Music!!! makes the people come together...yeah!!!

Hail the newest exhibition at petroscience!!! Muzika: the science of sound. From the add it says that it is built by Heureka, the Finnish Science Center and is designed to open visitors ears and mind to a multidisciplinary take on music. The exhibition will stimulate curiosity and motivation to investigate and learn about music because not only will you be able to hear music but also see touch and learn more about it. It's what you need to know about music. According to the KLue Klassifieds page, the science center is working with the Sibelius Academy, University of Helsinki, The Helsinki University of Technology's laboratory of acoustics and sound processing, the Finnish Music Information center and Cartes art and businesses, among others.

There is still time as it ends in March 2010. I had the opportunity to go in on the 7th November 2009. Petrosains members on the 7th and 8th get free entrance plus a goodie bag for the first 20 members. So, without delay I went and made my booking on the 7th at 10 am.

So the freakin day starts as I woke up late...(again) at 8.30 and headed to the KTM Subang Jaya station. it was 9.10am and as i was punching my cash card, I saw people on the other side of the rail standing up. This means...train is here. I was in my clarks wedges, running without breakfast, on the bridge and making my way to get on the train. luckily the KTM is driver operated. He might saw me running frantically and waited till i got in the train. Quick thumbs up to the driver and he went on its way to KL central.

At KL central, my cash card wasn't keyed in properly. When I went to the Kelana Jaya line rapidKL train, i couldn't get in. Quick run to the KTM solved the case and I found myself running past the escalator and again, train was arriving. Pushing through those not in a hurry lenggang kangkong people I made my way huffing and puffing through the train...*phew* no breaks man. most importantly, NO Breakfast!! I had to replenish my energy fast or i'll crash. So I bought my sandwich at rotiboy and went up to the top floor at petrosains...

Wee, I arrived at 10. 03 like that. To my suprize, all the shops were open. Not like getting started to open, they are already ready for people to come in. Aha! next time i know when I should come to KLCC to shop. Keep in mind that folks..

Knowing that Petrosains attract many school kids in the weekends, getting in the place might be a little hectic, but when you get in the exhibition hall it'll be more comfortable. Muzika is not in Petrosains main exhibition but is the one next to it. The place that they formally had the dinotrek 2.

So, upon registering, getting my goodie bag, I went straight through the curtains and this is the view at the exhibition. Looks very plain, but the exhibits are very interesting. See that huge globe. There are white dots on it. With a funny vacuum cleaner thingy you can listen to the music in the places on the globe. Its very fascinating. I thought of coming again on a week day. (possibly the day that I have my "holiday" so that I can finish all the nice music on the globe. It has only three headphones so it will be selfish for me to stay there for very long, because there are many people on weekends.

This is the closer view of the mobile thingy that i find nice. If you are working at the exhibition, tell them that if you don't want this anymore I would certainly would love to have it...hehehe.

This here is a never ending piano. When you play it, no matter when you go how many rounds, the pitch sort of keeps going. Come over to find out how it works...

There are even shows that are presented during the exhibition, so be sure to stay long enough so you could actually be apart of the demonstration. This is because, if you are lucky, you'll might get yourself free stuff....hehehe, who doesn't like free stuff.

So basically for this demonstration, they talked about how sounds are generated, how sounds are can be audible, different pitches, all those things that you lean in science around form 3. Nothing here is rocket science, but i might be to let say a 10 year old kid. But i think its a good introduction, plus its very visual and you can feel and play and touch and listen. Make use of all your senses. Me loike!!

Other booths include like this one here. It might look very simple, but when you do the activity its interesting. One more thing is that I'm writing on behalf of a music student so the fascination might differ according to other peoples interest. This thingy here has to do with catching the main beat. Having a sense of pulse. One of the activity here is that they give you a ragtime piece and tap on the table and it will record the beat that you tap. There are also recordings of other people at the exhibition and that they would play it together. In general, many would have almost correct beat. that all change when the ragtime is been stripped from its bass line. When they ask you to beat again without the bass line, its hard to catch the main beats thus, most people would be unsure of the downbeats. So, when we hear the playback of the guests, in the exhibition, it sounds hilarious because, people were tapping all over the place. It became a new rhythm all together!!

