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Taking the stage with Elea

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Adventures in San Francisco, 29th February – 17th March 2012

Imagine knowing a fellow blogger online, but she’s thousands of kilometers away. But yet, there’s still this sense of closeness because we’ve been sending the occasional encouraging messages to each other, on top of reading each other’s blogs since 2005. (That’s 7 whole years.)

So the opportunity to (finally) meet comes along, we seized it! I finally met Elea during the last few days of my trip to San Francisco.

Elea!
Elea, me and Jess.

It was an awesome night out … in fact, possibly the latest we’ve ever stayed out throughout our entire US jaunt. (We were quite wary of staying out too late because it was just us two girls travelling together.) It began with dinner at South Park Cafe. For the life of me, I can’t seem to remember what I had there, but they had beyond decent food and I’d definitely return if I am in San Francisco again.

Then, Elea lowered the boom. Well, we did plan to have a karaoke night … but the sly one decided that it’d be at an open-stage karaoke joint instead of the usual closed-door, individual-room karaokes we were used to!

My jaw fell all the way down to the centre of the earth.

Weeeelll, part of me felt a bit of trepidation at the prospect of performing in public (unprepared, no less), but the other part felt excitement. Based on my past experiences, I always experienced a strange high when on stage (despite bombing big time nearly 100% of the time thus far). I didn’t mind experiencing that high again, but was (naturally) worried of making a vocal mess of myself.

What I needed was a little push. And Elea provided that push. :P

Later within the karaoke joint, I was further consoled by the fact that hardly anyone else in the vicinity could sing well. I’ve heard mangled versions of “Barbie girl” and “Rolling in the deep” among many others, save for about two girls with decent voices. Considering that, I highly doubt the audience would care to judge any further. I felt emboldened.

So, Elea and I took the stage together.

Taking the stage!
Performing “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga.
(Apologies for the quality, this is a screen grab from a video.)

Followed by a solo round by each of us. The wait for our turns were tremendously long, and we practically had to bribe the deejay to bump our songs to the front of the queue. Despite that, we waited for close to an hour and a half to take the stage.

Definitely a night I’ll never forget, though! Thanks for everything, Elea, and hope we’ll get to meet again! (This time, in Singapore? (;)

Impresario Auditions: My stage, my moment

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After having taken a break from all things music-related for close to three years, I decided to audition for Impresario 2012 a week ago.

It was one of the more challenging decisions I’ve made recently. The weeks preceding the deadline had seen me swinging drastically from being “really keen to give it a go” to “meh, I really don’t have the time“.

Eventually, I swung back to the former and registered for an audition exactly on the registration closing date, with zero expectations.

It’s just for a bit of fun and excitement.

Surprisingly, I was barely nervous when I’d usually be a wreck. The whole thing went swimmingly well – my voice was steady (although my hands were trembling slightly) and completely on pitch, I added as much emotion into the song (as I could handle) and made the necessary eye contact.

In short, everything went much better than it did when I rehearsed at home.

The organizing team captured a picture of me just before I entered the audition room … with my big grin and all (and lookin’ just a little bit sleepy).

Impresario 2012
Photo credit to Impresario 2012.

I left the audition room grinning and feeling completely ecstatic. I wanted to give it my best shot, and I managed to. I’ve had my moment. I’m happy enough.

The audition results are due to be released anytime soon. Whether I’m in or out, it doesn’t matter. The experience of the audition itself (and the high I felt for the entire evening after the audition) was already well worth it.

I’m glad I decided to try out.

Unrelated, but I happen to think this contestant is really pretty.

My first attempt singing in a bar

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So, I was kinda prodded by my friends to jam with the resident guitarist/singer at O’Learys Bar this evening. It was a really impromptu thing. I eventually gave in, despite my indignation because I thought well, it’d be fun.

I tripped and fell while going on stage, right in view of everyone in the pub.

Never mind. In response, I cracked a feeble joke about how the floor loves me so much. (If I remembered correctly, hardly anyone laughed.)

I sang two songs – a solo of Sara Barielle’s ‘Love Song’ and a duet with the Bar’s resident singer of Colbie Caliat and Jason Mraz’s ‘Lucky’.

The first song was a struggle. The guitarist and I were playing/singing in two completely different keys. Then we’d notice the difference and attempt to compensate, only to overcompensate, undercompensate or compensate at the same time in different directions (i.e. he goes one key up while I sing one key lower). It was a complete mess.

The second one was much, much better. In fact, everyone said it was pretty good. I’m still not very convinced but ah, well.

Deep concentration
In deep concentration. Yes, I wore a dress that day. Rare sight, I know, but stop gawking.

Once thing for sure, I definitely had fun.

One big takeaway though – no matter how familiar you are with a song and its lyrics, don’t think you can get up on stage anytime and wing it with a live guitarist/band because it is totally not the same at all. It is much more difficult than singing to a minus-one version.

No kidding.

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