The Musical Journey

All about rhythm - part 5

2011-10-03T11:15:00.008+08:00

What is Rhythm?

Did you try out what was in the last post? By now you would have realized that not all music is written like this. This is just for practice only and to get you started on getting used to seeing how music is written. If you take the exercises and repeat them often enough, you will feel more at ease when you see music like this. It will free your mind and you will be relaxed enough to be able to feel the rhythm building in you.

In this week's post, we will be trying out some exercises which are longer and a little more challenging. Have a look at the three examples below. They are now a mix of what we discussed in the last post but still in a bar of 4 counts. These are actually 4 bar rhythm patterns.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Let’s take a closer look at Example 3. The third bar is quite tricky. This is called a syncopated rhythm. The word syncopate also comes from the word Syncopation which means the displacement of the usual rhythmic accent away from a strong beat onto a weak beat. Strong beats are on the first and third beats. When we clap to four beats or listen to any form of music, we can usually feel the first and third beats much stronger. Even in dancing, the movement of our body would swing a little bit more on the first and third beat. In the third bar of example three, there is a note on the first, second beat but it stops on the third beat which makes us feel as if there is a gap in the rhythm. This feeling of that gap is what rhythmic accent is all about. Most of today’s modern pop and alternative music would have this syncopated feel. As with always, I have included some audio clips for you to clap along.
Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Have a go at clapping the above rhythms and in the next post, I will include some longer rhythms with some modern drum beats and we can have some good interesting fun together.

All about rhythm - part 4

2011-09-29T07:04:00.009+08:00

What is Rhythm?

I hope by now you can remember the last three notes we went through, that is, the semibreve, minim and the crotchet and also their respective values. In this post, we will take a look at how it is all put together to make rhythm happen. I will put these notes within boxes or what is called in music, bars, with no more than 4 beats to each box or bar. There will be two bars for each one of the examples and they will look something like this.
Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

As you may have noticed, the notes are all the same. Each of the two bar examples will form what we call, a rhythm. A rhythm can be formed with anything from one bar to any number of bars. Now we will try to clap out these three simple rhythms. In order to know when to clap, we will put a count under each note like below, to help to show you when to clap. Keep a steady count like 1, 2, 3, 4. At any time you see a note above the number that you are counting; you clap your hands together. Remember, that it is very important to try to keep your counting at a steady pulse.
Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

In the next step, I have included 3 simple audio file that you can use to help you clap at a steadier pace. Try it out for yourself. It is based on exactly the same examples as above except there are 4 bars of rhythm plus one extra bar at the beginning. The first bar you do not clap because that is the first 4 beats which we call the “count-in”. That is to give you an idea of the speed you need to count at. The sound of the bell is to let you know it is the first beat. So, are you ready to try? Let’s go.
Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

See you in the next post for some more exciting rhythm playing stuff!

All about rhythm - part 3

2011-09-20T11:46:00.006+08:00

What is Rhythm?

By now, you might have realised that rhythm is simply the backbone of whatever music that you want to make. You can create rhythm even by simply clapping your hands together, but before you can make any rhythm sound proper, you need to have pulse. What is pulse, you might ask?

This pulse has a tempo or speed to which listeners can feel and tap their foot or dance along with the piece of music, and is usually called its common name the ‘beat’. In music and music theory, the pulse consists of beats in a repeating series.

How can we describe a beat? A beat can be described in a way a coin gets its value. Like a 10 cent coin has a value of 10 smaller one-cent values in one coin instead of in 50 coins. So in that way, each one-cent value would represent a 'beat'.

In music, one of the first things that are usually taught to students are note values. Traditionally, students are required to recognize these values and recreate the rhythm from memorizing patterns. These are good disciplines but sometimes do take away the 'feel' of the rhythm and will make music sound very mechanical. You will want to make music that feels 'alive' and not robotic.

Let's have a look at these note values and understand how they work. We will start with the simple ones first.

The first of these values would be the long note which is called the semibreve. This is long because it holds a value of 4 beats. Think of a semibreve as a 4 cent coin which has a value of 4 one-cent values in one coin. A semibreve would look like this.

Next would be the minim note which has a value of 2 beats which is halve of a semibreve. A minim looks like a semibreve but with a line down the side of it.

And the next would be the crotchet note which has a value of 1 beat, again which is half of a minim. A crotchet looks like this.

A simple way I would use to help me remember the values of the three notes above is that the first note has a value of 4 beats, if it has a line beside it, then that would make it half which is 2 beats, and then if it has the color black in the middle, that would half it again making it 1. Try to remember this and in the next post we will be able to see how all this is going to work.

All about rhythm - part 2

2011-09-09T11:38:00.005+08:00

What is Rhythm?

The simplest form of rhythm can be described in the way our heart beats. If you place your ear against your friend’s chest, you will be able to hear his heart beat. It beats in a certain kind of regular time. This time is almost very even. When the person is active like after walking up the stairs, you will hear it beat faster, but as the heart beats faster, it is still in an almost regular speed. That is rhythm. That is a simple example of how rhythm affects our lives directly.

In continuing from the last post, if you had looked around you, you would have found lots of things that could make sounds like drums. Some of them would be your parents' kitchen simple stuff like a frying pan, wok, a cooking pot and even your school lunch box. Besides these items, others would be an empty shoe box, a dustbin and even empty plastic buckets. All these items can be used to make sounds like drums although not exactly with the same sound as an actual drum but still it is a sound.

You can also make sounds with other stuff like beating a pair of chopsticks together, spoons and other stuff that is hard. When you hit these stuff to make a sound in a regular pattern, you have a rhythm. In this post, I have included a music clip which contains the sound of tribal drums. Tribal drums look something like this.

Listen to the clip. You can use two pencils or a pair of chopsticks to hit each on a shoe box to make a sound. Hit them together and try to follow along with the audio.

Now in the next clip, you have some sounds made with a set of modern drums. Modern drums look like this.

You will find a lot of these modern drums when you see bands playing. Now listen to this and you can hear quite a lot of difference between tribal drums and modern drums.

Assignment:
After listening to the above two clips, can you spot at least three differences between tribal drums and modern drums?

All about rhythm

2011-09-02T14:37:00.008+08:00

What is Rhythm?

In this post and with the following posts, I will attempt to explain the very basics of rhythm and how important it is to music. It is very important that students and parents understand this element as it forms the very backbone of how music is created and how rhythm makes music more interesting. We will start at the very beginning and work

on it step by step along the way. We will also look into some history of the early beginnings of rhythm and the instruments used. Some posts will also have a little quiz at the end. See if you can figure it out.

