My Bass Guitar got cracked...again !

What a tragedy !... after all the care and attention my bass guitar fell again and cracked its neck again. Yes this is the second time. The first time it happened was due to a motorcycle accident back in 1999. I think my friend Zulkifli still remember the incident because he was riding with me when I lost control and my motorcycle skidded. It costs me almost RM200 to refurbish the cracked neck last time.

This time I don't know when I am going to fix the cracked neck. I am tempted at the same time to buy a new guitar, but I don't know. This bass guitar is more than just a guitar to me. It has been with me since 1998. Her name is Aria Pro II stb series. What I love most about her is her deep and fat sound. So far I have not come across any other bass guitars which can give me that deep and fat sound. The sound didn't come originally with the guitar when I purchased it. But it evolved by the aging of the wood. I love it !


I definitely will have to leave Aria when I go to Dubai. But it is too bad that I have to leave her in this condition. I hope I will be able to fix her again when the situation allows. There are so many other difficult things which I have to manage at the moment and the least that I want is anything bad to happen to my loved ones. Unfortunately Aria is fated to go through this ordeal.

I pray to the Almighty the rest of my loved ones will be sound and safe..

NOTE: Oh ya.. Zulkifli's gambus broke too. What a coincidence.

It takes a minute to have a crush
an hour to like
a day to love
but it takes a lifetime to forget

Music and Friendship

I just got back from Dewangga Sakti's gig in Singapore held on June 7th-8th. It was Dewangga Sakti's first cameo in the city state. The band also did their soft launching of the EP Mabok Kepayang in Singapore. As a musician in Dewangga Sakti I am happy and proud to see the first fruit of our labour is now riped and ready to be enjoyed by listeners out there. But what is most important to me, this trip to Singapore has left something meaningful to me as a musician in the band.

I have been active with music band for more than 10 years now, first with Cryptic Malediction and then Dewangga Sakti. The love and passion for a particular music has drawn me and other bandmates together to form our bands. But I can say music alone does not sustain a band. It is the bond and friendship created whilst making the music that hold us together as a band. My equation to this formula is music + friendship = great survival band.

Without friendship I don't think my bands can achieve what they have got now. Sure you may ask why friendship is so important? The answer depends on how far you want to drive your band. I can simply put advertisement for a guitarist, drummer and vocalist and quickly form a band for a project either to perform or produce an album. I can do it with a complete stranger. But I dont think I can do it for more than 3 years if I don't perceive other bandmates as friends as oppose to mere bandmates.

I say like this because there are a lot of ups and downs in moving together as a music band. I am not talking about a band who just gather for a jam during the weekend and collect music materials together. This is about managing a group of peoples towards serious goals and maintaining consistency and improvement at it. The process of achieving those goals require a lot of sacrifices, commitment and hard work. Along the way, you could see peoples' attitudes, obstacles, excuses, laziness, ego, anger and frustration. What better way to understand and overcome all these problems? To me the answer is friendship.

Some may say it should be professionalism. But professionalism alone is not enough and in fact you could only behave in a professional manner if you think it is your profession. To me being a bandmate is not a profession, it is a passion.

My bandmates and I in Dewangga Sakti faced many obstacles in producing our first EP Mabok Kepayang. It may sounds simple to produce 5 songs and print it on CD but behind the scene it deals a lot more with cooperation, voluntariness, understanding, love and respect to each other. The works for the EP have made us closer to each other and reinforced our brotherhood in music. Moving forward I pray that we would be able to understand and cooperate with each other more and avoid past mistakes and loopholes.

Coming back to my Singapore trip, apart from the traveling fatigue and lack of sleep I had so much fun and laughter with my bandmates. I laughed so hard that I trapped air in my lungs and ripped my abdominal muscles (my theory only !). It is very rewarding to have a really good time after hard days work. The Singapore trip was special to me because it was the first time Dewangga Sakti got to travel outside Malaysia in full board. In our previous trips only some of us were able to travel and perform overseas due to the client's requirements.

In Singapore Dewangga Sakti have embraced En Wah Yun Kua as a new member. He plays percussion and is very good at it. He is my bandmate now and definitely a friend. I hope he can bring a lot of improvement to the band and vice-versa. I look forward to create more beautiful musics with him and bring benefit to other peoples out there.

