Gamelan Composition Workshop

I think I had never worked out so hard in the gym. Or maybe I could say I have not experienced these kind of body aches since high school. Remember during high school? A week or two before sports day if you are in athletic or sports, you would train really hard for days till your bones feel like breaking. Well, that's how I felt for these 4 day workshop from 23rd to 26th September 2010.

Musicians are pretty much like athletes in some ways. We need to warm up before practise or we might heard ourselves. Most of the times, we ignore it. Well, today's topic is not about this. This workshop is to showcase the composition of 3 of RIB members, which is Ann, Umar and LFong. We are pretty much the participants of the workshop, players for their piece. 2 half day rehearsals and 2 full day rehearsals to learn up 4 new songs before showing it to the audience for feedback. The purpose is to get some response about the new songs.

Gareth Farr came all da way from NZ to facilitate the workshop, guide us musically, gave the composers some pointers and taught us bout composing for our 5th piece, which is a group effort piece. He set a time frame of 4 minutes and split it into half, where the climax is suppose to happen. Each of us have to give a vague idea on the sections happening in between the song. So, the final results was a section with sparse sound leading to low register notes to high register notes to canon to repetitive notes and then to chords played in sync (Climax) then to Q and A and lastly ending with sounds imitating nature. Pretty experimental in sound and sometimes could be a lil messy, but I guess post modern music is always that way. It is free yet contrained in a particular structure that progress without signal.

One embarrassing moment for me. A wrong note for the gong part during a slow melodious section. I don't know where to bury my face..lol. I mixed up the gong 5 and gong 6! Ahhh!!

Love the space in Five Arts Studio.


My fellow gong partner Colleen, wahahah! :)




Lunch break at the restaurant beside the studio with the gangA group picture of RIB and Gareth, missing of Adilah and Susan in this picture.

Well, till next post before I upload the full one. After the workshop, and also after every rehearsal, the song just keep playing back in my head. It was difficult to fall asleep. But an exhausting week yet fun! Gonna be so sleepy on Monday...