A Choirholic Journal

8/10/2019 A Choirholic Journal

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S A T U R D A Y , N O VE M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 0 9

2nd Competition, State Level,

Sekolah Sri KDU

Usual competition morning routine. Rehearsals

were hectic as the competition days came nearer and

nearer. Rehearsals during the holiday break, NgShyh

Pohwas there teaching us with Tyler Chin. Both very

memorable teachers as they are really motivating,

just like Susanna. Susanna was away travelling so,

they took her place to train us. First day, Shyh Poh

took the lead by teaching us all sorts of techniques. I

was terrified by him honestly. Especially when I have

notactually had the alto part solid.. well.. I did, I

was just TOO SCARED to sing solo when he was doing

some checking with the altos. Callie our pianist of

the year was having her piano exam somewhere, so

Tyler was playing the piano. I marvel him as he

played our pieces almost flawlessly and it being the

first time him playing it. He was a great pianist! And

furthermore, he self learnt it on his own.

We worked hard and Shyh Poh was (hopefully)

happy. Tyler (tenor), Shyh Poh (bass). Aaron Teoh

(Tenor) , Tyler's extraordinarily cute friend was there

too. Aaron and Tyler sings in the Young Kuala Lumpur

Singers also known as YKLS under Susanna. Shyh Poh

is from the Dithyrambic Singers directed by Ian Lim

Kean Seng.

Competition day was 2 days after the Young Singer's

Choral Festival (YSCF) and we all came back with

A B O UT M E

KIMBERLY

Kimberly Ong

VI EW M Y COMPLETE

PR OFILE

C O U T D O W N S

C L O C K

C L U S T R M A P

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sore throats and hoarse voices. Our performance to

Susanna was bad. It was not up to standards and it

was horrible! I still remember what had happened.

All of us were terrified and disappointed. "What are

your excuses?! sore throat?! Come on! Who ask y'all

to scream so much at the festival??..... Do you know,

your performance today is horrible! What happenedto the team who won in Interschool?! I'm not even

sure that your team would place at state level!"

I remembered every word. I'm not going to say who

that person was, but whatever she said was all true.

We were a let down and the competition was the

next day.

We practiced harder determined to make ourselves

better and not disappoint anyone anymore. It was ourturn to perform now. The hall at Sri KDU was big and

somewhat intimidating. Being a private school, the

hall was very well equipped with a full grand piano,

spotlights and what soever not. The only thing was,

they didn't have condenser microphones. (Condenser

mics are those mics which are special and pickup

every sound around it and it is very very sensitive.

These mics are designed specially for musical

instruments and Choirs.)

Before we were up, we had a meditation session

with Shyh Poh. Tracy was there too. Wen Chin(alto

from Dithyrambic Singers) and Tracy is a soprano

from the YKLS and also one of the Kuala Lumpur

Children's Choir teachers.

We started our song and we tried our best. Out of

the 7 altos, Me, Mable, Shao Jun, Hui Tze, Alyssa,

and Siti Salwa, 4 of us were having bad throats and

were barely able to sing. I tried as hard as I could to

sing. It came out! yay! sound! harmony! But it was

painful. The feeling of swallowing sand was scorching

my throat. There were some points where I had to

sing softer and do a little bit of lip singing. And also,

we weren't standing in our voice groups, we were

actually standing in mixed position. Yee Hsuen, sop 1

was on my left and Imran, bass was on my right. Myharmony was much better at the time and I had

improved a lot learning and paying attention in every

rehearsal.

B L O G A R C H I V E

2009(4)

November(4)

2nd Competition, State

Level, Sekolah Sri

KDU

First Competition

Beggining Life as a

Choirholic

My Virtual Choir

Journal

C O P Y R I G H T E D
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It was over and we took a bow and went off stage.

We waited to all the other choirs performing. Some

were good, some were not so good, some were very

good. Finally, it was over. We were competing with

Catholic High School Choir and SMK Kepong Choir.

They are two choirs which are of very high standardsin this competition. It was the first time the Seafield

Choir was in the State level anyway. We weren't

expecting any high ranks but we hoped at least the

"Juror's choice award". They called out from third

place......

Third Place goes to.....

SMK Catholic High School!

We had a shock of our lives. SMK Catholic H.S are one

of the best choirs around. Who would have gotten

2nd place and first place!? Emotions going wild, we

were holding hands and squeezing fists tightly.

Please let us rank, Please let us rank was all that

was going around in my mind. Everyone was nervous.

Second place goes to...

*Ohmigosh,Ohmigosh, I think I'm gonna faint!*

..................................................................

..................................

............

...

..

.

SMK SEAFIELD!Oh my gosh! I cried! That was the FIRST time I've

ever had tears of joy!

The first thing I did was sms mom, dad, and sis ofthe news. OMIGOSH! I still cant believe it!. Called

Tyler and he was extremely happy too! And of

course, few years consecutive winners, SMK Sri


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Kepong. We were thrilled of the news, that we beat

CATHOLIC HIGH! It was almost Impossible! We didn't

expect that coming. At all!

POSTED BY KIMBERLY AT 2:00 PM 1 COMMENTS

T U E S D A Y , N O V E M B E R 1 7 , 2 0 0 9

First Competition

Wow, competition already? The usual competition

routine. Wake up very early, get to school by 7.

Leave by 8.30. All ready and geared up, we were

wearing our blue 'baju kurung' for the girls and 'baju

melayu' for the guys. Put our makeup on and we were

all ready and set to go. The competition was held in

Puchong some multi-purpose hall about 30 minutes

away from school. Our turn was somewhere in the

middle.