"In the rhythm of Life, we sometime find ourselves out of tune, But as long as there are friends to provide the melody, The music plays on."

L-R Standing = Mohsen, Syamsulfaiz, Wahyun, Zulkifli
L-R Sitting = Irwan, Norman, Azman, Raof

Scandalous !

Couldn't hold it anymore !

Dear Honey, How are you? I am currently at ...


Still scandalous !

Call for Update

I am sure most of you are familiar with an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. I am one of the frequent readers of Wikipedia as I find some of the information are reliable and accessible from any place in this planet (as long as you are connected to internet). In fact I love encyclopedia and I used to be an encyclopedia bookworm when I was a child (I still remember arguing with a librarian of a mobile public library on why I cannot borrow encyclopedia book).

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. For more information please read this page.

There is an entry on Music of Malaysia in Wikipedia which have several write up on traditional music, pop music, underground music, Chinese music, Indian music, jazz, classical and world music as well as contemporary music. I think this particular entry on Music of Malaysia need to be updated as the information provided so far is definitely not enough. Though I thank the pioneering volunteers for the existing articles.

For example the write up on traditional music is very general and limited. Its first paragraph talk about silat? and the other two paragraphs just superficially state about ghazal, zapin and dondang sayang. How about inang, joget and asli? The sections on pop music and underground music are more informative than the traditional music. The sections on Islam-influenced pop (why dont just use the term nasyid?), chinese music, indian music require more input.

To all my friends and readers wherever and whoever you are (including myself) I would like to call you to update the entry on Music of Malaysia in Wikipedia so that the readers will have access to a reliable and quality information on our beloved Malaysia's music scenes. I believe the effort will be a great and sincere contribution to the country and ourselves. Don't you love your music?

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard and read to grow"
Lawrence Clark Powell
Librarian, Writer and Critic (1906 - 2001)

I was a sailor, once..

The ship I sailed with
Chocolateeee !
Colleagues and bosses in my department

Me and big boss jamming at sea
My fans..hehe

It has been a long time since my last post here. A lot of exciting and not that exciting events had happened in the past few weeks. One of the exciting events was my cruise trip from Port Klang, Malaysia to Harbour Front, Singapore. My first sea journey of 200 nautical miles (figure out the equivalent kilometers for me please, thanks).

On a sunny morning of 26 April 2008 I together with 43 of my colleagues and bosses set sail to Singapore on Super Star Gemini ship. None of us brought our spouses along so I could see a few nasty faces on board who might be thinking of all the vices they could do without the presence of their other halves (no, this is just a married couple cliche). The trip was arranged a la free and easy style with no plan on formal meeting, brainstorming or group binding programme. I was indeed very grateful for that matter. In fact it was so free and easy that I missed the first lunch on board on the first day because I was busy unpacking my clothes and chatting with my bunker mate. However my fear of starving until dinner diminished when I learned the cruise has a chocolate buffet at 4.30pm. My god, the chocolates were not only delicious but beautiful too.

I hung out at the pool deck after tea enjoying the smell of the sea and the vastness of the horizon. The setting reminded me of my younger brother who sails for a living. He must have enjoyed this session so many times in his life already. No wonder he always looks happy and energetic everytime he comes back for a holiday. The scene of a wide open sea really can change your mood and way of thinking. I took the opportunity of such occasion to review my life, past present and future. Everything changed, evolved and passed by very fast. The day when I first set my feet in primary school to the day I left my university with a degree. Of all the friendship created with hundreds of friends. Where are they now? Some of them become closer to me but some are nowhere to be traced. I even reminisced about the first date with my girlfriend (now wife) and how I forgot to pay for her bus fare. The thought got interrupted when my friend announced about a group photo during sun set time. The photos turned to be very lively.

At night we were entertained by a bunch of professional dancers and musicians from Philippines, China and Belarus. They are multi talented lot. There was a performance on international women's fashion show by gorgeous women but with more closed look, only a handful of them are actually women. In commercial entertainment industry I admire very much the professionalism and dedication of Filipinos entertainers. They train themselves hard since young to be a performer and most of them are multi talented performers who could sing, play musical instruments, dance, act and do stand up comedy. I have not yet found any other races in the world who niche themselves as industrial artists other than the Filipinos. I am not sure whether the government of Philippines has had their part in encouraging its citizen to be international entertainment workers or they regard this human resource service as one of their export sector. The fact is, in almost all entertainment outlets I have been, whether inside or outside Malaysia, I could bet the resident artist are likely to be the Filipinos. Filipinos in entertainment services are like the Gurkhas in military and security services.