To begin with, other than the melody, rhythm is one of the most basic important parts of music. Rhythm is just the timing of notes or sounds that are made. Hmm, that sounds simple enough. If you look around you, you will be able to notice that, rhythm happens almost always in our life.

Many early forms of music were made up of only the sound of beating of drums, sticks or anything that will make a sound even clapping of hands.

Early tribal people would beat on drums for many reasons. In Africa, the drum is used to communicate across distances, something like the way we use our phone today.

This beating of drums was also an important part of a performance carried out in religious and community rituals like in a funeral or marriage ceremony.

In western America, the native Indians used drums and chants (a kind of singing with not much musical form) to bring the rain!

In China, red drums have always been a symbol of the power of the ruler and the destiny of the army. Drums are brought out whenever there were ceremonies or festivities. Weddings and funerals and all ceremonial occasions demand the insistent beat of drums. The two oldest drums found in China came from the Zia dynasty, the first dynasty of China, approximately 4,000 years ago. They were found near the Yellow River at a place called Taosi.

One of the drums is a meter high and made of a hollow tree trunk. In its day, it had a skin across the upper opening and was painted red, as drums of China often continue to be. According to ancient writings, human blood was rubbed into drums for magical purposes, but the colouring on this ancient drum came from another source.

The other drum from Taosi is made of clay. A pot used as a drum was also quite common in ancient times.

Assignment:

Can you look around your house and find out what are the things that you have, that can make drum sounds?

Music Is Fun

2011-03-09T10:13:00.025+08:00

Music Is Fun – Colombo, Sri Lanka

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Bishop’s College Lobby

It was my first trip to Sri Lanka and I found it to be a very nice place to visit. On my second day there I managed to take a visit to the National Museum. It contained a lot of artefacts from the many archaeological dig sites around Sri Lanka itself, thus telling us much about the history of Sri Lanka’s past.

The Music Is Fun activity was set for Wednesday 23 February 2011 at the Bishop’s College Lobby which was actually more of a big hall. The hall was decked out with banners and flags and a traditional oil lamp.

This was one event that really took me by surprise as the event was a mix of formality with an opening ceremony complete with speeches and lighting of candles and then the fun and games of our activities.

Our MC for the day was Ms.Sounthi Thavam of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Station compeering this programme for us.

The first agenda on the list was the lighting of the traditional oil lamp by Mrs.Usitha Samarakoon, Director Educational Ministry (Western Music),

Mr.Dushyantha, Chairman/ Managing Director of Symphony (Pvt.) Ltd., Mrs.Mano Dias Abeyegunawardene, Director of Symphony (Pvt.),

Mrs.Anurukshi Bandarathilake a teacher from Kandy, and me.

After the lighting of the traditional oil lamp, the national anthems of both countries were played. Next up was a welcome address that was delivered by Mr.Dushyantha, who is the Chairman/Managing Director of Symphony (Pvt.) Ltd. He mentioned that his company was delighted to be organising an activity of such a nature for the first time in Sri Lanka.

Mrs.Usitha Samarakoon, Director (Western Music) Education Ministry was also invited to present her speech. She thanked Mr. & Mrs. Dushyantha for taking the initiative in organising this workshop (Music Is Fun) for the first time. She mentioned that a workshop of this nature would go a long way to help develop the children’s mind.

Finally after MY “speech” which was something like 2 sentences, the fun and games began. We started with grouping the students into six groups. Then we started with note values and rhythmic movements to help keep pulse.

Sometimes even with students who are already learning music the conventional way, feeling pulse and rhythm can be quite challenging. You need to feel the rhythm within your body. Once we got down to sorting out getting the right feel, the children got down to playing card games. This activity helps to reinforce what was done earlier and at the same time also serves to stimulate the children's sense of creativity since no rules were set to play the games. There were many open choices to getting the cards right so they need to remember what they saw earlier.

Half way through, I got a surprise visit from a very special guest who attended our activity to see what we were actually doing. She is none other than Mrs. Rosy Senanayake a Member of Parliament and former High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Malaysia. She watched the proceedings of the workshop, and before she left, she had a chat with me while I explained what we were doing with the children. She was highly impressed with the program and thanked us for arranging this activity.

Continuing with the Music Is Fun activities, we came to the section where we did pitching and singing. This is always my favorite segment. The whole exercise is to let children experience a sense of harmony by doing simple canon singing.

By now you can probably see why this is my favorite!! If you may notice, it is not just the children who can enjoy the music but also the PARENTS who can participate!!! If you look carefully we have some shy participants, but after the first two rehearsals, the shyness actually disappeared!

Music is Fun concluded at 5pm and one of the senior teachers who attended this event with her students, Ms. Shanti Goonathialke concluded the event with her appreciation address on behalf of all the teachers, parents and students.

Overall, from some of my conversations with parents and teachers, they seemed to enjoy how we approach teaching music by using simple but unconventional methods like games and fun movements to stimulate the learning process for children.

The children also reacted very positively to the whole process without anyone feeling shy or left behind. One observation during this activity was that, although we purposely group students of different levels and instrumental studies together, the activities of Music Is Fun does not leave anyone out from the whole exercise.

We never got any student who felt that they could not cope or lagging behind which was a very good plus point. It makes the whole learning process a very interactive group activity where everybody needs to be involved.

We also saw that throughout the process of playing the card games, peer learning or learning with the help of your friends, actually helps to speed up the learning process of the children and the things that they learn is much better stored in their memory.

Then finally, it was time for group photos.

So Sri Lanka, thank you for inviting me there and I wish you all the best and hope to see you again in the near future.

Music Is Fun

2011-01-07T09:40:00.015+08:00

Do we really "Know" Music?

We all know that giving our children a good music education is very beneficial to them. We send them to music lessons, take the grade exams and then get their certificates. Once they get all their certificates, that will make them into a musician. Right? Wrong!! What is missing here?

Ever so often, we think that by sending a child to a music class, is the beginning of a music education. The teacher will be able to handle the rest. Do we all know that learning music is as complex as learning the alphabet? It takes just a few weeks to LEARN the alphabet and make words out of the alphabet but it takes years to UNDERSTAND a language.

Just like music, learning music is just about the same as learning the alphabet. In order to understand music, a student needs to take all that music knowledge he has learnt and try to relate it to his surrounding. This may sound complicating but it is very simple. Take for example, in music lessons, we learn about rhythm. When we look at the basic fundamentals of rhythm, we soon can see that rhythm is found all around us in our daily life, for instance, when we walk, we walk in rhythm otherwise we will find ourselves tripping over. Our heart also beats with a constant rhythm unless otherwise agitated.