Being a short person, I was placed at the end of the

first line. Holy crap!! I was the first to lead the team

in. Oh boy my head was spinning up a tornado. I

controlled myself and focus to sweep away the

anxiety. I actually tripped on my skirt while walking

up the side of the stage. The crowd weren't exactly

quiet especially the children's choir which already

competed earlier on in the first session. Susanna and

Shyh Poh were somewhere in the audience watching

and listening so as my Sister who came to support

us.

Listening to the choir for the starting notes for the

first number, Perwira and watching Seok Kuan the

conductor steadily beating out the tempo for the

song the piano started and we started singing. The

starting of the song perwira started of with a bigimpact and had a dramatic and also grand beginning

which drew the audience and crowd to a sudden

silence. All eyes were fixed on us now. The next song
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was the West Side Story medley. Again conductor

gave us the pulse of the song and also reminding us

of the rapid emotion change of the medley

West Side Story medley started off with the first

song 'America' It was a lively and fast song. The

second song was 'One hand, one heart' third'Somehow, someday, somewhere' Three different

cocktail of emotions into one song. America started

off with a fast beat and had to clap really loudly.

Finally! Results! They started to announce the

Children's Choir category first. The winner was SJK

(C) Lick Hung a Chinese Elementary school. The

emcee took forever to get over with the speechesand etc. gosh. Get to it already would you?!?

3rd Place....

SMK Seksyen (insert name here)

2nd Place....

SMK USJ4

JUARA (WINNER)....

SMK SEAFIELD!

Oh my gosh! the feeling was overwhelming! We were

jumping and screaming and shouting and I cant

describe the feeling.

POSTED BY KIMBERLY AT 9:25 AM 0 COMMENTS

Beggining Life as a Choirholic

Oooooooo...Aaaaaa....Eeeeee... LaLaLaLaLa...What

on earth are we doing?? Why does it sound so

weired?? Its going higher! NO! I cant reach it! Those

were the thoughts streaming through my mind for

the first time listening and singing to the vocal

warm-ups. For the first time I had done vocal warm-
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ups. Music was an alien language to me and Soprano?

Alto? Tenor? Bass? what!? I had never taken music

lessons before prior to this, other than the drums

and guitar. Even that, its all somewhat play by ear.

It was the first day of choir on a warm Friday

afternoon. We had all gathered at the prefectsroom/choir room. Probably 100 people in that

small,tiny cramp, stuffy place. Pn.Loh, Choir club

teacher advisor had a small speech talking about the

past achievements of the choir. I had no idea what

was going on. After warm-ups, we were split into

groups of 5 to get our range sorted out. First we

went by fives, then twos and threes. It was a nerve-wrecking moment. Seriously. My heart was pounding

against my chest and I felt dizzy when it came to my

turn. I don't exactly remember my range but what I

remember is that my lower range went further than

my higher range. I was then placed with the altos. I

was disappointed. Being a naive freshie, I taught

that the sopranos were the supreme bunch of thechoir and I felt that I wasn't good enough.

Alot of other things were going on during the

meeting. I remember talking to both teacher

advisors, Pn.Loh and Pn.Khasniati and at the time,

Miss Ngoo about how much I like to s ing and stuff.

They also were looking for musicians of any

instrument to list down their names and things.

Obviously, piano dominated the number 1 most

popular instrument, followed by guitar and I guess

drums was the minority. Being a person who was a

total tomboy in elementary school, I had a thing

against piano. I've always taught that the piano was

an instrument for girly-girls or for people who wants

to appear fancy with all their music talk and blah

blah. Man I was sooooo darn wrong about that.

I met Mabel. She was my first choir buddy and she

happened to be the most friendly and helpful alto at


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the time. We chatted a little bit and she told me how

a choir functions and what is SATB and things like

that. Honestly, I was a delinquent member who was

absent from choir for the first 3 weeks of training.

That means, I had missed the first 6 important

rehearsals cause I was too lazy. Until the 6th

rehearsal. Mabel had persuaded me to join theinterschool team. I agreed but I had no idea how the

song was and auditions were the next day. I had no

idea what had happened but I learnt the alto parts

and I merely made it through for the auditions the

next day. I was stuck to Mabel and she would help me

a lot in helping me hold my part.

Susanna Saw, vocal coach for Seafield Choir was theone who had the auditions. She took all the altos who

wanted to participate to sing only the alto part for

the 'West Side Story Medley'. Another nerve wrecking

moment. She scaled it down from 10, to 5,3,2. She

stopped at 2. Thank goodness or else I would have

fainted on the spot. With Mabel's help, I had gained a

spot in the interschool team. The songs for the

competition was half of 'West Side Story Medley' and

'Perwira' arranged by Ng Shyh Poh.

Trainings kept going on as usual and I took ever

opportunity to learn my parts as well as I could and

pay as much attention as I could when the coach was

teaching. It was only 2 weeks before the competition

when rehearsals started to get hectic. Afternoon

sessions were to skip first 2 lessons of the day and

Morning session students stayed back.

What happen to those who didn't make the team?

They became reserves just in case of emergencies if

someone could not make it, who is sick, undisciplined

and those who didn't keep up to standards. Those

who chose not to go for the interschool team would

be in team B a.k.a Bronze team ( find out why later ).

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My Virtual Choir Journal

Greetings to everyone reading this blog. The

purpose of this blog is to document every memory I

have of singing in any event. The other purpose of

this blog is so that I can share my experiences which

who ever interested. Feel free to leave a comment ifyou like, and I apologize for any misunderstandings

or whatsoever. Whatever you read is original and is

all based on what had happened. I will not be held

liable for any misinterpretation of content. Enjoy!

Love, Kimberly Ong


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