Un-Resolutions 2010

About this time last year, I wrote a short list of goals for myself. I think it’s time to review 2009 and have a think about 2010.

Last year, I resolved to:

Learn some basic Photoshop skills. In truth, after some initial dabbling, my interest quickly waned and I achieved next to nothing in 2009. BUT in the past month I have been learning by way of looking up random tutorials online. I really like Photoshop tutorials because they walk me through the process, enabling me to achieve a chosen effect with minimal frustration whilst educating me on what all the buttons and thingies do. It’s really a great application.

Be more well-spoken and articuate. This didn’t turn out to be difficult, it’s just a matter of switching it on, like you would at a work or professional place. I still frequently lapse into unwanted colloquial idioms such as “like” etc mainly when I stop thinking about it.

Make a general rule to accept invitations. Um, fail? If anything, I went out LESS. But I don’t feel bad about that.

Learn to draw. On it. I think I’m getting better. But I’m not going to show off my drawings yet.

So, this year, I only have two goals. One is to see more live music. The other is to be nicer. When I say “nicer” I specifically mean less elitist. It has gradually come to my attention that it is easy for people involved in music (including me) to talk down about our fellow artists. It’s easy to do because in this field we are always comparing talent/skill/whatever. But I’ve realised from talking to other people that it’s too easy to think you’re better than someone else, and vocalising thoughts like these is so unbecoming.

News and Musings

Hello, I’m back. My holiday was super-fun and great and also a bit lonely but I’ll get into that later. First, let me draw your attention to the fact that I am very excited that my band Monkey Puzzle Tree has been invited to perform at Womadelaide this year! Womad is my favourite festival and I can’t think of words that can adequtely describe how pleased I am to get to participate as a performer. This is a great opportunity for us so all four of us are very excited.

There’s something about the fresh feeling of commencing a new year that leaves me feeling quite excited in general. It’s the end of January right now, February contains good things like Chinese New Year (which coincides with Valentines Day this year; the 14th), then comes March and anyone who lives in this town knows that March is the best time of year to be in Adelaide. Not only is there Womad (which I’ve mentioned already, click the links above if you want more, more, more) but there’s the Fringe Festival (biggest Fringe in the Southern Hemisphere I believe) and this year is an Adelaide Festival year too.

My recent adventures abroad have really awakened the travel bug in me and I’ve already started making plans. I want to go on a holiday every year. Fortunately my occupation, with its frequent school holidays, allows this. In July, I’m planning to go to Fiji for a tropical escape. And in the December/January holidays I want return to the Motherland, as it were, and go to Hong Kong and possibly surrounds.

Kuala Lumpur was great, especially at first. I explored and got lost and discovered things and ate fruit every day. But I did get a bit lonely towards the end of my stay. I went alone and by the week’s end I was feeling the strain of not having had a real conversation with anyone for that whole time. Pathetic, no? This was of course, only exacerbated by the fact that I caught a cold in the last few days and could do nothing but languish in my hotel room. Boring!

I opted for luxury (for once in my life) and stayed in a beautiful hotel. It as great, but next time I travel alone I will stay at a cheap place, like a backpacker’s hostel as such locations are great for meeting interesting people from around the world.

I flew from KL to Melbourne where I stayed with my sister and attended seminars for work. The seminar days were inspiring and fun. I always leave seminars feeling excited about teaching and it’s fun to be in an environment where I can discuss the teaching materials with like-minded professional musicians. It’s great.

So now I’m back and I’m fresh, rejuvenated and optimistic.

Here’s a scan of some pictures I took in KL to finish…

Kuala Lumpur

In Absentia

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur. I’m here on holiday, by myself no less, for a week. It’s been fun but it’s starting to drag. A week’s a long time to spend by yourself, as I’m discovering.

I’ve been a bad blogger.

I’ll be good when I get back.

♥

Recital approaching… EEP!

My recital date has nearly been set. (They’re just trying to find a third examiner but they don’t anticipate having any problem with that.)

So the date will (probably) be Thursday 10th December. I think it will be 6pm.

I’m playing the Debussy piano and violin sonata in G minor and the Grieg violin and piano sonata in C minor. Both pieces are amazing and I shall struggle to do them justice. The Debussy is mysterious, fantastical, distant, capricious. The Grieg is exciting, virtuosic, extroverted and majestic. My associate artists are two wonderful violinists, one from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the other a fellow Honours student at the Con.

Entry is free and it’s at Elder Hall at Adelaide Uni. So please come if you’re free and in town. Because this is like, the single biggest event of the year for me and I need all the support I can get!

Once the date and time is confirmed I’ll do proper invites. (Meaning I’ll make a Facebook event, lol.)

My Current Beauty Product Staples

I’ve been thinking recently that I’ve been using some really awesome beauty/makeup products. So I’m going to write about them. Gosh, I can tell that this is going to be an almost unbearably girly post and I haven’t even started writing it yet!

