河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

My wife and I went to Leo Koo's (古巨基) concert tonight at the Hong Kong Colosseum. We were given the tickets by a friend of mine, and were very surprised to find ourselves sitting in the second row. My wife commented that she probably wouldn't need to wear her glasses. That's how close we were.

Leo's a music man. He's loved singing for a long time, so much so that even after becoming quite successful as an actor for China-produced television serials, he chose to give up the television work and resume his singing. Tonight simply proved that he made the right choice.

My wife and I are at the Robin Gibb concert in the HK Exhibition Centre. We arrived half an hour late much to my wife's chagrin. I planned on parking beneath the new extension but after half an hour of queueing in traffic finally arrived at a full car park. We had to swing around and park in the car park next to the hotel and walk over instead. Whoever designed this exhibition centre should be shot. They should have...

My next am730 article is just about finished. Part 1 was published a week ago and Part 2 should be published next week. I'll post the full article here after am730 has published it.

This am730 article mentions a teacher I had the fortune to meet while studying at The Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles last year. Her name was Elizabeth and we had a wonderful time together. One of the songs I sang during class that she particularly liked was "The Nearness of You", a wonderful song published way back in 1937. I'm going to record some of my songs and post them here on the blog and I thought this song would be a good start.

The other night, I heard a professional singer recording for a music show. He was really good but I couldn't help but wonder if he was singing a song or singing a vocal exercise. The vocal range of the song was extreme with rapid movement between real voice and falsetto notes.

Popular music in Hong Kong has lost any sense of feel. In an effort to differentiate themselves, singers have moved to songs making heavy use of falsetto. First there was one singer, then another and then another. Even Jacky Cheung was persuaded to follow suit. The apparent opinion is that if you can't sing falsetto, then you're not a professional singer.

iTunes changed the music landscape around the world, even in places where people were unable to purchase music from the iTunes store because their address was not within an authorised country. Before iTunes, people only had two choices for music; buy it at a music store, or download it from an unauthorised source on the internet. Once iTunes proved to the world that people would legally buy digitised (and medium rip quality at that) music if given the chance, other companies began working out how they could join the bandwagon and divert some of that new money into their own bank accounts.

iTunes allowed people to buy music from a corporately condoned online source. It allowed people to easily search for and sample music before buying it, and in the process allowed consumers to expand their music horizons, discovering new musicians and new genres of music, including those not affiliated with the big record labels. Most significantly perhaps, iTunes has also had a permanent affect on the music business itself.

Two days ago, I turned 41. I'm now officially what I consider to be over the half-way mark. It's not a bad thing and it's not a good thing. On average, I may still have forty years left with which to accomplish more goals, learn more languages and learn to enjoy my life and my family more.

Growing up in the countryside of Gympie Australia, I was always aware of the cicadas clicking away in the trees, leaving shells behind clinging to the trees when they morph, but I never actually saw a live cicada. A few weeks ago when the cicadas in our neighbourhood became active, buzzing all day long, I decided to see if I could actually find one. Finally, after being on this earth for 41 years, I saw my first live cicada. Once I knew what they looked like, I was then able to quite easily see them in the trees within a few minutes of hearing their buzz.

It's been a while since I've posted any articles here, but you can be sure that I'm still here, and you can be absolutely sure that I've read every one of your comments, even if I haven't responded. And I appreciate the comments. Even if it's not obvious, your comments are important to me and provide an important source of support.

In the time I've 'been away', I've filmed a new series at TVB. The name of the series is 寫意人生 and I'll talk more about that in a later article. It was a pretty busy part, including two sessions of five nights of continuous studio filming involving nine to eleven hours of filming each night.

I came to L.A. to study singing, nothing else, and the studies are coming along wonderfully. I have one-on-one lessons with my teacher once a day from Monday to Friday. Additionally, I attend one Cabaret workshop with other students on Tuesday nights and another singing workshop on Saturdays in a totally different place.

My teacher is simply amazing. Her knowledge of singing is so broad and extensive that I would never be able to learn everything from her even if I stayed here a whole year. For the workshops, she has a friend and partner who acts as the musical director. He is also incredible and I feel incredibly lucky to have met both of these people. Sometimes, you get lucky!

Other than my lessons, I have very little to do, so my days are relatively relaxed in spite of the small hiccups I've encountered along the way (which I'll describe in a later article).

It was Peisha's idea. Almost from the beginning of our time together, Peisha strongly recommended that I have a 'product' to take home with me. She meant that I should record a couple of songs, if only to show the folks at home just how much I had improved.

I wasn't totally sold on the idea at first. It was the potential financial cost of doing the recordings that kept me from committing to the idea, but as time went on, as my voice continued to improve, and as I discovered more and more songs that I loved, I grew more attracted to the idea. After three weeks of being with Peisha, I made the decision to record the songs. It's a decision that I'll never regret, and I'll forever be grateful to Peisha for her encouragement and insistence that I do the recordings.

Last week was busy; well not quite, but still interesting anyway. In addition to the interview with Alyson at RTHK Radio 3, I also talked with Shirley 曾淑儀 and Lu from the 「萬王之王」 King of Kings show on RTHK Radio 2.

When Shirley heard about my singing studies in L.A., she liked the idea of interviewing me but wanted to make it special. What she came up with was really fun. 「洋人中文歌」 is a three-part series; approximately fifteen minutes per part; with yours truly teaching (we're truly stretching the meaning of this word) listeners to sing ;-)  Shirley and Lu were wonderful and lots of fun. I think you'll enjoy the series.

It has been a very busy past week or so, and I haven't had time to update the blog. I apologise for that.

The big news is that I'm now in L.A.. I'll be studying singing with Peisha (she has a new technique to teach me), and scoping around for an agency to represent me too.

I'm blown away by the Apple iTunes system.

I'm getting myself organised for a musical future, and part of that involved converting and importing into iTunes all of the Karaoke VCDs and DVDs we have in the house. When the tracks become part of the system, they're easily accessible, and they'll get listened to. The process of converting and importing the Karaoke tracks took three days of AppleScript scripting to automate and process, along with lots of Chinese typing, but I now have more than 700 karaoke tracks; both audio and video; in my iTunes library. Being a perfectionist, I then proceeded to correct the data for the tracks in my library, and create playlists (unrated, not played within the last month, ≤xGB) that I could use on our Apple TV and iPhones.

Question of the day.

If you had the opportunity to see me perform, which songs would you hope to hear me sing? If you're reading this on my personal blog or on the AliveNotDead site, leave a comment. Otherwise, you can email your wish list to me at hokwokwing dot hk or me at gregory dot hk. Please include the song's name and the artist's name where applicable.

English, Mandarin and Cantonese songs are obviously fine. If you have a favourite Italian, Spanish or Japanese song, you could send those to me as well. No promises though ;-)