Music for Life!

Composer/Lyricist: Lydia Ang  |  Arranger: Edwin Toh  |  Vocalist: Melissa Poon

The untitled theme song for my polytechnic's drama production of J B Priestley's "An Inspector Calls".

Singapore Polytechnic officially launched the brand new School of Communication, Arts and Social Sciences (CASS) with an evening with drama and charity on 23 April 2008. To celebrate the launch of the new school, a group of Drama Appreciation students took to the stage with literary master J B Priestley's suicide mystery "An Inspector Calls". The story revolves around the Rai family and the unfolding revelations following a police inspector's incessant interrogation into a suicide case.

I was involved as the sound designer for this play.

An Inspector Calls - Behind the Scenes

An Inspector Calls - my FaceBook photo album

This was my final assignment for my diploma course's "Arranging" module.

Singapore Polytechnic Theatre Compass performed several Christmas musicals at children's homes, senior citizens' homes and community libraries in December 2007. I arranged and sequenced a series of minus one Christmas songs to complement their drama and dance, some of which I feature below. The tracks were sequenced in Logic Pro 7 and mastered in ProTools. Some of the tracks were deliberately kept simple in instrumentation/arrangement because the primary aim of the minus ones was to support the vocalist, not steal the limelight away from him.

The Chipmunk Song

Jingle Bell Rock

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Blue Christmas (sung by Melissa Poon)

This was done as an assignment for my diploma course's "Recording & Mixing Techniques 3" module.

Maia Lee is a Singaporean singer and television artiste who is best known for her provocative, liberal style and personality. She was also a finalist in the popular talent contest Singapore Idol.

My artistic direction for the remix of her song “Shy” is to portray the artiste as shy on the outside, but wild on the inside. I wanted the style of the music in the remix to complement and reinforce what the lyrics actually meant or implied in its subtext.

Even though the song was introvertive, I felt that I could use the music to enhance the artiste’s credibility as a versatile singer. As a result, the remix is a mixture of elements of different genres, namely pop, rock, techno, ambient and world music.

Vocalist: Jasmine Lim  |  Transcribed and sequenced by: Edwin Toh

“Voyage” is the 28^th single (from the album “Rainbow”) released by Ayumi Hamasaki on September 26, 2002. The song had an extended music video to promote it – a short film titled Tsuki ni Shizumu (or Sinking into the Moon), which featured Hamasaki acting for the first time since her idol days. It also bagged the Gold Prize at The Japan Record Awards in 2002 and the Song of the Year at the Japan Gold Disc Awards in 2003. Singer-songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki is one of the most prolific and influential Japanese pop singers in Japanese music history. Dubbed the “Empress of J-Pop”, her albums have sold more than 46 million copies. 

I chose this song because it first struck me as a song that stood out from most of the other J-Pop songs I knew, having seamlessly and successfully merged the genre of Pop with a style imitating the “Classical” period. The rich harmonious texture of the string sections in the song also tantalised my senses.

The transcription of the song “Voyage” was not scored or written out in any medium at all. The closest similarity was the lyrics of the song that I got from the Internet so that my vocalist could follow it.

Instead, the “transcription” process I used went like this:

1. I listened intently to the song, one small portion at a time, and identified the instruments used.
2. I mentally took note of where each instrument was in the sonic spectrum, and their tone colours (timbres). I then attempted to find a sound that most closely matched the sound of the instrument in the original song.
3. Having found a sound that matched closely, I listened again to the song and took note of the actual pitch and rhythmic contour of a particular instrument. When I was confident enough, I recorded my playing “live”, along with what the instrument was playing in the actual song.
4. I solo-ed each track after recording to see if it was satisfactory enough.

Production was done mainly on Cubase SX using a keyboard, with the vocal recording and mixing done on ProTools. I bounced each MIDI track in Cubase out to WAV format so I could transfer them to ProTools (each track with its correct placement).

Project Background:
 

In support of Creative Community Singapore’s (CCS) aim to create new opportunities and inspiration in the creative industry, 77th Street and Virtuoso Arts organized the 1st National Inter-School Artiste & Repertoire Challenge 2006/7.

The project proposes to groom Artiste and Repertoire talents for the music recording industry, as well as to raise awareness for the various supporting creative industries such as recording engineering, music arranging, artiste management, hairstyling, fashion, marketing, designing, etc. “Artiste and Repertoire” (A&R) is essentially the research and development (R&D) arm of a record company. In addition to being a talent scout, the A&R person is also the crucial link to getting the music record produced: from choosing the songs among the repertoire and helping to decide whether an artiste is going to do a cover, to deciding which producers are most suitable for the artiste and finding engineers and sessionists for the album.

During the challenge, each team member was assigned a specific role in A&R, and underwent mentorship with industry professionals to learn the art of the trade. After the training, the teams completed different tasks such as talent scouting and grooming their artiste, and produced and promoted their artiste’s album. Based on their performance in these tasks, five teams were selected to go into the Grand Finals. This is where teams promoted their artiste in a concert setting, as well as showcased their individual works.

Team 6FM (Six For Music) from Singapore Polytechnic

As part of the Artiste & Repertoire Challenge 2006/7, I arranged the song "Taller, Stronger, Better" for my group's artiste, Riza Hamizan. Originally composed and sung by Guy Sebastian, the first Australian Idol, the song is an inspirational one about appreciating what life has to offer and to go for one's dreams. I produced two versions of the song (one original and one acoustic) for the Grand Finals of the competition, held at Ngee Ann Polytechnic Convention Centre on 1 April 2007. My team, 6FM (Six For Music), emerged as the champion in the "Tertiary" category of the competition. You can view the posters I designed for the Grand Finals here.

Taller, Stronger, Better (6FM's Original Version)

Taller, Stronger, Better (Music Video)

(video currently unavailable)

In addition to the music, we filmed a music video to complement the song.

The idea behind the music video runs around the story of a young girl who aspires to make it big as a dancer and to also fulfill the dreams of her late mother. The latter, a gifted dancer herself, taught and exposed her daughter to the world of dancing and had high hopes for her as she believed her daughter had the potential to go far. The young girl will be taking her final ballet exams but however, due to an unfortunate car accident that roped her mum of her life, she was left alone to face the various challenges. With her dogged determination, she managed to pass her ballet exams with flying colours. In the music video, the Artiste is singing the story of the young dancer and acts like a Guardian Angel to her, standing by himself, watching her cope with the challenges and silently giving her his earnest support. The inspiration behind the song “Taller, Stronger, Better” is strongly narrated in its lyrics and is carefully depicted in this simple yet touching music video.

Here are two tracks I created just after I got acquainted with how Apple's GarageBand worked. 

Fly Me To The Moon

Visa Card Theme Remix