• MAC Prep & Prime Lash. It’s so awesome. Used before mascara, it plumps and lenghtens up my thin, short Asian lashes, prevents the mascara from clumping and stops it from falling onto my face throughout the day.
• Olay Moisturizing Lotion for Sensitive Skin. I know that this brand is aimed at older women, but I find this moisturizer works really well. It soaks in quickly and it’s light. I used to use the cream version of this moisturizer, but the lotion is better for the hot weather we’ve been getting recently.
• MAC Paint Pots. I have a queerly shaped eyelid which is not a monolid, but the crease is quite close to my lashline. Because of the unusual shape and because my skin tends to be oily, eyeshadow has a strong tendency to crease when I wear it. Especially if it’s hot/the eyeshadow is of shitty quality/I wear it all day. Paint pots are amazing for preventing creasing and prolonging wear when used as a base for eyeshadow. I dab it on with my finger. It goes on kind of moist but dries to a gritty powder that really “grips” powder eyeshadow. I also wear it by itself. And I also layer several paint pots on top of each other. Anyone who has problems with their eyeshadow creasing should DEFINITELY try this product.
• Napoleon Minimal Makeup. I usually get my foundation from MAC. But now that it’s warmer I needed something lighter than my usual foundation. (Studio Fix fluid has good coverage, but it can make me break out.) I wandered over to the Napoleon counter mainly because the MAC counter was busy and I got tired of waiting around for some assistance. The girl at the Napoleon counter was really very helpful and friendly. She actually colour matched me correctly by trying two similar shades, one on each side of my face. (At MAC they’ve only ever bothered to try one colour, and I always go home and realise it’s too dark for me.) Minimal Makeup is oil free and sheer, so I haven’t broken out since using it. I like that I can layer it on if I want more coverage and it’s very longwearing.

Okay that’s girly posting for now, byyyye.

P.S. I’m on the hunt for a REALLY AWESOME lipbalm. Recommendations?

A Fine Ear

What all fine musicians have in common is a good ear. Music is aural, so the ear gets to make all the final calls. A more discerning ear can detect more ranges of sound and nuance. To “laypeople”, a Steinway grand may sound much like a Kawai upright, and a first year Conservatorium student may sound much like a professional artist.

When you learn a musical instrument long enough, you get to a stage where you are no longer simply concerned with merely playing the right notes. Even louds and softs become obsolete. The way in which you judge the quality of sound has to become so refined. The word “soft” by itself isn’t descriptive enough. What kind of soft? A rounded, pebbly sound? Or a bright, sparkly sound? I often find I revert to visually descriptive words to talk about the kind of sound I want. My teacher, on the other hand, always tends towards describing sound as an energy force. Even the mystery of music as an emotive force is an illusion created by sound.

The difference between a fantastic piano and an average piano, is that the average piano will always sound, well, average. Upright pianos of fairly decent quality usually sound pretty unoffensive. A really awesome grand piano, like the Steinway grands we have at the Con are much harder to control. They can sound pretty awful if you bang away on them, not knowing what you’re doing. (Like how I played for most of my time as a student.) But they are capable of a huge range of sounds. To make the most of the instrument’s capabilities, the pianist has to have a large arsenal of playing techniques to draw upon, and, most importantly, the ear to detect what sound they want, and whether or not they have achieved that.

When I started out at the Conservatorium, I was playing without listening. I came from an electronic organ background, so I knew that piano technique would be the difficult thing for me to master. Only now that I have reached Honours level have I begun to make the connection between the ear and technique. Technique is nothing without ear.

Sigh. I’m rambling. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my first Honours recital is coming up. So I’ve been preoccupied with piano things. In other news, the music room gets devilishly hot when the weather’s warm, as it has been recently. I’ve moved a fan in there, making it more bearable, but I still have to come out for frequent breaks.

Besides recital stuff, term 4 is always a busy term for teachers. There’s a bunch of concerts and things to prepare for at Yamaha. So… much… to… do!!

Well, bye for now.

New Camera!

My Fuji Instax Mini 7 camera arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It is so much fun and very addictive. I took the photos above with it the other day when my little brother and I took the dog to the park. The park was covered with yellow flowers; it looked amazing. Unfortunately, it was also covered with bees and I was wearing sandals, so we proceeded across the grassy expanse with caution.

The camera is heaps easy to use. It has just 4 light settings. A couple of the photos above turned out overexposed because I used the wrong setting. Film works out to about less than $2 each and loads into the camera in packs of ten.

These photos would be heaps good for scrapbooking.

I have been really busy and stressed lately, so no time for paper crafts unfortunately! I have a recital coming up and I still have so much to do! I am playing two piano and violin sonatas; one by Debussy and the other by Grieg. I am playing with two different violinists, too. One is a fellow Honours student at the Con and we have had only one rehearsal. The other is a professional from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and we are having our first rehearsal tomorrow. Both pieces are really fucking hard, but I am especially freaked out about the Grieg because I physically cannot play the 3rd movement. Sigh. Just gotta keep pegging away at it.

In other news, it is October and festive Christmas-ware has already begun to appear in the shops.

I ate a whole box of Mr. Kipling’s mince pies to myself.

Links Roundup

I’m not adventurous enough on the interwebs to do weekly links posts like some bloggers, but here is a list of some of my favourite places on the web at the moment. Most of them are art, design or style blogs. Click, click!

• Doe Deere Blogazine. The accompanying blog to Doe Deere’s Lime Crime Makeup range. She’s got great style.
• Dooce. This woman’s blog is probably aimed at an older readership, but I still find it quite funny and interesting.
• Julie in Japan. A Canadian girl teaching English in Japan. Funny and cute!
• Nubby Twiglet. Art and design by a Portland-based graphic designer.
• Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog. Um, self-explanatory? Steve Pavlina got me onto Paraliminals.
• Kingdom of Style.
• Biorequiem by Zoetica Ebb.
• My Milk Toof. Another funny and cute one.
• Luxirare. She hasn’t posted in a while, but her projects are always amazing.
• Style Bubble. The original and the best.
• Rubby Gatta. Art, design and interior decor inspiration by kitty-cat, Ruby.
• Kris Atomic. Photography and art by Kris Atomic.

Hm, so yeah, that’ll do for now. I might do a shopping Links Roundup later. Just for funs.

Coopers Alive Showcase promo poster

Photography by Lana Jaie, poster by Matt.

I’m really looking forward to this gig. The Promethean is a lovely venue and the two other bands, Golonka and The Baker Suite make really interesting music. We’ve been working on some new songs, too.