old story: wind orchestra sbp competition 2006

SBP Wind Orchestra 2006; old story; my spiteful response.
For the new 2008 review, click here.

I got many responses, which are focused on another side or perception of the wind past 2006 competition.

Salute to these people Scherzo028 and Danial 1007, who dared to express their own opinions, by replying to my post.

These people regard me as someone who is biased towards the Alam Shah team, naturally because I am used to be a member and I am still concerned with their issues and such. This is not really accurate, because my review is based to my own demands on what a wind orchestra competition in our country should be, especially when it is deemed as a prestigious one.

If you say that I am a pro-Alam Shah, no, I am more likely a pro-Attawit band or pro-Sengoku Gakuen band. Attawit is a wind orchestra from Bangkok, and Sengoku, is an all-girls team from Japan.

Alam Shah, the team that I give support to, is basically still not to the standards yet, even though they are relatively much much better than other schools who went to the finals in the SBP competition 2006.

This is the comment given by Scherzo026:


btw who care bout that,yg penting he(the instructor)still ajr n give his best to do so...as a comment,SDAR's piece Tanah Pusaka mmg a wrong selection..."What was the instructor thinking?"-taken from the text above..........excuse me,just dat SSAS memang dh ade such a collection of lagu melayu which is almost were frm Suhaimi Yacub,mmg la bley ckp cm tu...sbb cnfrm dh settle 1 prob to choose or find malay piece..so bley la ckp cm tu......btw i heard that sdar n ssp got their piece frm Raymond Kong was l8(a week b4 sbp comp)....can u see how BIG effort they put...as for TKC,bkn xde lagu melayu laen,most of them frm piece Suhaimi Yacub...if byk sgt skol maen piece by Suhaimi Yacub...sure bored!!! n one more thing,lagu Rangkaian Lagu Melayu tuh pon dh berzaman dh,at least lg Fantasia Ulik Mayang tuh was early of 2002 ok!!

Scherzo026



Sherzo026, I could see that you are giving the logical reasons on why SDAR had chosen a wrong selection; Tanah Pusaka, for their Malay piece. If the school would want variety, perhaps the instructor might want to get well-arranged scores by C H Tang, or Eric Lee. Or the school might want to commission the Malay song arranger of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. If I were a pro Alam Shah, I do not need to reveal this actually.

I do not think it’s wise to get songs from the Tanah Pusaka arranger anymore. Regardless that he is a member of National Symphony Orchestra, not only that ALL his songs are badly arranged, his performance himself is too poor for him to be called as a national symphony orchestra player.

My review is based on the final quality being shown during the final competition. I don’t include the degree of effort of each band as a comparison in my review, and I did not even intend to do that at the first place. My review is to show where is the level these bands at, and they are all disappointingly far below par.

When you said about SDAR getting the scores only for 18 months, do I have to consider that when I am writing my review? Absolutely not! I do not care whether it is 18 months or even a day. If I really care about that, I would have mentioned about Alam Shah getting their Suriram score for ONLY THREE DAYS before the competition.

Tanah Pusaka is a bad arrangement. So if you put any effort in playing it, it would still be a bad arrangement.

As for what I have said about Ulik Mayang and the fact that it has been played so many times, you did not get my point actually. I will explain in my reply of the girl below.

This is the comment given by the girl who used Danial1007’s id:



Well.. first and foremost.. I’d like to introduce myself.. I’m one of the TKC band members (in case u’re confused, I’m just using my friend’s username..wtv,aint important). Erm,I just discovered about this blog post and frankly what do I think? VERY honest one indeed. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not hinting or what so ever. It is after all, everybody’s liberty of speech so I seriously don’t mind ;) HOWEVER, there are a few things I’d like to rebut cos I find that I should clarify on some of ur points..hehe.. though this thing was ages ago,I still feel like filling in ur comments. Firstly, regarding all of the skls not being up to par as the international level,well.. blame the government for that; not giving skls enough exposure on music. Though u say that the night was a total embarrassment, u should know, these kyds (fine,I’m one of ‘em).. should really be given credit for the effort. And they really did, at least try their very best. Regarding my skl, I’m being very optimistic with ur opinions.. in fact I accept ‘em all but I disagree on u,for without knowing much (or maybe not knowing a thing) about our band or the history, then simply pointing out: What was the instructor thinking? Let me tell u something; he sure as hell knows what he’s thinking n doing while u,on the other hand, DON’T. so u should really put ur words in better terms next time. And u-huh u call it a joke? Gosh.. any piece of music is never a joke to me regardless what year it is. No offence though.. but really dude, think twice if u’re about to utter something u have NO CLUE about. In this case, what’s happening in each skl’s band or in the minds of the instructors. Wow, SAS is just too good to be true huh?? No wonder u’re making them sound that way. Owh wait, don’t get the wrong picture. I’m not revenging or wtv but the reviews are just sooo.. contrast. yep. But heckk—everyone has their own thots ryte.. so this is mine =p Congrats anyway for being the champs and well done to the alumni as well, I must say I salute the SAS band alumni for their commitment.Lastly, sorry if anything that I said offended u in a way (tho I don’t think it did..wtv, was not even my intention to do so). To anyone else reading this blog, namely other finalists besides SAS; chill la u ppl. Don’t just fire this guy (FYI, I am not!!).. let’s all accept it as a positive criticism to improve our bands =)Peace to the world *winks*