The stool looks very much like it was purchased at IKEA.

hah, an empty stage, waiting for some creativity to start. Well, there are more interesting stuff here in Muzika like this boy and his dad doing...hehe, notice the disco ball??? its a DJ 101 class. Yep, this one tells you how to do the scratching and how to use the cross fader...

Haha, let DJ Slow teach you how to move-it-move-it...wee, so I had my chance to try. I think i need more practice, but it was all fun...

And then there is the invisible guitar. see that black screen?? What you do is take the yellow sensor gloves and start strumming. I don't know how to play the guitar, let alone an invisible one. I'll leave that to the experts. but i tried though, I was only able to struck one chord. I have no idea how to manipulate the pitches...
Here the computer actually takes several instruments and isolates the partials. Each musical instrument note is produced by a series of partials that makes the note. So here you can listen to each partials whether its piano, violin, flute and a number of different instruments. I'm not sure exactly on the details on partials since we've only talked about it briefly, but I'm sure Mr. Victor has more knowledge if you need more explanation.

Errr, this is actually the explanation for the partials, but its a little blurry,

Ah, this one is the basics in orchestra seating arrangements. The orchestra plays 4 pieces and then you can listen them by parts and actually learn on the evolution of the orchestra from Bach to Dvorak.

Here's a short 15 min clip that shows the history of western music. Very cute, gotta come here and watch. Here's the description.

Here the forms of recordings are been played from waxed cylinders to vinyls. Here we find that forms of recordings have improved and even sometimes when digitized, sounds become super clear that to some people it would sound a little fake. However, technology is ever improving. Who knows whats the latest in recording techniques in the future.

Finally, here is a short piece that I composed from, snorts, sneezes, growls, farts, thunder sizzles and I cant remember...Oh, Mr. Johan, would be so proud of me...*Too much of syok sendiri*...hehehe...its like doing the cool edit electroaccustic piece that we did during our final year...thing is this is much more easier....yeah...

Kinda been inside of that place for more than 2 hours, so I decided to head home. Lunch. On the way back I saw the add of activities in Petrosains main exhibit, and guess what, Its about foooddd!!!! so, I'll be coming soon. hehehe...probably drag the pandi as well...you like food right?? and that's Muzika. make sure you take an effort to check it out!!!

All of me

In my few months of building fat instead of muscles, I thought some stimulation would do me good. So I went to petroscience on a week day when I wasn’t able to meet up with becky because she was feeling unwell. I did enjoyed the my time I had to play in petroscience. Call me a big fat kid that likes science centers, I realy enjoy science centers more than theme parks. Oh well, the first time my hair stood by the van de graff machine at COSI, I knew that it wasn’t the last time I went into science centers.

Leave the fun aside for the moment, before I went to petroscience, I went to the MPO box office to lookup the latest calendar and saw that there’ll be an upcoming event on jazz and there is also a Haydn piano concerto. So, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. I bought tickets for both events and that I’ll spend the whole day at KLCC to watch the two events.

So I woke up early to catch the train in to KL central before changing trains to KLCC. I reached KLCC at about 10.40am in time to get a front seat that not many favored. (Typical Malaysians) so then the presenter, Joseph Pruessner, the assistant principal bassist led out the class.

We started out with simple chords: Major chords, Dominant 7th, Dominant 9th, flat 9th, Major 7th, Augmented chords, Major 9th, Sustained 4 (sus4), flat 5th, Minor 6th, sharpened 11th, and the list goes the same with the minor chords. Next were the modes. Modes were used widely before we had major and minor scales. If not I’m not mistaken, people use modes because there the system was not well tempered yet. Now, vocalist use modes widely. There are the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aoelian, and Locrian. The modes are for example Ionian on C so you play from C to C in C major. Dorian in C is play from C to C in the key of B flat major. So you count backwards. Because the interval between C and D is a major second, and backwards major second is B flat. This calculation is done during intense practice during group keyboard class. Anyhow, screw the calculation, its confusing if you are not a musician. The point here is, in jazz, certain modes are used with certain chords. For example, the chord B flat in a bar, you could use all the notes in the Ionian scale during improvisation. If you have a dominant 7th chord you use the notes in the mixolydian mode.

