke up this morning with the cough back again and my throat not feeling the greatest! I was quite anxious about it! 

We had a bigger congregation than usual this morning. I noticed quite a few people from the Mandarin fellowship at our service, which must have been the first time for them! I was talking to one of them the day before at our rehearsal, light-heartedly saying they should come along and bring everyone from their fellowship. I didn't think it'd actually happen! There were also a few new people too which was quite cool!

10am was soon approaching, and we were frantically getting Aonghas and the others to play a little background music as everyone waited. There was a bit of an awkward silence till that happened!

Once it hit 10am though, it was time to go! I started off with a prayer, reading something I had prepared earlier on my tablet. As soon as I finished, the band came in, and as they were playing the intro, I was meant to say to everyone

"OK everyone let's all get on our feet, raise our hands, raise our voices and praise the Lord Almighty!"

Instead, what came out was 

"OK everyone let's all get on our feet and raise our feet..."

That's when I quickly went into damage control mode to correct that just in time before the end of the intro and the beginning of the verse! At the same time my pdf file with the lyrics was on the wrong song and so on top of correcting myself, I was trying to swipe back to the correct song in my pdf file!

The rest of worship went a bit more smoothly. 

During the sermon I was still worrying about the response song, which was To Be Like You (the one with the really high notes!). I was tossing up over whether to sing down low or just sing as is. In the end I sang as is and managed to get through it!

PHEW!

We made it through! Hopefully we can do this a bit more regularly! We've got next week to prepare for now though!

Lorde Live

Tonight I went with Hamish to the free Lorde concert at Vector Arena. I managed to get free tickets for two people a week ago when I signed up to that new iHeartRadio thing (this whole free concert is their promotion after all!), but I forgot to get Hamish and Aonghas to sign up. I was going to ask a friend if they could take one of my brothers and we could all go together, but unfortunately they missed out on tickets, so I was left with a dilemma - just forget about the concert or go with one brother. Aonghas said he didn't mind missing it though, so I ended up taking Hamish.

We arrived half an hour before the doors were set to open. Aonghas initially was wondering where everyone was, as there were hardly anyone outside the arena. It was only when Hamish and I got a little closer there that we realised the queue stretched right down the road, around a corner, all the way to the next corner where we lined up! The weather wasn't the greatest either, so it was going to be a long wait! We were surrounded by these high school girls all talking about high school things like school balls, boys, etc.

Once the line started moving though, it kept on moving, and soon enough we were inside!

We were tossing up between going down onto the floor and standing, or just sitting on the seats. In the end, we decided that since Lorde doesn't really sing the kind of music you can dance to, we'd just sit on the seats, and we managed to find the seats right at the back of the arena, giving us a straight-on view of the stage.

Lorde wasn't due to come on till 9.30ish, so we had another two hours. There were a few radio personalities who came onto stage to talk, and then DJ General Lee played some music which was pretty cool.

Finally the warm-up act, Mt Eden came on stage. They're a dub-step group, and I have to admit when I saw Mt Eden on the tickets, it got me confused. I was thinking...I'm pretty sure Vector Arena isn't in Mt Eden?!


Anyway, they had a string quartet on stage, and had some pretty cool beats!

They went on for an hour, and I did feel like grooving a bit in the seats at the back.

It was a short while before it was Lorde's time. A light shone behind a white screen, and you could see Lorde's silhouette, before the screen was lifted, revealing the star of the show. I didn't really know her first song, but it did sound like most of the other songs she sung...which I had never heard of!

At that point I didn't actually regret sitting in the seats, as her music really wasn't the sort of music I'd feel like dancing to, or getting into! I only really knew two of her songs - Tennis Court and Royals. Once she had sung those two songs, I was hoping there would be some upbeat song.

The show was eventually over and we made our way out. We bumped into Grace who was with some other friends.

We were going to wait in the foyer for our parents to arrive but the security guards kicked us all out. We were standing outside the arena, surrounded by all these people with lanyards (I'm assuming they were guests of the sponsor), all smoking. There was even a well-known person from TV who was smoking. Nothing against the person, just disappointed in the smoking!

