Why am I still playing the trombone? (Part 1)

Hola!

Instead of getting to all a multitude of projects and personal ambitions, I decided to spend tonight writing. I was asked to write for ReMag sometime ago, about freedom in Malaysia, but that might not be my forte; after all, I’ve always been free in Malaysia, or at least as much as I’ve perceived in my free time in the past.

Tonight is not any special night either. It marks no known aniversary, it doesn’t resonate with my memory in terms of people’s birthday, or other special occasions. Nothing much has really happened in my life in the past few week to be worth archiving for life. Weyn had dinner with me after coming back from Malaysia last Sunday, and before that PSSO came back full swing, thus keeping me drunk for a short hour per week. Dan, our PSSO concert master launched his new website zoji.com, reminding me of the group of Malaysians in Bay Area who also attempted creating virtual community friendmily.com last month of so after prototyping most of it as DavidGallery. The big guys are fighting too. Amazon’s A9 has finally came out of beta, Google is countering  with starting Google Print. The industry is growing fine, at all levels, and thus nothing is happening in my world.

So what would I write about in this ordinary night?

A book review on books I read? Nah, not that I don’t like them, but to repeat the thousands of reviews on Amazon would be sort of redundant. Maybe I could write lyrics for a song. Wait, too many out there to judge that, plus I’ve no juice. And no, nothing about computers and code, which is why I’m taking a break writing right?

Let me recall stories in my life then. Nuggets of the past. Awesome stuff. Let me tell you about the story of why I play the trombone, even today, at the age of 24.

Trombone.

Part 1 – Chen Moh Primary School Band

Albeit having the opportunity to learn music since I was 4 years old, I was under the very same pressure that brought up many kids in the world who live in a middle class family. The ultimate form of peer pressure is in parenting. When your parents see that other kids are doing well, anything goes. I went to Yamaha JMC music course, and then immediately switched to doing the ABRSM exams for piano, which is the common “Grade 1” to “Grade 8” one would hear others talk about. No matter how much interest I would like to put into playing the piano, I couldn’t bear going throught this with a half-hearted piano teacher and a persistent yet discouraging mother.

I have a school teacher who also works as a Mandarin news reporter on TV2 in the evening. She is one of our school’s music teacher and she has been trying to set up musical groups in the school to enhance the dull music syllabus that was forced down by the Ministry of Education. When I was 8 years old, I was with her pianica and recorder band, playing the recorder, a very light and agile instrument, which unfortunately none of us really play well. The only vivid memory I have today was the recording session we did in a RTM studio.

Wait, I’m not at the trombone yet.

So that went on until when I was 11. My teacher got more ambitious and decided to re-form the school’s marching band, that has been abandoned some time ago due to lack of funds. After some background work that wasn’t apparent to students of our age, somehow we got Yamaha’s attention and bought a batch of new instruments from them, and got two tutors, Mr. Chan and Ms. Kim, to come teach us. I was among the earliest to be recruited, because of the personal relationship between my teacher and her colleague, my mother.

I started by playing the clarinet. The day I was handed the clarinet was a day I didn’t forget at all. I took the instrument and had no problems assembling it together, only to find it impossible to make any sound from it. The reed (which I only learn aout much later) was partialy broken, and I only manage to squeeze some sound from it after a whole day of blowing. Too proud to ask Ms. Kim, who’s handling the woodwind students, I continue desperately to push my behind together to squeek. Seems like being smart And musically trained for years doesn’t help me in picking up a new instrument at all.

There’s a catch to my participation in the school band. I wasn’t allowed to stay back after school to practice during the rehearsals. Only occasionally would I be allowed to stay back and play. This implies that what my mother expected of me is the ability to sight-read during concerts. Well, she got it nearly two or three times. I remember sitting in for a concert not knowing what’s the menu, and almost choked. Try that sometime. It makes you feel like a professional.

