UGLYM3N = GAYM3N

I always feel honoured and really happy when invited to give musical talks / seminars to all music lovers. These seminars make me learn more, and give me the opportunity to share my musical knoweldge. Most importantly, I get to know how others think about my ideas and in fact, at times, the audience would become my teachers as I absorb what they tell me about their musical ideas.

One of the talks i enjoyed most is the annual UUM 7.9 Musical Training Camp, this is the 3rd consecutive year I spoke at the camp. Every year there will be new faces coming in and I am really delighted to see these Uni students gathered to make something good both for themselves and others, that is ~ music creation.

A brief introduction to UUM 7.9 club. The club comprises many music enthusists and they come from all over Malaysia (Uni student studying in UUM). They organise weekly music gatherings, annual music training camps, and also song creation competitions and so on. One sad thing is 7.9 is not officially recognised by UUM, thus, they faced problems when organising events, trips, and many problematic incidents has happenned… which i will NOT disclose here, or else my post will be deleted again by the SSH cencor board. Inspite of all the trouble they faced, 7.9 is one club which i truely respect.
Salute!

The day was cloudy, windy, very nice weather, as I drove from my house to about 20km away to Alor Janggus. The venue is located deep deep inside from the main road. A small, narrow but very long road lead to the place where I was going to speak.

You can see the house where I was driving to, far far away from here.

After driving (slowly) about 5-7 minutes from the main road, the narrow road between the padi fields lead you to the seaside.

There were quite a number of stalls selling food and some groceries which i did not take any photo, since i was driving. The road was already so narrow, the stalls there adding to the absolute congestion where I had to reversed my car a few times to let on-coming cars passed by before i can proceed.

This photo was taken when i was on the way back, earlier it was packed with people, relaxing under the roof, puffing, chatting…

And, another 4 minutes of driving finally brought me to the exact place.

I was late by 20 minutes and everyone was already waiting, so sorry
Any familiar faces in the above photo? Jan2, Sheh Hwa, Adrian….

I must admit i am not good at remembering faces which I just saw once, in addition, there were over 30 people since last year at the previous camp. So, i could hardly recall some names though they looked famliar. The members there consists of both seniors and juniors.

The topic of the day was only one ~ How / Ways of Composing Melody.

I decided not to include music arrangement and basic recording as i had bad experience in the last two years running way over 3 hours from the allocated 2 hours time.

I tried to involve every one in the program, made them interact with the flow and i truely enjoyed my time there, and am sure they had a good time too.

This one for the club ~ All the Best in your Music (actually is kesi kesi promoting Uglymen, shhhh…)

Glad you guys enjoyed it.

One thing i always like to stress on is to pickup music theory. Although it is not a must to learn it in order to write a song. But the advantages of knowing it is countless. Many juniors who joined the club having zero music theory knowledge were having problem to understand when i touched on chord progression, hook, key, lyric synchronizing…

The talk ended in singing Love Bubble Tea, I divided all the members into 3 groups, and each group making a sound of percussion insturment, mouth as Bass drum, claps as snare, and mouth as hi-hat. It was simple, but they did it really nicely.

and 7.9 handed their club T shirt as a gift to me:

I have 2 of their T shirts which i never wear, bcos…… i am too fat la.

Thanks to everyone at the camp, and let’s get a big one for the album:

Went back at 1.45pm. See you guys 26th January 2007.