Tryout - Post Rock

10 years ago, I was a college freshman. I responded to an ad for band members. I wrote that I played piano, I played anything, had perfect pitch, had good hearing. I suppose saying stuff like that is a bit like going on a personals page and saying that you are 36-24-36. It does not guarantee that you are the perfect girlfriend, but people will sit up and take notice.

One Saturday, at the beginning of the month, I responded to a few advertisements for people who were looking for keyboardists. Until now, I am still dealing with the responses. There have been around 8 interested parties, I’m following up with around 4. That’s probably too many for me to handle. But until I meet up with a dead end on all these leads, I won’t need to look for advertisements.

When was it possible for me to do this? I think, as early as beginning 2007, around the time when Shingot was dragging me out to salsa lessons. After a while, I quit, and turned to long distance running instead. 2 half marathons and 1 marathon later, I quit. Just wanted a finisher’s medal. Finally I’m doing something that I always wanted to do since I was a teenager. How did I not know that it was so easy for me to find people to jam with? The opportunity cost is unconscionable.

The only difference between then and now is that since the beginning of 2007, I have written 20-30 songs, ever since I found out how cakewalk could let me record down my stuff.

OK, I have actually played keyboards for around 4 hours today. But not really played, because a lot of it was just gawking at people going around doing their own stuff.

First jamming session was with the band I tried out with last week. I’m still going to follow that leader because I want to see what he can teach me, and I’m also in the company of 3 guys who are even more talented than myself. But I was a little irritated that the leader’s conception of “chim” music was funky time signatures. Not that I should complain, since my last incarnation was named after a funky time signature (it is 7/8 in Spanish).

We ran through 1 or 2 of the leader’s compositions. He brought a laptop, and played his stuff. On one hand his stuff is not too bad even though he’s not as good a composer as I am (I’m not going to brag about this to him anyway, I’m perfectly happy being a sideman for now.) There was a truce between the drummer and the leader, and whereas there were some arguments about who was right or wrong during the 7/8 section he was perfectly OK to go drum along. The way that they played off each other was quite great, and I was just happy to play under the radar.

Later on, he said, I have 15 originals, and we will be playing with them. He intends to gig. And if I can still keep up with them after that, you guys might just find yourselves in a nightclub listening to the 4 of us entertaining you for the evening. He was even talking about performing at jazz festivals overseas. God, no, pls help me…

The leader is also a devout Muslim, and was undergoing voluntary fasting. He was explaining to me that it had to do with some birthday of some prophet or something. How he reconciles this with naming one of his compositions, “Withdr awal Techn ique”, I don’t really understand it.

There were 4 hours between the 2 jamming sessions. Time for a nap, and then dinner.
The second jamming session I had was a tryout for a post-rock band. A lot of bands will tell you which age group they are in in advertisements, so they don’t have generational problems. This was – take away me, and the average age of those people I played with today is around 10 years younger than me.

But they played post rock, and I liked that. In fact, it was such an obscure genre, that I was surprised that Singaporeans were doing this. I also like the fact that now, 10 years later, is when people are starting to catch up to the stuff I was listening to 10 years ago.

I was initially enthusiastic about this, because my point of contact was with a chick 10 years my junior. I got to the studio, and then found myself talking to a young 21 year old drummer. Then I found out that everybody else in the band was male. Well, no problem I guess. But surely less fun than being the only male member of an all-girl’s band. Her name was Kim, and I wonder if important indie bands have bass players named Kim. (Kim Deal from the Pixies, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.)

This gig didn’t go down very well. I sense they are unsure about adding a keyboardist to the line-up. Post rock doesn’t have a lot of keyboardist, and the stuff they played didn’t really feature keyboards. Also you could tell things from the length of time it took for any 1 of them to respond to me (1 week). But I always believe that there is an extra room in any band for a musical genius like myself. The band was putting together a composition. I didn’t know what to write because I wasn’t used to writing post-rock.

Some of them had a few smokes after the session. It’s a hazard in this line that you will come across more than your fair share of smokers. I asked if this was the only post-rock band in Singapore. They said that the genre was gaining strength in Singapore, even though it’s always been a marginal scene. One of the guitarists was a stand-in for the regular, and he was in a progressive rock band with Kim as well.

The drummer sounded like he was having a great time bashing his sticks out in the original. He asked if he was going to far, but we all felt it was fine. I talked to him about post-rock, and he told me that he hated the term. Music is music, etc. But that’s what we’re doing in the band, right? Post rock is what we’ve been doing. But we should be free to spearhead in other directions, of course.

Sample conversation in the band. "So, uh, how long you been playing keyboards?" "Since before you were born."

Seems like both the bands have much in common. Both have Malays and Chinese. With 1 exception, the Malays play the guitars and drums, the Chinese play the keyboards and bass. Both have capable guitarists and drummers. Both have members living all over the island, in Woodlands, Bukit Batok, Pasir Ris, Tampines, Thompson Rd.

I have 2 more engagements. One of them is with a former frontwoman of an all girl band who released 1 or 2 albums in the 1990s. She’s thinking of a comeback. We talked over the phone, and she sent me a demo. It’s scary, completely different from what I like. But I just have to do some arrangement for her. It will be a plus if we get our stuff recorded.

Another one is a guy who’s trying to get a band together, and he claims to have written pop songs. That’s the vehicle I have to show my compositions. But how will I balance that against what I’m doing for the other 2? Well, at least I know that I would have freed up a lot of time I used to spend on books. It’s a lot of time.

There are a few immediate tasks to do following the belated start of my music career. 1 – learn how to play jazz on the piano. 2 – learn more about how to use the synthesizer, at least make the demos more professional sounding. 3- learn a rock instrument. What will it be, the bass? The drums?

Well, guys, you know that I don’t really go out and enjoy myself for the heck of it. Everything is work. Even my hobbies are work. They aren’t even hobbies, since if you were to consider that a lot of these things are on my “things to do before you die” list, then it is work. It’s something that has to be done. Even my reading was all on the “things to do” list.