New scores update...

I heard's Tokyo Guitar Quartet's rendition of Francis Kleyjans' "Los Cuatro Elementos" (which means "The 4 Elements"), and was instantly attracted by the interesting melodies and intricate runs.

After sourcing around for the score (which apparently has been out of print at many online stores all over the world), I finally managed to get it!

A quick look at the scores showed it to be tougher than I'd first imagine. It shall be kept as consideration for Guitaresque's future performances.

New Scores update...

Some time ago, I bought 3 books containing scores arranged by the Tokyo Guitar Quartet, as well as 2 of their CD recordings.

Perhaps not many people in Singapore would have heard of this quartet, since we have a rather limited choice of CDs available here (even LAGQ CDs can be difficult to find at times...sigh).
But having listened to their recordings - which subsequently prompted me to purchase their scores - I have to say, they are really very good!

My personal favourites include their arrangement of Funiculi Funicula (haha.. Liang Shan absolutely hates this one, since he has an extreme finger/chords etude to do throughout the song), as well as the beautiful Moon River, which was the theme song from the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

Currently, Guitaresque is working on a couple of pieces (including the 2 above-mentioned) as part of our repertoire for the Library performance and later the recital at Singapore Art Museum.

The way we were

Just a little history about Guitaresque...
It's probably not of interest to anyone else except ourselves, as a way to keep track of how we became what we are now - which was part of the reason why I wanted to have this blog set up.

I have spent nearly one and half decade at GENUS (NUS Guitar Ensemble), having joined the group in 1994 as a freshman in the University. Joining a demanding course of study like Chemical Engineering (which was a mistake!??! but that's another story...), I found it essential to liven up my varsity life. Thus began my life as a guitar orchestra player in GENUS.

Throughout the years, members joined the group and leave (mostly when they graduate). Many good guitarists have passed through our doors throughout the years I've been in GENUS. For some, their guitar journey continues even after they leave GENUS. These are usually people who are into solo guitar playing. Many are still wonderful guitarists whom I am proud to have played alongside with in GENUS.
For others, unfortunately, their passion for the instrument (and some for music itself) diminished over the years, and eventually the guitar became a white elephant in the house, or something which they pass on to their younger siblings or nieces/nephews.

In 1999, I managed to find 3 like-minded players - Balraj (aka Raj), Kar Mun and Ivan, who like me, liked the idea of forming a more "permanent" guitar quartet so that we could continue to jam pieces and to play as a group, even after we have graduated from NUS and move on with our lives. We called ourselves the "Genres Guitar Quartet".
This particular set up lasted merely 2 months, as Raj realised he could not afford the time for our weekly practice sessions.

That's when Karen Ann was recruited as a more-than-able replacement. She was an excellent solo guitar player, even at the time, and she quickly assimilated into the group - becoming our 开心果with her brand of quirky and witty humour. We had a "rebranding" meeting, during which we came up with the name "Guitaresque".

This time, we lasted for slightly more than a year. In 2000 (year end), Kar Mun had a change of heart (actually, it was more or less a group decision, since he obviously had lost interest in our practices) and left the group. Again, we were 3.

In came Liang Shan, who was then still a relatively new member in GENUS. Still, we kinda felt that he had the "right attributes" to fit into our quartet. ( he was quite crazy... about music, about guitar, basically he was just a crazy and fun guy! I mean, just look at his dressing and and his hairdo these days, and you'd agree. hahaha )

We had a couple of years of good fun making music and entering competitions. In fact, we took the 2nd prize in the Yamaha Guitar Festival in 2001, for the ensemble section, narrowing losing to another group of GENUS participants (I remember it was a 10-man strong Niibori team consisting of Michelle, ATKS and gang). We came back in 2004 and took the 1st prize, playing the fast and exciting piece by Patrick Roux- Carnival!

In 2005, Karen left the group and went travelling round the world with her fiance, and we were left again with 3 remaining members: Ivan, Liang Shan and myself.

Fortunately, we found Alex (who had been a member of the earlier defunct group "The Canoners"), and Guitaresque was back in business once more.

The quartet has become more active in performing in public arenas in the last 2 years, and we have put up a series of performances at the Library@Esplanade and the Singapore Art Museum in 2006 and 2007. The experience have been so wonderful, that we decided to repeat the acts again at these 2 locations. So later this year (in September and November respectively), we shall be performing once again at the library, where we can have a close and cozy environment to interact with our audience; and then at the SAM, which features excellent accoustics for the classical guitar sounds.

Going forward, I am looking into new and exciting places for us to perform in, and the Esplanade performance halls (be it the concert hall, or maybe more likely the Recital studio) would seem a good target for us to aim for in the future.