Tones or pitch that we hear during a music lesson can also be related to the hum of an engine or the honking of a horn or the even the breaking of glass. Every sound that can be created, can be related to music. Every experience that we encounter every moment can be in some way related to music. Music practically surrounds our daily life, even when we sleep.

The activities conducted in “Music Is Fun” are specifically designed to highlight most of these areas to children and to help them make those connections which will, in turn, help them to feel their way around music. Music education is no more confined to just what they have learnt during the lessons. The focus of “Music Is Fun” is to provide an avenue for children to explore their musical minds and “see”, “feel” and “touch” their music with what knowledge they have. It does not necessarily mean that they have to be playing an instrument to be musical. Music can be produced in many ways and forms. And did you know that singing is also part of music education? In fact it is the simplest form of instrument available to EVERYBODY!

In a recent similar event, we realised that “Music Is Fun” is able to bring many benefits to those who already have prior music knowledge by stimulating their minds to reflect on their past music knowledge to overcome certain musical barriers within the activities. For those who did not have prior music knowledge, the activities actually helped them realised the significance of what they would gain by learning music. The most stimulating exercise would be using unconventional methods to highlight the learning of certain topics.

Music and music learning is both in their true form creative and forever evolving. In order to stay on top of this, you need to be unconventional and keep a sharp look out for new stuff all the time. The mind of a creative musician needs to be forever evolving and changing. Someone once asked me,"What does it take to learn to play an instrument?" My answer was simply, “Are you going to learn to play an instrument and be an instrument player or do you want to be a musician?” The fact is, anyone can learn to play an instrument but not everyone can be a musician. Just like anyone can sit down and play the piano or guitar or violin but can they play "MUSIC?"

If you would like to participate in this very engaging experience, please contact:
Rhythm MP at +60-4-587 3689
Mr. Seng at +60-12- 295 0830

Music Is Fun • Colombo, Sri Lanka

2010-11-19T13:22:00.009+08:00

Rhythm MP being one of the leading music education providers for young children in Malaysia, we are constantly looking to help improve on music education for the young. We are always seeking ways to create innovative teaching ideas which ever so often leads us to creating activities to instil more awareness and inspiration into the music learning journey

of the young. Today, we have designed a new music activity entitled “Music Is Fun” to help young children develop an awareness and interest to learning music and also to experience what the many facets of creativity and personal development a music education can bring to them.

This activity serves to initiate the musical senses of a child who may not have learnt music before to be more receptive and sensitive to what they feel when they hear music.

We will be organising this activity for young children in November. Check out the following program details.

Other details are:

Venue: SJK(C) Sin Kang, Penang

Date: Monday, 29 November 2010

Time: 9:00am - 11:00am

Music Camp 2009 at Brastagi, Medan

2009-10-16T11:59:00.012+08:00

Music Camp 2009, Organised by Medan Musik in collaboration with Rhythm MP (Malaysia) at Brastagi, Medan

19-20 July 2009

This article was contributed by Ms. Ivy Syamsir, Education Manager of Medan Musik.

For the first time, a Music Camp was organized by Medan Musik through the support and encouragement given by Rhythm MP. The Music Camp was held at a nearby hill resort in Northern Sumatera, at Hotel Mutiara in Brastagi over the weekend of 19 and 20 of July 2009.
The trip began with 150 enthusiastic students of ages 6 to 22 years gathering at Medan Musik at 8am. 3 buses were required to transport the participants to Brastagi. The Music Camp was packed with 2 full days of most interesting and informative music activities.

Mr. Wilson Quah from Rhythm MP kicked start the event by making the students very excited about performing in an ensemble using homemade percussion instruments. The homemade instrument was a project that was initiated to prepare the students for the camp. The ensemble sounded interesting with a varied concoction of homemade percussion instruments, performed to the tune of ‘Good Morning”. Teachers and staff of Medan Musik also participated in the ensemble performance.

This event was followed by a more sober story telling session after teatime. Mr Wilson Quah took students and teachers on an eye-opening journey on the history, development and appreciation of jazz music. From Wilson’s illustrations and explanations, many of the students were busy taking down notes demonstrating their keenness and interests in understand how contemporary music, especially jazz has developed over the last century.

All the students did very well to answer the quiz at the end of the session. During dinner prior to the concert, some of the students were still excited that they were able to answer the quiz questions at the last session. While some students were busy preparing and dressing up in their very best for the evening’s concert, a handful of students were rehearsing concert/performing protocols that they had learned from Wilson before going back to their rooms to get ready.

At around 7:30pm, though it was running a little late, the audience and performers were finally settled down for the evening’s concert that was held in the resort’s foyer. We can see excited parents and performers eager for the evening’s concert to begin. Piano duets, violin with piano accompaniment, and solo piano performances were featured during the concert. The evening concluded with Wilson giving an appraisal of the performances, awarding certificates to all participants, performing for the audience and a photo session with the students. Everyone retired for the night feeling happy and excited after an eventful day.

The following day, more outdoor activities were organized for and it was another day of fun and laughs for the teachers, staff, students and parents. The camp concluded with a visit to a nearby fruit farm, just to pick and eat fresh strawberries.

The buses arrived back in Medan at 5:00pm. The feedback from parents and students were very encouraging with much positive comments and suggestions. There were requests for future music camps to be held over more days, as this inaugural event was a bit too short. There were also requests to have the camp held at other venues, like the resorts at Danau Toba and even overseas in Penang.

The management, teachers and staff of Medan Muzik were very pleased with this recent music camp and are setting their sights on the next Music Camp…perhaps in Penang!?!

My MPA Recipe

2009-09-28T16:37:00.001+08:00

Music Performance & Appreciation (MPA) – Conducted by Michael Kay

If you would like to organise MPA at your studio, please click here.

Dates: Any date convenient to your music school
Days: Any day from Monday to Friday
Time: Any time from 9am to 3pm
Duration: Two Hours per session
Class size: 20 to maximum of 25 students per session
Age: 6 to 12 years old
Levels: Beginner levels and Intermediate levels

Part 1
In Part 1 of MPA, each student will be required to play One song from the pre-prescribed list. The song can be any of the current songs that they are learning or songs that they have previously learnt. We will have a brief discussion based on the three areas.

Presentation
Music presentation is about how students show or perform or entertain their audience with their music. A well rehearsed presentation will help develop true confidence and character in a student. Here we will discuss about different aspects and etiquettes of performance at the beginner level.

Articulation
In music, articulation refers to the performance technique which affects the music being played. Many times, we have seen that students especially the younger learner tend to forget about techniques learnt during lessons. These problems will be addressed here.