On the morning of April 27th, I woke up to the sound of captain's announcement on the ship's arrival in Harbour Front, Singapore. It was a calm and sunny morning and I had my breakfast whilst enjoying the morning scene of the city-state's port. After breakfast my bunker mate and I decided to disembark and shoot photos at the statue of Merlion. We had to switch MRT stations twice before we reach at the Merlion statue. One thing I noticed about the MRT station is that the speed of the escalator is slightly faster than the one in Kuala Lumpur's LRT station. If you are not mindful enough of the speed you could trip on the escalator's first step.

In the evening we sailed back to Port Klang at 1830 hours. I went to the pool deck again hoping to continue the reminiscing session but found out almost half of the guests were there for the sail away party. I joined the partying crowd and danced to the melody of YMCA song under the instruction of a funny Filipino dancer. My bunker mate is such a natural dancer, the organiser picked him up as runner up to the final dancing contest in the party. He should have won but because of the voting was on the basis of how much cheering and applause he could get from the crowd, my bunker mate lost to an Australian who happened to have his group of wasted friends cheered and screamed for him. After dinner I joined a karaoke session with my colleagues and bosses. Almost everybody in the group can sing and the effort were not bad at all. I sang a few Malay and English duet songs with my big boss. I was surprised to find out his interest and knowledge on Malay songs since he is a Singapore educated Chinese. I also found out my lady boss can sing and dance too. What a talented lady.

We arrived at Port Klang at 0930 hours of Monday the 28th. It was a fun-filled cruise trip and a good memory with friends to be reminisced in the future.

"Who is staring at the sea is already sailing a little"

Paul Carvel, Belgian writer and editor

Music and you

I want to share a perspective about music. In my humble opinion music is an ancient form of communication. It is also the most natural and universal way of communication. With music the musician tells the listeners his/her message that is embedded in the arrangement of the melody, rhythm and the bit of the tempo. Any sound is a piece of music. When people talk they punctuate their conversation with certain intonation which is a form of music. Same goes to animal.

The birds have their jamming session every morning. The monkeys thrashing their hearts out together in the jungle. Some of the musical composition can be understood by certain listeners and other composition can be understood by larger listeners. Sometimes I feel I can understand what my cat is ranting about when I got back home late, simply from the rhythm and the melody of its voice. Even ancient people communicate their messages from village to village by blowing shell trumpet. Language of men is a recent tool of communication compared to the long history of music as the means of communication.

We would find modern songs nowadays either instrumental or comes with lyric sung by a singer. But both forms are essentially a music and carry messages to its listeners. Yes there is a MESSAGE in every piece of music. Even if the song has no lyric it definitely carries its messages in the composition of rhythm, melody and bit of tempo. An experienced listener can capture the messages in music. You can tell if the song is a happy song, sad song or angry song even without a lyric. Try listen to an instrumental zapin or joget song and you may find your body will gesture some form of dance movement. The message of dance is being communicated to you and your body is replying to it.

Music is a very powerful tool of communication too. We could see dangdut music moved the political scene in Indonesia. Blues music of the African people inspired the successful entertainment industry of the USA. Soldiers go to battlefield accompanied by war songs. There is no barrier for music to communicate between human. Music is capable of penetrating our soul and evoke our emotions.

A lay listener may not be able to hear which instruments are playing or what pitches are used. Yet he or she may have no problem of appreciating the music as a whole. As a music performer I try to get the listeners to get involved in the emotions inherited in the music played by my band. It is also in my opinion that when one listens to a piece of music he or she must be in a state of emotional. Because only then the emotion of music can be converged with the emotion of the listener and recreate a new emotion. The listener will enjoy an intense pleasure with the newly recreated emotion passed by the music.

So feel the power of music. Open your heart and try to interpret the messages in the music being played to you. Listen to the melody, rhythm and lyric in a song. And find yourself a story is being told to or shared with you.

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."
E.Y Harburg, American songwriter (1896-1981)