Overall I guess it was a good concert experience, but maybe it just reconfirmed that Lorde isn't really my type of muisc! I hope she continue to do well though and become big!

What Late Nights do to You

We had another rehearsal for our worship band today, and I was struggling to sing properly! I swear I'm coming down with a cold! I just kept coughing and couldn't even reach the high notes!

I think I must've caught the cold over the past two days, having slept at 4am in the morning trying to finish my assignments. It's been pretty cold recently and by the time I had finished my assignment on Friday morning, my fingers were freezing!

Hopefully I get better by next weekend though, as I will be leading worship!

Preparing for the Big One

That big weekend for Christians is coming up...Easter! It'll be extra special for us Anderson brothers, as we will finally be getting baptised! It certainly has been a long time coming!

It'll start off tomorrow morning with a Good Friday service. Our choir will be performing this pretty long song, called No Greater Love. It's over 50 pages long, and we're singing the abridged version! I think it describes Jesus's life and death? It's all in Chinese so I'm not quite too sure! I should probably study its meaning before we perform it tomorrow!

I joined the choir a few weeks ago, and have to admit I've only been able to attend a few rehearsals prior to tonight because of other events popping up, so I've had to get help writing down the pinyin under the characters to help me sing them. Thanks Jenny's dad and Rebeca's dad! (As you can tell, I sit at the back with the dads) I'm fine with singing in tune, it's just being able to pronounce the Chinese properly!

Tonight we had our final rehearsal. I think we only managed to go through the whole song once in the time we rehearsed! It sounds really good though, so hopefully all goes well tomorrow!

I Need Tougher Fingers! 00000iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiz

Tonight our OFB (Oddfellows band) had a little rehearsal at church after work to prepare for this Friday's Good Friday combined fellowship. Joylynn is leading, and so we thought we'd back her up.

I'm going to attempt bass guitar again, despite still not having my own! After a night of playing though, I had blisters on four of my fingers and one of my thumbs! I must've have really soft fingers! Apparently the more you play, the more calloused and rough your fingers get! I don't think I want rough fingers! I might just have to try find gloves or plaster my fingers up to protect them!

Hopefully the blisters will go down by Friday at least!

My Students Surprise me Again

This morning was the end of year concert at the music school. It started at 9.30 in morning, so I asked my students to be there about 15 minutes before, but when I got there around that time, they were already there!

Recorders were to perform second after the first group of flutes, so I gathered all my students together in one of the classrooms and tried to go through all their songs before we were to go up on stage. I have to admit, I was quite surprised at how well some of the students were playing! I have to admit I was a little nervous over the week thinking about how well they'd do.

After a bit of a pep talk, it was finally time for the kids to head to the hall to perform! I lead them to the seats on the side of the stage, and got each group to come up and perform one after the other. Some groups had a student who wanted to introduce the group themselves, while I had to do it for a few of the classes.

There were no major catastrophes. There were a few little mistakes, but I'm sure the cuteness factor covered it! I pretty much teach the youngest students at the music school, all the little kids who have never played music before! I was extremely proud of the way my students played, the way they were able to count themselves in, and keep going even if they stuffed up...a little!

I led them all back to the classroom to give them reports and a little prize afterwards. I gave them each a lollipop, a pencil, a little packet of Oreo's and a little notebook. I think I spoiled them!

I returned to watch the rest of the performances. I just missed Rebecca, Nadine and Joylynn (who attend my church) perform flute, but I guess I can re-watch the video! Before I knew it, the violins were up! My brothers and I were the last violin group to perform. We had Arthur (another violin teacher who often comes to help out) helping us which was good.

The guitar students were the last to perform before prize-giving. It's always a joy to see some of my old students performing, even if it's another instrument they're playing! I just hope the time I spent teaching them helped contribute to where they are today!

A few of my students actually won awards for other instruments too! My top music theory student, who won the top recorder award last year won the top flute award this year only after playing for one year!