Liang Shan's 7 string guitar wishlist

Courtesy of OG (good one bro! haha..)

For body, pls use top-of-the-grade Brazilian rosewood for sides and back. If possible, look into Church-door design for back. Also spruce for top (as indicated by DIVO), however, use high quality ones like in close-grinded, prefably have some bear claws would be nice.

As usual, ebony for finger board but use titanium metal for fretting coz it might hurt DIVO fingers and the insurance will cry. Look at installing RODGERs' tuners (with snake-wood), no imitation thank you. Body length of 650 mm would be ok.

Having a 20th fret is forthgone conclusion. Else why he buys a 7-string other than to play and sound like an orchestra? Also, ask Yudi to construct raised finger-board to facilitate the runs at the 15th to 20th frets.

Lacquer-finish is acceptable.

He is still considering adding an arm-guard at side (ala arm-rest). Ask Yudi to throw in guitar-support wrapped in premium leather as DIVO hates the sit the classical way. Also, throw in life-time free-delivery of 7strings to DIVO residence would be critical in making DIVO commit.

5k is for planning purpose, other cost just add in accordingly. ^^

And for heaven-sake, make the guitar weigh like a M-16 at least.

Archive - Engraving the World (performing at the art gallery)

Guitaresque performed at the Singapore Art Museum on 21st July 2007, as part of the "Engraving the World" event held there.
We gave 2 half-hour shows in the afternoon (I think it was at 345pm and 445pm respectively), each with different sets of repertoire (this will be updated later - Liang Shan being our group's "score keeper" )
Anyway, it was a wonderful experience playing in a cosy environment, with the audience seated (on the floor) barely an arm's length away from us. =)
Here are some of the photos we took on that day:

Archive - Open Mic performance at Library@Esplande (Sept 2006)

(taken from an old blog entry dated 17th Sept 2006 - Good fun and great nerves)

I have to say it was predictable. And to be honest, rather expected really.
And i'm not talking about the mood and atmosphere we were greeted with at the library@Esplanade yesterday.

16th September 2006 was the first time Guitaresque had an hour long performance indoors, all by ourselves (not as part of Genus or with other small groups) - playing to an actual 'listening audience'. That means, we were not playing to some big shots in a dinner setting, where we could basically just smoke out and keep repeating repertoire without anyone noticing (ala Pine Tree club charity dinner); or in an open stage in a garden where the sound probably sounded crap regardless of what we played (ala Chinese garden performance).

This was really a good experience. Nice, appreciative audience. Rather cosy and warm ambience lightings, and at least decent sound (it wasn't as good as playing in my home studio of course! ). Many of our friends came to listen to us and to lend their support. The usual Genus alumni gang were there - Mich, Wai, Sherrie, Mel, HF, JQ, JH, Moh. Some of the SMU Guitarissimo members popped by too. I also had 'past' and 'present' colleagues coming to "support" me - really appreciate the gesture - Lina & Sandra! :)

But what was really predictable and expected was the fact that some of us 'froze up' during the performance. I think it is precisely the fact that we knew that we were being watched and listened to by an attentive audience, coupled with a video camera pointing at us at the same time, that created the nerves and anxiety.

Haha.. i cant recall ever hearing Owls play the Habanera melody line wrongly in ALL our practices. But it happened.

Barber couldnt get his fingers to listen to him as he attempted those darn Aragonaise scales. He even ended Canon 2 bars before we did - causing alarming and disbelief stares from Owls and myself. ( i was too stunned to realise what OG was doing )

The Telemann concerto sounded like we were sight-reading it for the first time. I think the passing of melodies were completely missing as fingers were slow to react to the panicked mind.

I messed up several arppeggios (those darn pizz!) in Canon too. Not to mention the usual nerves when playing the art. harmonics in 老情歌.

But OG kept the best for last. (wahahah!) The 'ad-lib' display in our encore showed that he was back at his best. I could barely contain my mirth as we completed the supposedly romantic Entrac'te.

As the leader of the group, i feel that we may have to challenge ourselves a little differently going forward. While we are certainly progressing in terms of our technical abilities and being able to tackle more challenging repertoire (e.g. A Furiosa, Libertango); there remains this aspect of us not being able to rise to the occasion when we are in front of an audience.

As a group, our 默契 is certainly fantastic. We know one another well, and our weekly practices give us gives us time to gel and to develop our group dynamics.

Individually, as players, we need to develop our self-confidence too. Whether playing guitar to or addressing an audience is actually a test of our own self-confidence and esteem. I certainly still feel some nerves when doing so, but it really helps me to think "the fact that i'm here performing/speaking to you (ie. audience) means that i am probably the subject matter expert in this particular topic. So even if i fumble along the way, as long as i show the kind of confidence that experts normally do, then you wouldn't even know i'm "smoking" you."

