First post - The Introduction

Hey everyone. =)

Why I started this blog

I was trying to help teach the RJC Jazz Club people on how to really learn how to appreciate jazz, and posted a few things up on Facebook to get the guys going. Then when I showed it to my friend Lianglin he advised me to bring this onto a blog such that it'll be more open and more people can check out my stuff.

I've seen a number of blogs started by Singaporean "musicians" who are trying to teach. I shall be blunt about this - most of them skim the surface and miss out the most important points about playing music - the music itself. They go through theory with all the little facts and all and try to keep all the true information for lessons when they get to teach the students (their aim is to earn money afterall).

However I think that with the internet being so wide, most of these information can be gotten off the net through a more professional blog like AllAboutJazz and other sites like that so it completely defeats the purpose.

I may not know it all, but I believe my experience in teaching people at NUS Jazz Band and RJC Jazz Club has helped me learn what is important in analysing music and how to go about fully analysing and learning music such that you can appreciate it. No artist can start creating art without actually appreciating other art. It's like a writer who never read in his/her life trying to write a novel. It's a brilliant attempt once in a yellow polka dotted blue cheese moon, but most of the time, we know how it turns out.

What are you doing here?

My aim here is to share with you my knowledge and my approach to dealing with listening to music. Going through a systematic and analytical approach was my way of gradually understanding different types of music better, and it helped me appreciate cross-genres. As most people start off by listening to pop, poprock and all that stuff, so I'll be using crossovers which tend to be more related to those genres (i.e. smooth jazz, japanese fusion, pop-jazz etc.) but from time to time I'll be adding some stuff meant for metal/heavy rock/ethnic music/others just to spice up.

I hope to update this blog with a new topic weekly in an attempt to analyse a piece of music or share new knowledge. As knowledge is very vast and to really go into the nitty gritty details will take forever, I hope to be able to categorise my posts along the way; but this is just as much a learning process for me to teach as it is for you to learn about appreciating music.

Why analyse? Shouldn't music be felt?

Music should always be felt. But like with everything in life, a trained person is able to appreciate the finer details even fuller. If everyone was able to understand music at a deeper level, there is much joy and other feelings to be extracted. Of course as usual everyone brings the idea of how thinking too much when you're listening affects your true perception of the music.

Remember that what I'm offering here is a new way of perceiving music. I'm teaching you how to analyse music to begin with and find the beauty of it. When your mind is trained towards that direction, you can critically analyse and assess a piece of music without actually actively doing so. It opens up a whole new world of advanced sounding music by learning the basic idioms, rhythmic ideas and a whole host of other things which makes music that much more exciting.

It also helps you understand why you might be playing the exact same thing as some legend but it just doesn't sound right. Or very often why some people sound so amazingly mechanical while some others sound just so beautiful; every note that he touches is like butter.

For classical players: What really defines a musician of equal technical skill level to be better than another musician? Sensitivity, touch, taste, can actually be found within all of this.

We're not adding prescriptive labels or finding "rules", but by listening to great musicians, we learn what is beautiful and what is great, and once you know that, you know what to work towards. And also it gives you a great idea on the diversity of what's good - so diverse that you cannot believe it - while it shows you more about yourself and the things around you. Because it is art appreciation, you'd find many new things.

Conclusion

Feel free to comment and bring on healthy discussions. Do not take all comments too seriously as we're all here to learn. Will be posting up some music for everyone to comment on from time to time as well, like little quizzes. No right answers, always down to how you analyse it.

Suggestions

1. Don't take my posts way too seriously. They are my opinions and my comments. Meant to be shared and discussed. I might be a bit quick to comment sometimes but all in the name of discussion not to put another down. Sharing of personal philosophies will inevitably surface as we're all dealing with something that I believe is a form of art, where life philosophies come into the picture, and I will inevitably share much of my ideas on life.

2. Get yourself:
a. A good pair of earphones/headphones (I'd recommend Triple Fi 10 Pro's. Best till now and at 300+ nowadays it's a steal... Might be expensive to you but after you hear the difference in quality between your earphones and that... You'll see what I mean)
b. Start using high quality files for music. I'm not an "audiophile" but when you want to analyse more complex music, you want to be able to hear all the sounds possible so that you don't miss out anything. If the file quality is shit, it will sound like shit regardless.
c. On youtube videos, do your best to switch to &fmt=18 for stereo sound AND switch to the highest quality possible. Sometimes getting to best quality recordings are never available but try anyway. =)
d. Get a portable listening device, preferably a good one. Learn to enjoy your music as art, rather than just entertainment. Learn to enjoy it on your public transport rides or jogs/walks. Listen to it while studying and let it run in the background. It'll help you listen more.

3. Learn to relax. Listening to jazz can be an amazingly relaxing thing to do. Analysing can be more of a release than you realise. Using your brain is not something that drains you, but when you focus on something other than your life and stress, suddenly the world can see that much more beautiful when you concentrate on enjoying the beautiful sounds presented to you.

With that, I welcome you to my blog. And hope that you will enjoy this journey with me. =)