I guess one of the benefits of being a music teacher are the presents you get from students (just a side thing of course!).

After the concert, my brothers and I met up with the music teachers at a nearby cafe for a coffee and a bite to eat. It was really good having a chat to them, as my teaching timetable this year didn't allow me to schedule a morning tea at the same time as all the other teachers! It was quite interesting talking to them about teaching, students and all sorts of other things!

Oh well, that's my seventh year of teaching down. Looking forward to the next!

It's all Western!

Tonight was Rangeview Intermediate School's (my old intermediate school!) Music Evening, with the theme being Western music. Glenna, one of the girls I teach violin to at church attends the school and is in the orchestra. She was really keen on me coming, so it was lucky I sat my exam and returned to Auckland just in time for it!

When I got home from work I got a surprise when my neighbour's mum rang me, asking if I was going and if I'd like a ride there! One of the boys she looks after attends the school and she was taking him there. Apparently he told her that I was going! Glenna must've told him!

Anyway we got there about half an hour early, and the hall was already full! The girl's family (her dad is also our youth group leader and youth pastor at our church!) were all there too!

They forgot to bring their camera, and I couldn't find our camera, so I had to rely on my phone camera which wasn't the best in low light!

The music evening was pretty good, and brought back memories of when I used to be at the school!

There were quite a few performances, with the choir singing, recorder, guitar and keyboard ensembles performing, and of course the orchestra performing.

The head boy and head girl were the MC's of the evening, and were dressed in cowboy/girl costumes, and they came complete with the whole Western accent!

The head boy also turned out to be quite a musician, playing a couple solos and duets on the trumpet!

After the show, I went back to the music room to visit Miss Rai, my old music teacher at Rangeview Intermediate. Fortunately she still remembers me! She still has the newspaper articles and photos of me up on the wall!

I was really proud of Glenna tonight and I'm keen to see her and her brother perform more often! They're going to be great musicians!

Banding Together

Aonghas and I have just come back from Grace's house where we got together with her brother Sam and also Jenny to have a go at playing some music. We're having a go at doing something different for our youth group. I don't want to say too much just yet just in case it falls through, but hopefully it works out and could be the start of something cool!

Grace's mum was kind enough to make us some fries half-way through too! (This will be the only photo I'll show!)

The Final Lesson

This weekend marked the last music lessons I had to teach for the year.

Yesterday after having spent all night awake at my youth group's sleepover to farewell Jireh, I was quite worn out when I had to go straight to the music school to teach the kids.

I spent most of the classes playing games with my students - Music Bingo! I tried to get my students to come up with a more interesting word than 'Bingo' to call out. One student came up with

'Mexico New Zealand All Blacks Binga Bingo!'

so that's what they shouted out when they thought they had won!

I did start to doze off in my last couple of classes, especially when I sat down to teach in one of my classes. We were playing Bingo, and I was calling out numbers when I started to drift a little, and said something like

'Fifteen.....to the waterfront....'


I think I realised what I had said after I snapped out of it and just hoped the students didn't notice!

It was a tad sad teaching the students this time around, as I knew that quite a few of my students won't be back next year. Most of my students were second year students and so I've taught them since they first started music. I've become quite proud of them, and it's such a shame to lose them so early! I know they won't be lost entirely, as they are all going on to learn other instruments such as the violin, flute and guitar and I've reminded them all to remember me when they become professional musicians, and to come say 'hi' to me whenever they're around, as I definitely won't forget them!

One message I left with them was that

'Perfect practice makes perfect'


no matter which musical instrument they learn. There's no point practising the wrong thing!

Two sisters I teach who are moving on to another instrument next year gave me a Christmas card and a present which was really nice of them! I haven't opened one of the presents yet, but they also gave me a snow globe, which is pretty cool!

The message they wrote on the card also meant a lot to me as well.

It was also the last lesson I was teaching at church today, and two of my students (brother and sister) gave me a present and card as well. I'll open the present on Christmas Day just so I'll have something to surprise me, but the card they gave me had quite a few amusing messages:

 

and my favourite...

Ready, Set, Go!

