18/9/2014

A Choirholic Journal

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A CHOIRHOLIC JOURNAL
CH OIR | S CH OOL | PAR ENT S

S A T UR D A Y, NO VE M BE R 2 1 , 2 0 0 9

A BOUT M E

2nd Competition, State Level,

Sekolah Sri KDU

K I M B ER LY

Kimberly Ong
VI E W M Y C O M PL E T E

Usual competition morning routine. Rehearsals

PR O F I L E

were hectic as the competition days came nearer and

nearer. Rehearsals during the holiday break, Ng Shyh
Poh was there teaching us with Tyler Chin. Both very
memorable teachers as they are really motivating,

COUT DOW NS

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
not actually 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

CLOCK

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
http://mychoirjournal.blogspot.com/

CL US 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 happened
to 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 our
turn 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. My
harmony was much better at the time and I had
improved a lot learning and paying attention in every
rehearsal.
http://mychoirjournal.blogspot.com/

BL O G A R C H I VE

2009 (4)
November (4)
2nd Competition, State
Level, Sekolah Sri
KDU
First Competition
Beggining Life as a
Choirholic
My Virtual Choir
Journal

COPY RIGH TED

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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 standards
in 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 of
the 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!
PO S T E D BY KI M BE R L Y A T 2 : 0 0 PM

1 C O M M E NT S

T UE S D A Y, NO VE M BE 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 big
impact 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 speeches
and 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.
PO S T E D BY KI M BE R L Y A T 9 : 2 5 A M

0 C O M M E NT S

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 warmhttp://mychoirjournal.blogspot.com/

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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 prefects
room/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 nervewrecking 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 the
choir 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 sing 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 the
interschool 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 the
one 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 ).
PO S T E D BY KI M BE R L Y A T 8 : 2 3 A M

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0 C O M M E NT S

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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 if
you 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
PO S T E D BY KI M BE R L Y A T 8 : 1 6 A M

0 C O M M E NT S

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