Clarinet only lasted for about 6 months or less when I realized that I can’t do what most clarinetist were told to do – tongue. To produce a nice sounds, one needs to ‘tongue’, which is to somehow pronounce the letter ‘T’, something I end up finding much much easier on a brass instrument. So even though I emerged as the champion in fingering and leading my section all the time, I ended up being switched to trumpet. No one complained whe this happens. We’re all Malaysian Chinese kids brought up in an atmosphere of absolute obidience, so being told to switch to another instrument without getting scolding first is almost like a bonus. And by the next day, I was a “trumpeter” who can only play the 8 chromatic notes between written middle C and G, and that’s also because I was eager to look up charts immediately but not getting anywhere with the buzzing – a concept only eluded to me in high school…

Nope, said Mr. Chan, as he gives a thumbs down to my trumpet playing. But he did noticed my tendency to learn quickly and adapt. “You shall play the trombone”, he said one day, when I wasn’t even sure whether I’ll end up a world class trumpeter yet. Sure. Why not. I was puled into the section on one fine day when he (Mr. Chan) was really tired of teaching the trombones to play in tune. Placing the slide in some arbitrary position and blow the hell out of your lungs is not exactly every kid enjoys.

I packed up the trumpet and took one of the only remaining trombones from the shelfs, and, to the surprise my young bustling ego, I couldn’t put it together in twice the time taken for me to set up my clarinet the first day I joined the band!! What a shame. In the end I still have it at the wrong angle (i.e. in a set up that would lend the trombone on the wrong side of  head) and had to be corrected. Full of shame, I joined the group of 6 other trombonist playing a long E flat. Everyone had a sad look on their face, trying to get “in tune”, where being “in tune” is as sure as being “in sane”.

And it wasn’t until the day when we had a “real” trombone teacher, did my life ever got better. Eric came into the picture at some time unclear to me. He just got out of Form 5, or rather, doing his Form 5 the second time, when he decided on a career in music. I’m glad he did, seeing what he has achieved over the years. As an aside, I wonder when will people growing up being educated on how to think rather than how to follow instructions and succumb to peer pressure. Why must everyone be molded the same way when everyone has a different potential? Why is there a need for a standardized set of subjects that every future tax paying citizen needs to know other than doing a percentage calculation on their pay? I’ll save the rants for another time.

Eric Lee, who we respectfuly called “Lee LaoShi”, LaoShi being teacher in Mandarin, and later “Sir”, when I went on to CHS, is himself a trombonist in the making at that time. He was fresh out of school, but he already have the opportunity to play with many groups around town, and naturally to the young ears of an 11 year old, the voice he made on that tube made sense to me. Afterall I have no idea what a good trombone should sound like, both lacking the money and interest to buy any available recordings (mind you we didn’t have mp3 then. I was still using a 8086 XT desktop, and I didn’t have a CD player). Therefore, Eric’s sound is my only reference point. I ended up copying everything that he plays privately.

Eric arrival happens during the departure of the two Yamaha teachers we got. Although I’ve seen them later in life, they officially left my life for good, pretty much. Being more comfortable with my trombone, I also ventured out to play the Tuba for a while, when the school band was completely missing a tuba player, only returning to playing the “bass” trombone a few months later, a compromise to help my lips adjust back to the smaller mouth piece.

By the time I’m back in trombone section, the school band has improved into a state that can be envied by many. I’m here to testify that many of the dedicated band members I met in Chen Moh will grow up to be one of the best people I met as well as the best musicians you can ever find in Malaysia, if not in the world. This is my first answer to my original question.

I’m still playing my trombone when I’m 24 because I played the trombone when I was 11. And I was playing it together with world class musicians.

As for my piano, that continue to wither until I failed my Grade 5 exam. My mother was furious. Right – that was the word. She was sad too, although I wonder whether it’s because she spent so much money on the piano teacher and the exam extrance fees, and I sort of wasted it. I did. I hated it by that time. It grew from an interest to a chore, and what I’m playing is not appreciated by anyone. Who likes listening to Bach played by me on a piano? You must be joking if you do.

So she told me to quit. Hey, it’s not everyday I get to do something that I like and she concur. With the official reason that I’m facing UPSR next year, I stopped playing the piano. Even band practises were totally banned, but then that hasn’t been happening a lot anyway…

That is set to change after UPSR, after my mum listened to one of my classmates playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 2nd Movement on the schools’s piano, her eyes started glittering and in no time she found my classmate’s piano teacher. In fact, many things changed – I started writing music, without even knowing that that was the beginning of my composition/arrangement “career”, and with a brand new piano teacher (who comes to my house instead of my traveling!) But that will be in a later part of the story.

Ok, that’ll will do for part 1 of the story. I’ll be posting 4 more entries with the following headings.

Part 2 – Catholic High School Band – the budding years
Part 3 – Catholic High School Band and PJYSB
Part 4 – Singapore Youth Symphony etc.
Part 5 – Today