Events : Marty Friedman Guitar Clinic

Hi all.

Should have posted this a long time ago.

Attended a guitar clinic in May by ex Megadeth lead guitarist Marty Friedman. He's pretty famous in the metal scene and is well known for his melodious playing in his former band. He's got an uncanny sense of melody creation which goes out of the box, at least according to my opinion... which is a nice contrast coz Megadeth's like all fast and furious so Marty's soloing gives a breath of fresh air to the cocophony of banging drums and scratching guitars.




Marty doing his thing on his new custom Ibanez





Marty jamming with Paul Daniel (S'pore). Paul's a very seasoned player and he certainly did give Marty a run for his playing!





My friends and I with Marty! Thank God you can't see the platform shoes that he was wearing...


Another striking feature of Marty's his hair... think he shares the same hairstylist as Kenny G... watch the video below and you'll know what i mean... heh...

God bless.




Kenny vs Marty video!

Features : Canon in D

Hi all,

Sorry for lack of updates. Been busy with church conference.

This week I'm featuring the progress of one of my student John Julius aka JJ Mangosteen (that's what I call him affectionately). Below is a video of him playing a classical piece called "Canon in D" using his Ibanez electric guitar running through his Korg multieffects and Samick amplifier.




"Canon in D" by JJ


Profile
Name: John Julius
Age: 15
Location: Bukit Batok
School: Assumption English Secondary
Experience: 2+ yrs

Am so proud of him. He has improved tremendously since I first taught him about a year ago. He learns fast and practices hard. A rockstar in the making! Go JJ go! :)

If he can do it, you can do it too! ;)

God bless.

Features : The Trio - Road To The Promised Land

Running in tandem with the Parade of School (see previous post) is the Talentine which is one of the hightlights of my church's 3 day long youth conference. There are many categories in this competition such as solo (vocals), group (vocals), solo (instrumental), group (instrumental), drama and dance. I managed to get into the finals under the group The Trio in the instrumental group category.




A typical Trio practice


The story of the Trio traces back all the way to 2004 when Jason Ang (Erhu) and I formed the Double J to try audition for the talentine. Unfortunately there wasn't any intrumental category so we weren't selected. This year there's an inclusion of Paul T. (percussion).

Jason Ang's amazing in his erhu. Just hum him any tune and he's able to play it for you on the spot! I'm always buffled by how these players find those notes without any frets??? Hahaha. Paul's another amazing musician. Give him any surface and he can tap out interesting rythyms for ya! We've even tried letting him play on a Ikea paper basket and it still sounds good! Paul's from India and spent a few years learning Indian music so he's also able to come out with many tunes that's simple on hearing but complex on inspection. The complexity's got to do with the pitching and timing of the notes. The next time you watch some Bollywood movie do take note of the music! It's more than just about bollies running around coconut trees! :P

Anyhow, the video below was taken during our practice just before the audition. We had lots of fun playing this piece! It has evolved to much longer than this to date. Would love to show ya a video of it someday. Check out this audition version for now! :)




The Trio practicing "Road To The Promised Land"

Events : Bring It On @ GuitarTalk!

Some of you must be wondering just what on earth is Mr Jason so busy with that he can't even spend some time posting his O' so lovely blogs??? The answer can be found in the videos below.

I've been activated to help out in my church's youth conference by taking part in the Parade of Schools (just a nicer name for cheerleading competition). Yes, Mr guitarman has yet again took on the challenge of being a cheerleader. For those of you who thinks cheerleading's all about pom poms then I can only conclude that you're from Mars & beyond. Ever since the enlightenment of the show Bring It On, cheerleading has been a showcase of many high level stunts that are limited only by our imaginations. Just in case you ARE from mars, take a look at the videos of a Magnum Force (national champion team from Ngee Ann) demonstration.




Magnum Force demo part 1





Magnum Force demo part 2


These guys are amazing. There are only six of them during a demo for the participants and yet their stunts, energy & spirit are more than all the latter combined together!

My team's suppose to represent NTU (Nanyang Technological University) and we've been training ever since after exams. We worked hard with trainings on all the weekdays and I'm happy and proud of what the guys had achieved. Check out the videos of our routines below.




NTU routine part 1





NTU routine part 2


There were many mistakes made and some of the stunts didn't take place due to some of us who got lost in the timings. Nevertheless, considering that we had only practiced for a month I would think that it's already pretty impressive. Must really thanks those coaching us for pushing us beyond our own limitations. Some of the routines made our jaw dropped when we tried it for the first time. But the impossible is indeed possible and all it took was some guts from the girls and abit of strength from the guys.

Another highlight for my involvement was the music. I had a great time piecing in the music. It went through many many nights of editing before the music was finalized. Brought some interesting perspective to the cheerleading genre. If you've noticed the Magnum Force video, their music had lots of accents using bells, gunshots, alarms, whips, etc. Not to mention the layered drum loops behind giving that fast & driving feel. These are not easy to emulate. I take my hats off those people who came out with these music. RESPECT!