Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

10 June 2011

Covers and Samples

Filed under: I Wonder,Rant — Tags: , , — Ben @ 2:23 pm

When it comes to current popular music, I usually prefer to listen to the longest, most original version of a song. Sometimes these songs are sampled or covered by others; I tend to steer clear from those (except in certain tasteful circumstances).

One example about duration. I have the Sister Sledge’s 8-minute long hit single ‘We Are Family‘ on my iPod. It’s far better than the 3-minute version that is often played on the radio. If you search through the iTunes Store for this song, you will find plenty of covers. Yuck.

It can be said that the radio has toned down the appreciation and creativity of popular music. Short versions, ads in between plays and countless and tasteless cover versions and samples. This is an extreme generalisation, I know.

But given all that, I must confess that I have a weakness.

Last week, I bought the album ‘The Very Best of Supertramp‘. When I listened to ‘The Logical Song’, my mind almost instantly thought of the version done by the German happy hardcore group Scooter. See the YouTube links for comparison.

Despite trying to block out the Scooter version from my mind in favour of the original, I couldn’t. Maybe it’s because I currently enjoy some forms of dance music. Who knows? Mind you, I still thoroughly enjoy the original. Often, they are the best version out of the lot. The only reaction for me is to simply laugh it off. *cue laughter*

This is a behaviour that will linger in my mind for sometime, perhaps until I get tired of hearing Scooter’s version.

In the meantime, back to exam study. Here’s another pair of songs to fill in the time.

20 January 2011

Review: LIVE at Sydney Festival 2011

Filed under: Arts,review — Tags: , , , , , , — Ben @ 8:00 am

The concept for LIVE seems so simple: musicians, black and white, solo performance. But after viewing a few of the 20 performances on show, you’ll realise that there is more behind what you see.

LIVE is a project by Jasmin Tarasin to attempt to study ‘the art of performing’. I have to agree that large-scale performances that musicians do these days have lost their ‘intimacy’, and Tarasin does well to bring us right up close to these artists. Showing the performances in black and white removes the distraction of key elements of a performance such as their dress, and instruments.

The performance that represented Tarasin’s vision the best was that of Julian Hamilton, one half of The Presets. Hamilton’s performance had no instrumentation, so all you could focus on was his singing voice. His vocal part from ‘People’ is vastly different to that on the album recording, and it shows the song from another perspective.

By watching long enough, the subtle differences between performers are apparent, and interesting to watch. At one stage, three guitarists were pictured side-by-side. Each had a different way of playing their guitar. You could notice the positioning of the guitar, and their style of playing.

LIVE is a rather inexpensive way of seeing 20 songs from 20 different artists. I would highly recommend you to see it before it closes this weekend.

LIVE is open until January 23, at the lower part of Sydney Town Hall. Tickets are $15/$12.

PS: I’m volunteering at LIVE handing out headphones on the 23rd between 5pm and 7:30pm. Come visit!

25 December 2008

After Europe

Filed under: Reflection — Tags: , , — Ben @ 3:52 pm

Apologies for the lack of posts for a month. I blame the Europe tour for that.

Yes, that’s right. I have just come back from a 20 day tour of Europe and the UK with the Barker Choir and Orchestra. I could write on for ages, but I think that it is best captured in photos. Below is the set of photos from my flickr page.

There are more photos to come; I still have not fully uploaded the best images.

There will be a new Chat soon to recount the last month or so. Thanks so much for supporting and reading!

12 September 2008

Observations of the Creative Scale

Filed under: I Wonder — Tags: , , — Ben @ 6:54 pm

This year, I have encountered the ‘other side’ of what I call the ‘Creative Scale’. One side is music, the other side is drama and somewhere in the middle is design.

At Barker, people usually are associated with one side of the scale. Some are good music, others drama. But some do both.

Today, I observed a glimpse of the drama side. I have been a music person for a long time now, and seeing into drama was interesting.

As someone told me today, “We are always busy busy busy… it never stops, and so doesn’t you.”

This year, music has been like that. For me that has been all the choir stuff, Battle of the Choirs, and the tour coming up in December. I would not be able to imagine myself associating with drama as well.

What’s great at Barker, is that we have super talented people doing all the drama stuff, as well as some doing music. There are few who do both, though.

“The stations are manned, and they don’t need more people.” says Me.

1 August 2008

Battle of the Choirs: The Last Hurrah

Filed under: Attended,Reflection — Tags: , , , — Ben @ 1:44 pm

Friday July 25. It’s Barker Swings night, and the choir will be performing.

Tonight felt special, not because I was wearing the red and black for the last time, but because it was the last time we were performing from our ‘battle’ repertoire. JAllington, our conductor, called it “the ridiculous”, but we all loved it. That night started at 5pm, the rehearsal.

Nostalgia filled the room, as we were all moving to the music that we sung, what felt like, many months ago. Then, the choreography was changed to fit the longer version of “Say a Little Prayer”. For an hour, we went through moves with O’Brien, but in the end it was what she described “three songs mashed up into one”. We all felt good, now it would be up to the performance.

Five hours later, we were just about to enter the hall for our part of Swings. Everyone was hyped; it couldn’t get better than this. The Big Band started to play; we ran on, the crowd loved us. About five minutes later, it was over. Our last performance as the ‘battle’ choir was done. As we left the stage, I felt happy and slightly sad. Battle of the Choirs had been a great experience for all of us. Now, it was back to our normal repertoire and schedule.

Working for TV is very different to what many people think it is. On our filming days, there were many rehearsals to get the best camera positions, basically to get everything right. Filming 40 minutes of footage took about three hours! I can’t stress how unique and fulfilling this experience was.

23 January 2008

(At time of writing) Four short days…

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , , , — Ben @ 8:09 pm

… until I go to music camp. For me, music camp is an annual thing. A time when all musicians from my school gather somewhere out of school to enjoy music. My friend Tom says it is “the best camp of the year.”

Music camp is held several days before school officially starts. You could say it cuts my holiday short. I don’t find it that way. I see it as an opportunity to get back into school routine, especially after two months of holiday. But what has been bugging me more than ever is knowing that summer has ended and it is only 300 or so days before the next summer.

Summer is a time where I rest after a (successful) school year. Each day, I feel that I have not fully recovered from the year (and why should I?, I have two months off!). But all good things must come to an end, and so here I am.

Over the years, I have tried to find a way to ease back into normal life. I still haven’t found the perfect solution but I have managed to do some things.  Have you got any suggestions on how to get back to normal life after a two month holiday?

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