Musicianship
Musicianship to music is what sportsmanship is to any sport. In a basic sense it is obeying the rules of the subject. It can also be considered the character of music. In music class you are expected to follow the guidelines as to what is expected of every musician.
Musicianship is not about competing with other fellow students. It is about the positive attitude that students are supposed to show in their music.

Part 2

Melody Writing
Before writing a piece of music, it's critical to feed your mind with inspiration. Inspiration comes from all around us: our emotions, relationships, nature, people and experiences. A big part of finding inspiration is putting your own self in situations that rouse inspiration and then recognize it when it comes.

In Part 2 of MPA, we will get the students to move into this area of self-inspiration and to help them identify that inspiration when it comes and prepare themselves to write simple melodies.

FAQ
Why Should I Let My Students Join MPA
Quite often we get music teachers who ask this question. Well, it is a good question. To fully understand this point, it would be useful to place ourselves in a young child’s situation.

The following is a typical breakdown of a child’s daily routine. In a full day of 24 hours, the typical breakdown of time taken up by other activities is:
Sleep ............. 10 hours
School ........... 6 hours
Tuition ........... 3 hours
Homework .... 3 hours
This means there are still two hours left in a day, which makes it a total of 14 hours in one week. From 14 hours, if we take away 1 hour for the music lessons, there would still be 13 hours left.

Out of the 13 hours left, we need to ask ourselves if our students are doing anything musically creative. Understandably, a music teacher’s time is also very limited and given the expectations from parents to have their children achieve the highest grade in the shortest of time, there is practically not much musicality or creativity left in the students’ achievements. In the end, it is just a normal paper chase.

That is why Rhythm MP has created this MPA activity to help teachers to do what cannot be done in the normal music lesson class. Although we do not guarantee that students who attend MPA will be magically transformed to become more creative but more importantly, it will at the very least help stimulate the creative process. Besides, MPA will benefit students later on when they start going into their examination syllabus.

Benefits of Music Creativity
Children have the ability to respond naturally to music. Music Creativity allows the individual child to participate in a non stressful environment where each child responds NATURALLY to music.

Each of us thrives on a very high self esteem. Music Creativity allows us to use individual skills to relate, remember and respond to specific learning experiences. These experiences become lifetime lessons because Music Creativity allows us to create from within.

Music Performance and Appreciation

2009-06-11T14:56:00.001+08:00

MPA at Sweet Harmony (Farlim)

Date: Friday O5 June 2009

This is the second time that Rhythm MP is conducting Music Performance and Appreciation (MPA) at Sweet Harmony. The ages of the participants range from 6 to 11 although we also had some who were five years old. We started out the first part of the

activity with all the children performing one piece of their music from the book Piano Lesson Made Easy series by Lina Ng. Generally the playing was quite impressive but with a few minor hitches on presentation. A summary of these are described below:

1)Posture and sitting position. This is an important aspect of a performance and also a part of a musician’s general outlook and appearance. A musician with good posture presents himself with confidence and the audience will be able to enjoy listening to him and also watching him perform because he is an interesting person. The sitting position should be with the body about 20cm away from the edge of the piano keys. If you are a smaller person, then you may adjust your sitting position a bit nearer, but not to an extent where some children sit just 4 or 5 cm away. Once you get the distance right, your elbows should be bent at around slightly less than a 45 degree angle with your hand above the piano. Remember to sit with your back straight and not hunched over.

2) Remember to sit with your legs slightly apart and both feet firmly on the floor. If your feet cannot reach the floor, use a small stool to place your feet on. I still see some children hook their legs to one of the piano stool legs to try to maintain balance. Remember to use a small stool. The aim here is to get a firm and balanced sitting position. If the body is not sitting stably on the piano stool, you cannot be in a position to control your playing as you will be constantly trying focus on not falling off the chair. Always remember not to swing your legs. Swing of the legs will only serve to confuse your body’s natural rhythm.

3) Remember to keep the wrists up and not resting on the ledge of the piano keys.

4) Fingering. Some of the children play with fingers too curved to the point that they look like the legs of a spider walking. This will not be able to get you powerful finger strength. Try curving a bit less. One of the ways I find that helps is to practice scales in different speeds starting with a very, very slow speed. If the fingers still curve too much, then decrease the speed even further until they curve naturally. When the fingers curve naturally, they should look as if the hand is holding a basketball and not a tennis ball. Some of the children’s hands look like they are holding a ping-pong or table tennis ball which over-exaggerates the hand curvature.

5) The other observation is about self confidence. Some of these children are playing for the first time in their lives in front of a large audience. So it is natural that they are nervous. But when that happens, their playing becomes extremely fast. They also tend to look away from the piano. When they end their performance or even before they end their performance, they have half of their body almost away from the chair. One way to overcome this problem is to build their performance experience and overcome what most musicians term as “stage-fright”. To do this, parents can help, by organising more small “home performances” for their children in front of their school friends.

I did not mention the names of the people who made the above errors because I feel that even if you did not make these mistakes, all students need to be aware of these problems in order that you do not make the same mistake. This then, is the end of the first part of MPA.

The second part of MPA is centred on developing creativity.

To achieve this, rhythm MP believes in putting head knowledge into practice. Whatever knowledge students learn during music lessons are just tools. What they need to do is to take this knowledge or tools and begin to create. So we started by taking two exercises from page 18 of Lina Ng’s Piano Lesson Made Easy Level 1 worksheet 2 to begin on rhythm clapping. Once the students were familiar with the rhythm, they began to put music notation to the rhythm and began to create their own music. The following are their own creations:

Chloe Ch’ng Pey En Age: 7 Song title: My Little boat

This is a very well written song with a very nice flowing melody. The notes harmonise quite well with the bass clef. Very good work. Keep it up.

Kang Jia Yang Age: 10 Song title: Do Re Mi

This song although has a very simple melody which moves scale-like but harmonises very well with the bass clef. Jia Yang has obviously written his song with the sound of the accompanying bass clef taken into consideration. Very good effort.

Yong Gent Hoong Age: 6 Song title: Rainbow

Although Gent Hoong is still six, he has made a very good effort in creating his own melody. there is still much room for improvement. Since this song is in the key of C major, you can try to end with either a C or E note which is most safest.

Lillian Au Xin Hui Age: 7 Song title: On the flower

Another good effort by Lilian but quite a number of notes do not harmonise quite well here but still is a good effort. Again here you could either end with a C or E note.

Heap Sen Li Age: 6 Song title: Twinkle twinkle

Sen Li has written a very nice melody. Unfortunately, some of the notes do not quite blend with the harmony in the bass clef. By itself, the melody sounds very very lively but if you have a bass clef given, you might need to try to hear the harmony. One way to do this would be to try to play each bar that you have written and try to find the notes that you think will sound nice when they are played together.