The chart is as follow: Ionian- Major, Major 7th, and Major 9th. Dorian- Minor and minor 7th, Phrygian- Minor 9th, Lydian- #11, Mixolydian- Dominant 7th, Aoelian- natural minor, Locrian- diminished chords.

So we tried the chords on blue monk, a piece from Thelonius Monk from “The Thelonius Monk Story” so it kinda sounded like this:

It was good though I thought, then we heard the recording on by Monk and John Coletrain at Carnegie hall, the piece sounded great and that I found out that it has been rumored that Coletrain didn’t want to show up and that he needed to be dragged out from the hotel to the concert hall. From the recording too, I found out that different jazz musicians have distinctive motives that they liked to play. For example, Coletrain liked patterns of sequences in the melody, Monk liked chromatic dissonance, is a minimalist most of the time, playing sparse notes that change at a slow rate, and play whole tone scales. In a piece, usually the musicans would play the “head” which is the main melody, mostly twice before the improvisation takes place. Then after series of improvisations, some one would point at the head indicating the last improvisation and that the next repetition will be the main melody and that the music would end.

A highly recomended CD to buy...Thelonious monk and John Coletrain

Prepairing audio for us listen and jam

So we then played on All of Me. This is how we are taught how to improvise. Jazz is always about improvisations. Improvisations can’t be learnt overnight, and it comes through practice. However, you could learn to improvise by stages like improvise firstly by using chord notes. Then, you could use scale passages going up and down according to the chords used and you could use chromatic notes. Try them individually and mix them all together to make it your own. Then try using like Coletrain did which was using sequences and monk, using some dissonance. Razif once taught us a trick. If you played a wrong note, play it many times so that it sounds correct. Along the way you’ll pick up tricks here and there, main thing is you practice…heehee, something that I’m lacking at the moment.

So that ended my jazz appreciation class and that he mentioned a bit during his time in collage, John Cage was one of the lecturers there, he made them listen to the walls and you’ll be surprised on what you’ll hear. Not other peoples conversation, but as we know John Cage, everything is music. I didn’t miss a chance to take photos of the pictures of performers and conductors that had played at DFP.

My boyfriend Joshua Bell, heehee....

Riccardo Mutti

Lorin Maazel

Neville Creed

Other awards and trophies

Quiet office on a sunday

Initially I wanted to try to have lunch at Nyonya because; I always see the place full and guessed that the food must be good. When I went up, it was not only full but people were queuing up to get in the restaurant. Sigh, time wasn’t on my side so I went to the Lebanese and Persian restaurant and ordered chicken kebab. It tasted good, on the way back I saw baklava, my favorite, but it was with the buffet that I didn’t take. There’ll always be next time…I hope.

At 3pm I went to the concert. The first was Overture to La fedelta premiata by Haydn. The next was keyboard Concerto in D (Hob.XVIII:11). I like Haydn. He always pleases me. The pianist Cederic Tiberghien, played a beautiful encore piece by Bartok that I never heard before. Or I can’t seem to recall listening to a pleasing Bartok piece like this before. After the intermission, they played Bruckner Symphony in B flat. It was a bit heavy to listen at 4pm I guess. There were parts that sounded like Barber’s adagio for strings though that I liked. After the concert, I went to pray, and then I headed home.

It was raining as usual and on the way there was an accident near Kampung Dato’ Harun stop. Anyhow, KLCC was so packed that day, I think due to the PC fair and all the pathogen and the rain and the heat had left me with flu and a head ache. On top of that my wisdom tooth is driving me nuts again. I hope I could be back in good shape before I go to Indonesia at the end of the week. I’m so excited but the bad sore trough has drained my energy to get excited. I also would like to go to the International book fair. We’ll see.