Danial1007




Dear girl;

I am so agree with your explanation that the government could have given more music exposure to schools as an effort of creating a chain effect to give the school bands awareness on what is called as good orchestral performance.

But then again, I don’t think there is much can be done, especially that our VIPs over there were genuinely impressed with just mediocre music performance. It is good to heighten the spirit of these enthusiastic young musicians, but it’s a risk to say that everything is good when actually there is so much rotten stuff which should be get ridden off and there are a lot of things to be improved.

So how about a reversing action instead? It is us who should expose them to a good level of music by improving ourselves and let them see a high quality of orchestral music. From that, perhaps we could get more support by the government.

My review is blatantly written, and it’s the real thing from my thoughts. My focus is more towards what I think of the music quality, take it or leave it. It’s nice for you to say about giving credits to these orchestra members. That is your focus which is different than mine.

As for you defending that the instructor knows what he is thinking, sorry to say, no, he doesn’t know what he is doing. I do not know whether it is more towards the instructor’s lack of experience and exposure, or it is that thing that we call as ‘ego’ which have put the instructor to a mind block of not wanting to improve his knowledge. If I am biased towards Alam Shah, I would not have pointed this out, because I would say that this is one of the competitive secrets of a school orchestra and it’s instructor: the willingness to learn through mistakes and accepting people’s ideas.

Forgive me because of my words on ‘Ulik Mayang and it’s year’ which have been misleading some people. What I meant is, Ulik Mayang is a bad amateur written piece but it is still been played by the same school over and over again. I was hoping that through years that have passed, better songs would be selected, but yet it happened again.

Ulik Mayang IS A JOKE, no doubt of it. Horrendously written, a typical arrangement with bad movement and flow, bad chords, and narrowly sounded. One of the very strong point for the team to be a good orchestra; is by playing good songs.

As for what you said about Alam Shah, yeah, they are still in luck in 2006. Victory is just based on them relatively being better than other schools. But they could not compete with bands like Attawit and Sengoku band. They still need to strive out of the “too good to be true” level.

My comments are frank.
If the band is good; it is good.
If the band is average, it is average.
If the band is horrible, then it is horrible.

Alam Shah had its famous downs also, like the cackling chicken sound of the trumpets which failed the introduction for Inspiration Point.

My school is in good terms with Tun Fatimah.
I have very, very, very good friends from Tunku Kurshiah and Seri Puteri.
It is less likely that I am on any side at all.

Therefore my comments are not biased, they are just blunt.
You can indulge with it positively, or you can leave it with a hurtful heart.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

honey, why hasn't anyone else commented? Well, let me be the first then.

Seriously, your review was blatantly honest, and not biased at all. And truthfully, would the judges of the competition even think of how long the band had the score, or how much effort they put in (as in, how many hours the students put into a particular piece, etc.)...

The answer is no. All they care about is the music that was presented during the competition. All the politics of the band are not taken into consideration. The focus is the music.

And that's what we all have to keep in mind.

Unknown said...

ya karim, tak habes lagi this issue? okey laaa kena comment jugak.

jubes: no one has commented coz umar hasn't updated for a loong time.(matilah mak!)

abt the post: i agree that your review was honest (well you can be too honest sometimes with your words, but hey, it's good, so don't go changing) and everyone should be taking it with a pinch of salt and perform better for next year's competition. politics is always bead, but it's there, deal with it/ignore it..whatever suits best and focus on the performance(s) at hand. yeah, it's hard to get 80 or so ppl to focus..but hey, team work!

daniel1007 (?) : salam from an old katak (muahahahahahahaha). be rest assured that this blogger has many TKC friends (many ke umar????) and has performed with them too (refer to yam here). so unfortunately, he does listen to stories from 'real ppl' abt the reality of situations. to the band: keep up the good work, and keep improving, never stop and be complacent with what you've achieved, that mistake was made in the past...so learn from it. instructors/teachers..they are not the ones performing..the students are, so you guys have to give the best. regardless of how the arrangement sucks or whatever, give your best performance...and it will matter..just you see.

SMSAHBAND said...

mmmm...