Darren Khoo Kai Jie Age: 8 Song title: The Engle fish

Darren, maybe "Engel" should be spelt "Angel" but if you are writing your own song, it is OK! Your song is very nice and you should continue to write more. Your notes harmonise very well with the bass clef. Don't stop writing.

Derrick Khoo Age: 5 Song title: Mother

Although Derrick is only 5, still this is a good attempt by him to write his own song. Keep it up!

Khoo Ming Jing Age: 11 Song title: Skateting time

Your first line is very impressive and the melody is nice and sweet. The second line sounds a little bit off when played together with the bass clef. You will be able to write better if you can play the bass clef and listen to how it sounds and then write the notes that you think will sound nice when played together with the bass clef.

Sim Ch’ng Vee Ter Age: 8 Song title: Robot

Ver Tee's song is very nice and he likes to play with scale notes. This is a very good effort by Ver Tee and the music sounds quite in harmony with the bass clef.

Cray Ch’ng Kai Juan Age: 9 Song title: My tree and me

A good effort by Cray. You could also try not to make the notes skip too much. Bar 2 to 3, and within bar 3, you have a lot of big skips. You can m,ake it better if you try to play out what you have written and then make the necessary changes of you hear the notes "jumping around" too much. The secong line sounds much more flowing. Again, at the last bar you could try to end your song in C or E note. In this case, the most suitable note to end your song would be C.

Sim Yu Yin Age: 6 Song title: Happy Day

Yu Yin, although is 6 only, but the music you write is very nice and flowing. The only thing is, your music does not match the bass clef accompaniment. You can try again but try to play what you have written to hear the sounds of the treble clef and the bass clef and if they will sound nice together. You have the potential to write more songs. Don't stop writing.

Jordan Chan Yin Jun Age: 9 Song title: My flower and me

Jordan is a very active fella and can be quite creative. He actually asked me if he could add more notes to his song. And he actually did it quite well. Very creative. Good job.

Elizabeth Yonicole Age: 6 Song title: Rainbow

Elizabeth is very young and at age 6 she actually made quite a good attempt at writing her own song. Keep trying and you will definitely get better.

Lim Celine Age: 5 Song title: My Family

Good try by Celine. Your melody is quite nice. It is a good start and if you try to write more, your songs will get better.

Lee Khoon Hong Age: 8 Song title: Home on the range

A good try by Khoon Hong. What you can do is to try to write again but this time play the bass clef first and try to hear what the bass clef sounds like. Then you add the treble clef notes and play together with the bass clef to see if they sound nice together.

Lye Wei You Age: 8 Song title: Westminster chimes

A good attempt by Wei You. You have to write more music and very soon your song writing skills will begin to improve. This is your beginning so continue to write more.

Tan Yan Ni Age: 8 Song title: Westminster Chimes

Nice attempt in song writing. Continue to write more and just like Wei You, you will improve.

Chee Tsu Ling Age: 5 Song title: Flower

You started your song quite nicely. Continue to write and you will be able to improve on your song writing skills. This time try to play what you have written. When you can hear what you write, your songs will always get better.

Renelle Koay Age: 7 Song title: Blue Star

You have quite a nice melody here. Try to keep the notes close to each other and keep the interval slightly closer. You could also try to end your song on a E or C note.

On the whole, I would consider this as a very good attempt by the children to write their own songs since they never got the chance to hear what the pre-set bass clef accompaniment sounded like and still some of them wrote very good melody line to harmonise very well with the accompaniment. In fact, they also never got the chance to play what they wrote and still could come up with some very good melodies. I believe that every ons of these children are actually gifted in their own way. All they need is the opportunity to develop it. And now they have.....

My Schedule

2009-05-22T14:13:00.016+08:00

Click here to Compose Your Own Music and send to Michael Kay at michael_rmp@yahoo.com

My MPA Recipe (Michael Kay)

2011

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

2010

Monday, 29 November 2010

2009

24-29 August 2009 (Monday - Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2009 - Penang, Malaysia - Application Form (PDF)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-Jamboree/70165541274

19 - 20 July 2009 (Sunday - Monday)

Music Camp 2009 - Brastagi, Medan - Medan Musik

5 June 2009 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Sweet Harmony Music Centre

16 May 2009 (Saturday)
Song Writing Competition 2009 - Penang, Malaysia

2008
23 November 2008 (Sunday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Bandung, Indonesia @ Andry Effendy Music
21 November 2008 (Friday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ CDE Music
20 November 2008 (Thursday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ Excellent Music
19 November 2008 (Wednesday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ Trinity Musik
16 November 2008 (Sunday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Probolinggo, Indonesia @ Cendana Musik
15 November 2008 (Saturday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Surabaya, Indonesia @ Cadenza Music

21 September 2008 (Sunday)
Music Appreciation - Probolinggo, Indonesia @ Cendana Musik

18-23 August 2008 (Monday - Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2008 - Penang, Malaysia

30 May 2008 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Sweet Harmony Music Centre
26 May 2008 (Monday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Genesis Music
22 March 2008 (Saturday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Pronix Music Centre
14 March 2008 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Pronix Music Centre
11 March 2008 (Tuesday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Fame Music

2007
15-16 December 2007 (Saturday - Sunday)
The Joy of Making Music - Perak, Malaysia @ The Piano Cafe Taiping

1-2 December 2007 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival - Penang, Malaysia

29-30 November 2007 (Thursday - Friday)
Music Educators Conference - Penang, Malaysia

29 November 2007 (Thursday)
The Jimmy Boyle Young Talent Jazz Competition - Penang, Malaysia

6-27 September 2007 Music Appreciation in Indonesia
CDE Music, Tangerang, Banten, West Java
Interlude Music School, Cilegon, West Java
Interlude Music School, Citra Raya, Tangerang,
Global Nusantara School (Kindergarten), Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Unison Music and Dance (Gandy Restaurant), Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 2 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Edwin Philips, Makasar, South Sulawesi
Saint Peter's Primary School, North Jakarta
John Calvin International School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Singapore International School
IPEKA
Unison Music and Dance Course, Sunter, North Java
Rhapsody Music Center, Tangerang, Banten, West Java
Willie Sumantri Music School (WSMS), North Jakarta

21-26 August 2007 (Tuesday - Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2007 - Penang, Malaysia

21 April 2007 (Saturday)
Music Carnival - Selangor, Malaysia @ SJK (C) Kepong

25-19 March 2007 Music Appreciation in Indonesia
EduArt, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 2 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 1 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
John Calvin International School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Bunda Mulia International School
Mawar Saron Junior High
Mawar Saron High School
Singapore International School