It's the second-to-last music lesson for 2011, and it was probably one of the breeziest days I've had in terms of teaching. I made my Grade Two music theory students to sit a 'mock' exam, using one of the past exam papers.

I only had to teach one class in the morning before the exam and so I just gave them Christmas carols. All the kids seemed to have learnt some other lyrics to Jingle Bells! It was about Santa Claus being too fat, and that I'm glad I'm not a reindeer who has to pull his sleigh!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF2fBLWAyrU)

I got Aonghas to direct my music theory students to another room and I joined them just before the exam started. I have to say it felt quite cool to be in a position of power, on the other side for once! I gave them a run down of the exam rules, and Aonghas wrote down times on the blackboard so he could cross off over time.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbgQlkrdZUY)

I went off to teach one of my music theory students who wasn't sitting the exam, and as I was teaching, apparently the students who sat the exam finished it in about 45 minutes, when there was one and a half hours allocated!

I'll have to start marking the papers, so I hope to see some good results, especially as the pass mark is 66!

The Big Exam

The early End-of-Year Concert at the music school I teach may be over, but for my second year music theory students, they have an exam to study for in a week's time!

None of them wanted to sit the actual ABRSM exam, so I decided I'd hold a 'mock' exam and get them to sit it under test conditions just to simulate an actual exam...and also partially for my own enjoyment! I'm just kidding.

Anyway I'm a little afraid as to how well they'll do. I've given them past papers to complete at home over the past few weeks, but only a couple of them have remembered to bring them to class for me to mark!

The last few weeks have been a bit of a rush, so despite having covered the whole syllabus, revision hasn't been ideal and I don't think the students have memorised the performance directions/symbols and Italian words completely!

I guess we'll have to see this Saturday! I've told them that the exam is one and a half hours long but they have to stay for at least 45 minutes, and use as much time to check, check, check and RE-CHECK!

So It Wasn't Broken Afterall..

This weekend has been tough on me - my phone died on Sunday and I've been using Grace's old phone. Today though I put my foot down and decided that enough's enough! It's time to end this misery and buy a new phone!

It almost didn't happen yesterday though as I tried ringing the shop in the morning and only got the voicemail message. I was thinking that maybe the shop was closed due to Labour Day.

Later on in the day I decided to try again, and was surprised to have my call answered! They said they would be closing in half an hour. I grabbed Aonghas, jumped in the car and took off!

We only just got to the shop in North Shore just as it was about to close. You can now say hello to Samsung Galaxy S2!

Along the way home we stopped off at a KBB Music Store so that Aonghas could check out the electronic drums that were on sale, then badum before you know it, we were directed to their Henderson Rock Shop and ended up buying an electronic drum set!

We came home not knowing how to break the news to our parents that we had just bought a drum set. We didn't even know where we were going to put it yet either! We thought maybe we'd put it in our bedroom, so we told our parents when we got home that we were going to clean up our bedroom! They thought it was a little fishy that suddenly we were keen to tidy up the house.

You end up realising you can't hide anything from your parents, so by the end of the day we manned up and told our parents about the drum set!

Today I ended up passing on my old HTC Desire to Aonghas and told him that he could have it if he could get it to work, and he could then pass on his HTC Legend to Hamish so Hamish could finally jump on the Android bandwagon.

It turns out all Aonghas had to do was wipe the data (or something like that) and my (old) phone was working again! He rooted it like a true engineering student does and it's working and doing a lot more than I ever managed to make it do!

An Early End of Year Concert

Today was the big End of Year Concert at the music school I teach at. It's not really the end of the year as there is still Term Four to go, but because of renovations to the school hall and the November elections, it was decided to bring it forward to the end of Term Three.

I've been preparing my students for the past three weeks, trying to get them ready and so I was probably more nervous than they were before the concert! 

I asked them all to get to the school half an hour before the concert as I wanted to have a run through with them. The recorders would be the first to perform, then the flutes and then the violins. 

I got half of them to practise with Aonghas on the keyboard while I practised with the other half of them just to save time. 

