Sounds Easy Perf at Jurong Point

Woo Hoot~! Woooo Hooooot~! Woooooooooo Hooooooooooot~!

Sounds Easy had the honor to be invited to sing for the Singapore Arts Festival 14 Jun 2008 at Jurong Point. "Arts on the Move" is one of the initiatives organized to bring Arts into the neighborhood to get more people interested and involved.



Although I won't brag that I've never had stage fright for performances before, I must say performing on stage hadn't been getting on my nerves before. However this time round I was more nervous than before. Its more difficult singing in A Capella groups. One of the obvious reason is that each individual is the voice and the accompaniment. Each error we make can be clearly seen or heard. Furthermore, we are a small group with only 1 or 2 person for each part. The amount of stress on each person is greater than being in a big group, each person is a soloist. Blending is of course a more difficult task when the number of singers reduce.


I kept making mistakes during the practices too... for my soloist/melody parts especially for "不想睡“ I keep getting the pitch wrong.... had problems remembering the words.... and all these add to my nervousness. Luckily the people around have been singing with me for a few years now and we are close friends. Having them there was a great morale support (anshin desu) before the big thing.


Even though I felt that we did not do very well for the performance especially for my solo parts and that we kept rushing our songs. A bit of flats here and sharps there. We can still see that most of the audiences enjoyed our performance as they stayed put throughout the performance and that is a good sign. We have experienced singing in the public and keeping audiences throughout, is tough and nearly uncontrollable. (Unless we tie them to the chair or they absolutely cannot leave the place e.g Weddings)





Despite some glitches in our singing and screams from the kids directly below the stage (potential 追星族 practicing for chasing idols in the future), some audiences were singing along with us for the more familiar songs like Kit Chan's "喜欢你“ or nodding when we sang "Stand By Me".



However, I would say people are still not accustomed to A capella, especially the more contemporary remixes like the arrangements that June did for “车站” and "最后一夜“.





Listening to the video recordings of our performances (Haha~! Cannot show you ~! Pending approval from higher Management *wink*) I kind of have a feel of what its like when we perform on stage. We had never recorded our performances before and I think this is a correct step to take.


Now I know co-operation and coordination among the members are very important, not only for the sound quality but also for the outlook of the whole group. The group will look strange when some of us look like we are enjoying while others are not. Looking at each other during the performance can help us communicate and also to calm ourselves down. Its real difficult to sing well when we are nervous wrecks. In fact we should actually be too busy on stage to think about being nervous. Thinking about the pitches, coordinating our pitches and blending with the others, our volume, quality of sound, feel of the songs, the mics and expressions.


All in all, we are glad for this performance opportunity. It also gives us a clearer guide to performing.

Also a big Thank You to all the friends who went to support us. Qian~~~~ Phil, Allan, Renshi, Alan, Jing Jing and Dawson. Arigatou~!