2006
2-3 December 2006 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2006 - Penang, Malaysia

30 November 2006 (Thursday)
The Jimmy Boyle Young Talent Jazz Competition - Penang, Malaysia

22-27 August 2006 (Tuesday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2006 - Penang, Malaysia

2005
3-4 December 2005 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2005 - Penang, Malaysia

23-28 August 2005 (Tuesday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2005 - Penang, Malaysia

2004
4-5 December 2004 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2004 - Penang, Malaysia

23-28 August 2004 (Monday ~ Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2004 - Penang, Malaysia

2003
8-14 September 2003 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2003 - Penang, Malaysia

2002
9-15 September 2002 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2002 - Penang, Malaysia

2001
10-16 September 2001 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2001 - Penang, Malaysia

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhythmmp/

http://www.youtube.com/RhythmMP

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-Jamboree/70165541274

Music Fiesta with Andry Effendy Music, Bandung

2008-12-11T10:09:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Sunday 23 Nov 2008

It is 5am in the morning and we are getting ready to go to the van-station to wait for our van to bring us on a 2 hour van-ride through the scenic view from Jakarta to Bandung. Bandung is a nice hill resort style kind of town where the air is much cleaner and cooler than JAkarta. This town has streets lined with shops after shops offering mass factory-produced clothes. It is virtually a shopper's bargain paradise.

We arrive in Bandung at around 10am and go straight to the Auditorium Graha Kadin, the selected venue of choice for our Music Fiesta and MPA activities arranged for by Andry Effendy. After a bit of checking out the equipment and tuning of the pianos, we proceed to lunch. After lunch, the activities begin with the MPA performers coming on-stage first. After the young talented children have performed, we took out the new Rhythm Game cards and proceeded to have a game with them. The game of choice was the composition game as most of these kids were already around the ages of 7 to 8 years old.

It was a very interesting session and htese kids could come up with some pretty nice compositions of their own. I would say that this group managed the games very well because some of these kids managed to write some pretty impressive music at that very young age.

Later in the day after the MPA session was over, it was Wilson's turn to take centre stage with the children from the Music Fiesta performing the compositions of Christopher Norton and Pam Wedgwood. Again, it seemed that Bandung had quite a lot of good talent as some of these kids performed flawlessly. After Wilson's input on improving performance and technique, we had the photo session. As you can see there were many happy faces as the kids seemed to have received mor than they had bargained for.

After all the performances were over, we had a short break before dinner where we took this time to meet with some members from the locally formed association which looks into the interest of classical musicians. Their role seems to be some kind of a check-and-balance routine for musicians to provide a platform for discussions and performance. For this afternoon we centered our discussion around the topic of the positive and negative attributes of sending young children for competitions.
The evening program consisted of a performance recital from Wilson and also some selected participants from the afternoon's program.

Music Fiesta with CDE Music, Jakarta

2008-12-11T01:51:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Friday 21 November 2008

Today we head to Serpong, which is a little north west of Jakarta to Miriam Kuswanto's studio, CDE Musik. We arrive there early and already Miriam has prepared some cakes and coffee for us. Quite a number of her teachers are also there waiting for Wilson's workshop to begin. We wait for a little while for some more of her teachers to arrive and then begin the workshop. Again, we had some teachers prepare some pieces to perform for us. Here you can see Wilson explaining the finer points of technical atriculation to the teachers on the finer aspects of contemporary music.

At this workshop, Wilson also encourages teachers to take on a more proactive role as in performing along together with their students.

As we progress into the second part of the workshop, I take over and pull out the newly designed Rhythm game cards. We talked about the usage of these cards and what steps to take to initiate students into a session of simple composition.

As the game progresses, things get more tense and exciting for these teachers because a forfeit has been imposed on the unsuccessful ones.

Just before we break for lunch, we have our group teachers' photo session. As you can see how each of them is proudly showing off their certificates of participation.

After lunch, we come back to the Music Fiesta sessions for the afternoon. Today there has been no MPA arranged for me so it is just the students performing pieces from Christopher Norton or Pam Wedgwood. There are three sessions arranged for.

Session 1

Session 2

and finally session 3

The whole activity ended around 7 in the evening and we were already almost wiped out, but overall, it was a very good day for us and we would like to thank Miriam for having us at her studio. She has also been most supportive of all our Rhythm MP activities.

Music Fiesta with Excellent Music, Jakarta

2008-12-11T00:54:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Thursday 20 November 2008

Today we are at Marie's studio called Excellent Music located at Kebun Jeruk. Her studio is quite nicely decorated with the blue clouds painted on the ceiling of her studio. We arrived at her studio early and already coffee was already ready and waiting for us.

So we downed our coffee and some light snacks and started with the teachers' workshop she had arranged for Wilson. As usual some of the teachers had prepared pieces from Christopher Norton's Concert Collection to perform for us.

After the performances, Wilson proceeded with the workshop to work on chords and adding tensions to chords and how to apply chords to a piece of music. Teachers were divided into groups of around 4 to work together on a set piece which they were allocated.

Interactive is the word and after you had the theory down, you need to put it into practice so as to be able to hear how it will sound. Here the teachers are playing out what they have written in order to hear how it sounds.

The whoe workshop went until lunch time and after we came back from lunch for the summing up there was another group photo session to remember this workshop.

Later in the afternoon, we had the participants for the MPA session. As usual the young little performers stepped up to the grand piano to perform their piece. It was a very good afternoon of music and to see some of these little kids performing for the first time in a public event was quite exciting. After the performances, each child was presented with their follow-up books and you could see that they were certainly looking forward to it.

After we were done with the little children, it was time for the older kids to show their stuff, and they were certainly good. They performed quite well and we all had quite an enjoyable afternoon of good music by these children. At the end, they each received a certificate of participation for their effort.

Of course, every time when Wilson is giving a workshop at Marie's studio, he has a very loyal fan in the most distinguished Ibu Latiffah, a very prominent music educator and writer for music education books.
She has always attended Wilson's workshops and she is a very open-minded person who believes strongly that music is a never ending learning journey.
Well, Ibu Latiffah, we wish you all the very best!!!!

Music Fiesta with Trinity Musik, Jakarta

2008-12-11T00:21:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Wednesday 19 November 2008

Today is Wednesday and we are now in Jakarta. It is in the morning and we are now in the distric of Pluit, north of Jakarta. This area is mostly chinese dominated and most of the residents are from Medan and it gives Wilson and me a chance to speak hokkien again with some of these people. The food around this area is also very much in similarity with the food of Penang.

