Re-visiting My Musical Roots

Being a part of the Alive Not Dead has got me seriously thinking about going back to my musical roots... on Wednesday (13 Aug), I decided to re-visit my old music school... Yamaha.

Yamaha Music School has branches all over Singapore, including one in my neighbourhood at Marine Parade. When I was 5 years old, my grandma wanted my parents to give me music lessons, so they did. I was enrolled in the Junior Music Course (JMC) at the Yamaha Music School in Marine Parade, and my parents used to attend class with me, mainly my Dad, 'cos he's the more musical one.

When I finished JMC, my teacher spoke to my parents and suggested I go on to take up either the Piano Music Course or the Electone Music Course (EMC). My parents are just ordinary people, and music lessons don't come cheap, but they let me go on to take the Electone Music Course. I was to take Group Lessons, because they were more affordable, and at the time, no one knew how far I would go in music anyways. At this point, music was just one of my extra-curricular activities, something I could do outside of just studying in school.

I wasn't far into my Group Lessons, when my EMC teacher decided to speak to my parents, because she felt that I would probably do better taking up Individual Lessons. But Individual Lessons aren't cheap, they are even more costly than Group Lessons, but the huge advantage of that would be that I could make progress at my own pace, and the teacher's attention could be focused on me during the entire hour in the studio.

I seem to recall that my parents had a discussion about this with my grandma, 'cos I was just 6 years old at the time, and this was a pretty big deal for a kid of that age. It was my gutsy grandma who threw her support behind me, financially and otherwise, and told my parents to let me take Individual Lessons. She would help to pay for them. They cost about SGD$100-odd dollars back then, I don't remember the exact figure now. But with SGD$100 back in the 1980s, you could probably buy a Barbie Doll house, or a few weeks worth of groceries for the whole family!

It was my grandma who also bought me an Electone, so that I could practice at home. It cost about SGD$4000, which was quite a princely sum back in the 1980s, but even then it was just a lower-medium range model. The top model cost about SGD$12000 back then, if I remember correctly, so the one my grandma got for me was just a little higher than the classroom model for the Group Lessons.

Within about a year of having Individual Lessons, my teacher decided I should start competing in music competitions. So I started my competition days by playing "Windmills Of Your Mind". This was my first ever competition song at the ripe old age of 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAAUnZ01M8k

I chose the clip above, because it is closest to how I remember playing it when I was 7 years old, except that I wasn't playing it on a piano, but on a Yamaha Electone that was more expensive than the one I had at home.

Being inexperienced in playing at competition level, I didn't even get to sniff the final round of competition at my first go. The final round is usually played on a nation-wide level in a big concert hall like the one at the old World Trade Centre, or Kallang Theatre, or Singapore Conference Hall (now the home of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra). Back then, it was called the Singapore Electone Festival, and only the 4 or 5 musicians who made it to the final round at each level would get to play in it.

There were 3 levels to compete at... Junior, Intermediate and Senior levels. If you were younger than 12, you would be playing in the Junior Level. If you were in your teens, you would be playing at the Intermediate Level. I'm not sure how old you had to be to play at the Senior Level, but one of my teachers played at Senior Level and she was in her 20s at the time.

I hate to cut short my musical journey, but I have to head out to meet an old friend now... will continue this when I'm able to get online again... in the meantime, enjoy the "Windmills Of Your Mind"!