We only just had enough time to have a group photo before the concert started!

My first year students started off the concert, performing Easter Bunny, Playing in Parts and Two Birds Together. I was a little worried about them as one of them went camping and so missed last week's lesson. The most pleasant surprise was that they played very well!

My first second year class then performed Puff the Magic Dragon, Triplet Round and Little Brown Jug with Aonghas on keyboard. They also did very well which made me very proud, as they must've practised heaps over the past week!

My next second year class performed Donna Nobis Pacem, I Like the Flowers and When Johnny Comes Marching Home with Aonghas on keyboard.

My last second year class (who I've taught the treble recorder to) performed Scarborough Fair, Putta Nera Ballo Furlano and The World in Union (to get in the Rugby World Cup spirit!). The tunes involving all four of the different recorders sounded really neat!

To finish off the recorder section of the concert, I got all my students to come up to perform It's a Small World. Even though I had practised the song with everyone only once earlier this morning before the concert, they managed to pull it off! I was so proud of my students!

After the recorders were done, the flute students performed. Rebecca, Joylynn and Nadine who go to the same church as me all performed, and I also saw some of my ex-students which was really cool!

The violins finished off the concert. Nadine also learns violin so she performed with her class, and our class performed last.

It was really good to see all the students performing today and I was so proud of my recorder students! I had a lot of positive comments from parents and other teachers so I can relax a bit now, and just hope I don't lose too many students to other instruments next year!

Thoroughly Modern Millie

Tonight we went to St Dominics College to watch their school production 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' as one of our favourite friends Grace was guest starring on the keyboard and percussion! OK so she wasn't on stage but that was OK, we just wanted to support her!

It was the first time I've ever been to the school so it was interesting to see what it was like! I was afraid we wouldn't get there on time as I finished work at 6pm and it started an hour later, but fortunately the motorway wasn't that clogged and we got home in under half an hour!

We managed to get a good seat near the front where we could get a clear view of the stage and also Grace.

The story goes...

"It's a comedic romp through the roaring 1920s in New York, where Millie and her flapper friends hang out in the Priscilla Hotel (a boarding house for young ladies) and unbeknownst to them, are in frequent danger of being sold into white slavery in Hong Kong by their house mother Mrs Meers! "

Because the school is all girls, the guys were played by girls as well. I have to say the girls played the guy parts very convincingly! At times I forgot they were actually girls!

Grace's friend Sophie was in the play, playing one of two Asian henchmen. They were pretty funny, speaking in Cantonese with English subtitles on the projector screen (although I'm sure I heard a little bit of Mandarin along the way!).

The singing was also quite good too! They sounded professional at such a young age!

 I'd have to say my favourite scene though was the elevator scene, when the two women jumped into the lift and two people standing on either side of the lift held signs saying

"First Floor", then
"Second Floor", then
"Third Floor" etc

as cheesy music played. It was pretty funny!

Another was the Speak Easy Dancers who did this really funny dance!

Oh and finally, I have to say the music was well done!

Overall I enjoyed the production. Well done to everyone who put it together!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2J_4XumQdA)

Singing Birthday

 It was Shrikkanth's birthday today and he was having a 22nd birthday party to make up for not having a 21st birthday party last year. By golly he's young! Most of us have already turned 22 and he's only turning 22 now!

Anyway, I had to teach music in the morning so I couldn't make it till the afternoon. When I got there, his friends were all in the lounge playing Singstar. It's been a long time since I last went to his house. I think the last time was way back in year nine in 2002, when a group of us had to create a short film about something to do with Ancient China. I wish we still had a copy of that!

While I recognised a few people's faces, I only really knew Grainam (intermediate school friend) and Sarena (intermediate-high school friend). Apparently the other high school friends had been and gone already!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoQMiXLWqp0)

There was still some food left so I had a bit to eat while catching up with Grainam and watching the singing going on.

As it got later, people started to leave until there were just a few of us left. We went into Shrikkanth's room to watch a few funny Youtube videos before it was time for me to go too.

Happy Birthday Shrikkanth!