We start our morning off with a round of workshops with the teachers of Trinity Music. They had prepared some of Pam Wedgwood's pieces to perform for us and after that Wilson gave some pointers as to how each performance could be improved and also how contemporary music should be interpreted. Here you can see Wilson showing how some areas of interpretation for contemporary music should be emphasied

As usual, any workshop would not be complete without a photo session to remember this occassion by. Incidentally, the owner Ms. Ellyn is the lady in black, second from the far right.

After the teacher workshop finished at around slightly after lunch, the students session started with the MPA performances with the children of Trinity Musik. At the end of the performances, they were rewarded with a follow-up book of their existing lesson book. You can see here, Ms. Ellyn giving out the books to the MPA children and just check out the happy faces!

Again, here you have another photo session of the children from the MPA session with their brand new Rhythm books by Lina Ng.
OH! That's me in the middle (back row) for those of you who still don't know me!!!

After we finished with the MPA session, it was time to bring out Wilson for the Music Fiesta where most of the students performes compositions from Pam Wedgwood and Christopher Norton's books. These children also received a certificate of participation from Rhythm MP Malaysia.

And what event would not be complete without a group photo of our most valuable hosts, Ms. Ellyn, and her husband Pak Arfusin of Trinity Musik. So here we have from left to right, Ms Yuni (Rhythm MP Jakarta), Ms. Ellyn, Wilson, Pak Arfusin, and yours truly.

Music Fiesta with Cendana Musik, Probolinggo

2008-12-10T22:46:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Sunday 16 November 2008

It was not a very long trip interms of distance from Surabaya, but the roads to Probolinggo were not very forgiving coz they were really narrow at certain places. The situation was further aggravated by it being Saturday night that we had to travel. There many vehicles on the road with families going on road trips to Surabaya. But we finally arrived in Probolinggo and this is quite a quaint town with a very laid-back pace. Today is Sunday and we are going to have our Music Fiesta and MPA in a "bioskop" which is actually a movie theatre.

We started our event with the MPA students performance first. After the performances, we conducted an activity which is a first considering we were using the Rhythm Gamecards for the first time with these children in Indonesia. We chose to use the note-value cards to do a bit of composition with the children.

After they finished their compositions, there was the phototaking session and as you can see from these pics, every child received a follow up book for their continued piano lessons.

Next item on the programme was the performances from the Music Fiesta participants of which we had two groups of children to perform. The following pic shows Wilson with the first group

and here again with the second group.

The lighting in a "bioskop" is not very camera friendly as you can see that some of these pics are quite dark. Anyway, after Probolinggo it will be back to Jakarta for the next few days.

Music Fiesta with Cadenza Music, Surabaya

2008-12-10T21:44:00.000+08:00

Dateline Saturday 15 November 2008

The Music Fiesta and MPA started with the MPA children taking centre stage first with their performances from the Piano Lesson Made Easy and Step by Step series first. Then it was followed very closely with the children from the Music Fiesta, as there was a limited time availble for us. This is a pic of one of the participants who performed for the Music Fiesta receiving some very valuable tips from Wilson.

After all the children performed their pieces and received their very important tips and encouragement from Wilson, they were presented with their follow-up books for the MPA and certificates of participation for the Music Fiesta participants.

This is the second batch of students that Cadenza Musik had prepared to perform for us on that afternoon.

And finally, these are the people who went against all odds to make this even happen in Surabaya where everything is centered around competition. Everyone in Surabays says that if you are not doing it in a competition style, you will not get any participation coz everyone wants a competition. Well, Cadenza Musik has proven these critics wrong and our congratulations and thanks goes to them.

After we finished Surabaya, it was straight to the waiting Kijang and another 2 hours drive to another small town called Probolinggo about 90 kilometers away.

Music Fiesta with Cadenza Music, Surabaya

2008-11-15T15:09:00.000+08:00

Dateline: Saturday, 15 November 2008

This is our second day in Surabaya, Indonesia and I am now here with Wilson Quah. We will be having a seris of workshops and recitals which will be carried out throughout several states in Indonesia. Right now at this moment we have not started yet but just to let you see what Surabaya is all about, this is the hotel reception where we are staying.

The venue of our activity is Pro Steak Manyar Ketoarjo and in this pic you will see our host Mr. Heintjie Gunawan with none other than Wilson Quah. It is really a nice and cosy place.

At this moment, that is all we have for now and until the activities start, I will try to keep posting as soon as I can get pics or also to get to a wi-fi access.

Keep checking this site for more updates soon.

This is Michael and Wilson, reporting live from Surabaya. Over and out.

Music Appreciation with Interlude

2008-11-07T16:09:00.000+08:00

09 September 2007

I know I am behind in my time but it's not my fault coz' I just received these photos and I would like to share them with you.

One thing I would like to say about Indonesians. They take their photos really seriously. Just have a look at the following pic. You can see that all their pics are labelled very carefully.

Ok, the lady next to me is not a student but a teacher and incidentally she was also my translator. And I must say, she did a very good job of translating and keeping up with me, considering the fact that sometimes people say that I talk too much and too fast....... remember?? "The Fast and Furious" ....

Talk about some exercise to get the blood going again. Well, this is not a therapy session but since there were parents around, so why not have some fun, since music was not supposed to be boring and dull. At least we managed to let parents feel that music is also about rhythm and I mean the body movement type...... and not the Rhythm MP kind of rhythm.

If you noticed by now, there are some paintings on the wall. Well this building was actually rented by Sidhi Olik and Lana (Sidhi's wife) and it is a sort of art display and the paintings are all painted by local artists. Incidentally, the paintings are also for sale. That is why the photo looks like an art auction.......

And here is the rest of the gang. These are the teachers from Interlude. That's me (third from the right, if you are facing the photo). Do you know which is the guitar teacher? No, not the blue shirt one but actually the brown checked shirt (third from the left). Everyone always thinks he's the guitar teacher. Is it the hair????

Music Appreciation with Cendana Muzik

2008-11-07T12:51:00.000+08:00

21 September 2008

This is my first trip to a place which is approximately 90km south-east of Surabaya called Probolingo. The trip there took me past a town called Porong (23km south of Surabaya) which has been flooded with mud flow coming out of the ground for the last three years or more. That is why travellers to Probolingo will be able to see stone walls as high as 5 to 6 meters, which were built to keep the mud flow out of the highway. I get this funny feeling that those walls will eventually become another historical monument of East Java.

At Probolingo, I was introduced to Hartanti, one of the owners of Cendana Muzik wh arranged a session of music appreciation for her school students. This is one of the many activities of Indonesia where the venue is actually a restuarant that is designed in a very traditional manner.