* ironically, it's this kind of thinking that helped me 'survive' at my workplace too. Given the kind of people i sometimes have to deal with (e.g. bankers and traders), you have to demonstrate confidence in your product knowledge (no matter how cock-up the product sometimes can be), else you risk losing all credibility.

I think some members of Guitaresque need a little more of this confidence-training/booster than others. But all of us will benefit if we do not keep to our own comfort zone, playing good music behind closed doors, in a comfy studio which seduces us into thinking we are better players than we really are.

More performances for us, definitely. And Genus seems a good place to start. :)

Archive - An Evening of Classical Guitar Music performance at SAM

(taken from old blog entry dated 1st April 2007)

It was an evening I will remember for a long time. Great ambience, superb sound, an appreciative audience, and we played our hearts out.

First, the venue. I believe we hit the jackpot this time, when I decided to write in for a venue sponsorship from the Singapore Art Museum. They promptly replied and we got a performance slot on 31st March 2007. Initially, my idea was to play in the Glass Hall, which I had previously attended a concert in, and it looked pretty cool. But as luck would have it, the Glass Hall was already booked by another group that night, and SAM offered us the Auditorium instead. And what a nice place that turned out to be, especially for a delicate sounding instrument like the classical guitar. It wasn't too large, but just enough to seat 150 people or so. Here's how the place looked it (picture taken during our sound test earlier on the day of performance):

Lots of friends and well wishers came to lend us support, including our dear mentor - Maestro Alex Abisheganaden, who had nothing but kinds words for us after the performance. He liked the more spanish sound pieces in the repertoire, which included Sevilla and Fandango, but less of the contemporary ones like Harumi suite and (a little surprisingly) Carnaval.Ivan's guitar teacher, Ernest Kwok (arguably one the best local classical guitarist of our times) also came by to listen to our performance. He too was very appreciative and even suggested we play for a Yamaha event, featuring 4 silent guitars (plugged in)! haha.. that would be interesting :P

Some of my colleagues - Sandra and Thomas (my usual supporters! yay!) came, as well as Wilson, who commented, "whoa! i didnt know classical guitar could be played in so many ways!" Ex-colleagues Lina and Ken also came to lend their support and reminded me at the end of the recital to call them for future performances.

My old buddies wolf, tpk, pete and Tian How also came, some with their spouses and even kids. I didnt really get to talk to them much (i was busy 'entertaining' some of my other more inquisitive guests.haha), but i hoped they have had a great evening.

As for our repertoire, i felt we started off a little shaky (what's new.. cold fingers, anxiety..etc) with Sevilla, but by Cavatina we were moving along pretty ok.

Telemann's Concerto in D was pretty standard, some missing runs here and there, but generally I felt we fared much better than we did in the Open Mic event @ Esplanade Library just a couple of months back.

Baia was smooth and the tempo was great (for once!), and once we went into the tune, we never looked back, and song moved into good "cruise-control" mode. Chinese oldies medley was as usual, one of the audience's favourite, its catchy and familiar tunes, with some techniques (pizz, artificial harmonics, etc.) thrown in. Alex told me later that his 2 RP students who were there, actually asked him for the scores! :)

Harumi was, well... very Andrew York. ie. very modern and "mood" music. Not surprisingly, Along the Edge managed to put some ppl almost into sleep mode - not that we played badly though. I thought our rendition of Blue Ocean Echo/Country Gentleman came through quite well last night. (I'll have to watch the video to hear how we sounded though)

Lastly, our 2 fast-n-furious finale was the highlight of the night! I thought we played Fandango very, very well - not too much bones to pick on that one. And Carnaval's signature whistle-start and the all-time-fav "OOmmpH!" brought the concert to a nice high and close.

*phew*

One more performance in our pockets, and this time, we gained some valuable experience playing to a closed door (proper hall) seated audience. I'm definitely looking forward to our next excursion soon!

If I may say so myself - Well done, Guitaresque!

Opening post

After more than 9 years since its formation in 1999, I have finally decided to set up a simple blog site for our guitar quartet.

Reason being - I wanted it to be a somewhat more "transparent" as well as simpler way for us to look back at the journey we took (in terms of our music then & now, and our playing standards too!), and hence learn to improve going forward as a quartet, hopefully for many more years.

* Had I been more web-savvy, I would have prefered to set up a Guitaesque dedicated website, since I'd be able to upload videos and sound clips from our previous endeavors. But hey, I just an average web-surfing joe eh, so what do I know about all these HTML stuff..blah blah blah..??? :P

Finally, for our friends and fellow guitar afficionados, this is where I will be posting announcements of our future performance details.

So, keep a look out for us! :)