It was a beautiful setting for a wonderful evening of fun and music with the students from Cendana Muzik. So much so I will be back there again to do a series of MPA activities with the students from Cendana Muzik. Any way, when evening came, we got down to doing all kinds of fun activities working on rhythm, pitch and best of all a parent forum with the parents form that school.

I love parent forums best of all as it always helps to bridge the gap between teachers understanding the needs of their students and also we get to discuss on how parents can help to provide support and inspiration for their children. what I also like about parents in Indonesia, you can never be short of participation. Whenever you ask if they have something on their minds, you will be able to see lots of hands in the air.

Eventually, after the parent forum was over, all of us adjourned for dinner at the restaurant itself. There was no way dinner was late coz' it was Puasa Month!!!! You can be sure that food always came on time during puasa month.

After dinner, we adjourned back to Cendana Muzik for a full discussion about the how the sessions went and what parents expected from music teachers for their children.

Keep a look out for further posts on our activities from Indonesia.

Music Appreciation in EduArt, Indonesia

2008-11-07T00:08:00.000+08:00

Very often, children and parents will find themselves in a situation where they do not understand the full benefits of what music education cna provide their children or how this education is to be used. At Rhythm MP, we have always believed that music is to be enjoyed and appreciated and thus we always strive to provide the right information to parents and their children on the benefits of music education wherever they may be.

This was one of my earlier visits to Indonesia where Rhythm MP was working with one of our music outlets, EduArt.

EduArt is located at this township called Kelapa Gading. Incidentally, Kelapa Gading is also a shopping haven for shopaholics with malls like Artha Gading, Kelapa Gading Mall and recently Kelapa Gading Square (if I am not mistaken) and these malls ARE HUGE!!!!!

MPA at Sweet Harmony

2008-11-06T23:52:00.000+08:00

Location: Penang
Date: Friday, 30 May 2008

Rhythm MP would like to congratulate the following children for participating in our Music Performance and Appreciation activity:

Chau Keen Zhi, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Lim Jingmin, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Yeoh Zhi Ying, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Wong Weng Yee, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Chee Tsu Ling, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Agnes Chen, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Jonathan Tham Yao Ming, MPA-PLME1 Level 1

Lim Chun Huan, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Loh Long Xiang, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Chuah Wen Shi, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Chuah Ri Faye, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Vanessa Tan Li Tse, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Wong Tek Loong, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Ng Hei Min, MPA-PLME2 Level 2

Loh Long Zheng, MPA-PLME3 Level 3

Oh Chia Yee, MPA-PLME3 Level 3

Yip Wen Xuan, MPA-PLME3 Level 3

Wong Weng Yean, MPA-PLME3 Level 3

Lim Chun Kai, MPA-PLME3 Level 3

Chin Zheng Lam, MPA-SBSPC1 Step1

Cray Ch'ng Kai-Ian, MPA-SBSPC2 Step2

Chin Zheng Yee, MPA-SBSPC3 Step3

Music Performance and Appreciation helps children to explore the various aspects of the music learning journey and also grooms and moulds children into better performing musicians. In this session, all the students performed a piece and some pointers were given as to how they could improve on their presentation.

If you can see, that's me in the green tee-shirt sharing a light moment with the kids. Sometimes you can never know what is going to happen and the kind of answers kids can give you. You never know!

Anyway, it was a very fun time for the kids although it did not start that way. When we started, you could see that there were some scared faces, like going for an exam!!! And incidentally, when you say, "prepare a piece for a recital", why is it that everybody always thinks it's going to be like an exam????? Can't you just have some fun? Sometimes we just need to chill out and enjoy our music. Please, please enjoy your music and your life will change.......

Chapter 12: Enjoying the musical career

2008-09-01T17:30:00.003+08:00

As a music teacher, I must ensure that I keep myself updated with the latest technologies, updates of new methods of teaching and keep up my playing as well. That was just what I did.

When I began as an amateur teacher, I ensured I had an hour in between my classes to keep up my practices because I knew that I would be too exhausted to do any more practices at the end of the day. I also ensured that I kept up with the latest news and reports about teaching, classical music, music literature, etc. Those were the pre-internet days. Keeping up with all the latest happenings in the music world gave me great pleasure in my work and my journey as a musician. I was aware of many music teachers and performers who burned themselves out quick and left the career with no intention of returning. That is sad!

I also strived to ensure that I was fresh in my thoughts and ideas. My prayer ministry that began recently through my music ministry saw the surge of new power and new areas flowing for me. Being willing to learn, to share and to give, great gifts and ideas poured in abundance and I found myself totally immersed in the world of music with such intense joy, gratification and contentment. I knew it was totally a gift from God I had used rightly for Him and all His plans for me! I enjoyed my entire journey and will always do so with greater intensity as each day passes by.

Dr. Geraldine Law-Lee, Tue 05/08/2008

Step By Step The Fun Way Series
Step By Step Piano Course The Fun Way Step 1
Step By Step Piano Course The Fun Way Step 2
Step By Step Piano Course The Fun Way Step 3
Step By Step The Junior Technique Reinforcer Step 4
Step By Step to Piano Lessons The Fun Way Master Series 1
Step By Step to Piano Lessons The Fun Way Master Series 2

Chapter 11: Harvesting the fruits of labouring in the field of music

2008-08-04T17:01:00.003+08:00

Quite many years ago, music as a career in Malaysia seemed to be only for those who couldn’t achieve higher academic levels, besides being a field totally for the artistic. Music has taken the world by storm in the field of performance, especially in the area of pop and jazz. The classical arena has narrowed, due to the emergence of world music, gospel music, contemporary music and folk music. Technology has opened up the world of music production through digital recording media and computer music. The creation of amazing music software has lead to a whole new world of composition, arrangement and production.

I was again in luck to hit the wave for the music world I was in. I started a higher learning academy for music students to pursue their degrees, and this opened up all the areas of education, technology and opportunities for me. I wanted a place of music making, teaching, performing, enjoyment, a place where music teachers can enjoy being together, working together and excelling in music.

Again, when all that was achieved, I sought to fly higher. This made me realize that God was really empowering me. With this realization of God’s love for me, all things faded in comparison with His plans and His love for me. I had found my goal. I had found an oasis with a lifetime abundance of satisfaction, of joy, of immense wealth, of the joy of sharing. Indeed, discovering that one derives great satisfaction in one’s daily work, and to discover one has a truly rewarding career is indeed like having found the world’s greatest treasure.

Dr. Geraldine Law-Lee, Sat 19/07/2008

Click here for a new song on CDE