yesterday, Mr Ong and Ms Sia brought Mr Yitoh the jap conductor to our band for mentorship program. his wife and daughter came along and the tchrs brought them out while Ms Sia stayed with Mr Yitoh to conduct us.

Ms Sia conducted Sunrise for an introduction. though we didn't stop halfway for corrections, she commented alot about tuning, intonation etc. feeling really nervous for we didn't sound as usual too. after the song ended she commented more about other stuff and didn't look pleased.

Mr Yitoh then came up and said "my english, little bit!", using his thumb and fingers held close tgt to explain what he meant. half of the time he was talking in japanese and we couldn't understand him, so he communicated through music. playing the trumpet and singing, he asked us to sing our chords too. he emphasised on the impact like tennis where you don't just hit the ball hard immediately, but you hafta swing it(breathe in deep) and hit it so it will fly straight and true(let ur note out smoothly). apart from that he also told us about our articulation, ba-bii, du-daaa, staccato and to play the same sound throughout a phrase(not laa laLA laLA laLA laa). after taking apart the whole of Sunrise, we played the whole piece in one breath and sounded much much better! Mr Yitoh even clapped and went "ahhh, goooood!" we were so happy, you can feel happiness radiating from us.

he then took a video of us waving into the camera and we took pics with him. he also invited us to his school in japan! during practice, he told us that their band practices were all day and we were all so shocked. ms wan said afterwards if we get a gold this year, we will get to go there at the end of the year! oh my gosh! but that's dependent on whether we can get it or not. i believe CSB can do it! :D


tday was speech day. special thanks to Grace for so willingly helping me to take videos of our performance! she was so sweet, she even gave me a choc flower with the leaves and stem and petals and all! Mr Ong came specially to see us too, it's too nice of him.

handbell sounded lovely and they moved much! Jubilee Hoedown was very energetic and bright i like the different versions of melody Seven Bridges has, and the ending chord that rings so clearly.

at first i thought our performance lacked the dancing feel, but appealed well to the audience. later on when i heard our recording, i realised we were good! at bar 7 we were in tune, same articulation, sounded like one. alto and bari's bar 59 was the best we ever played for we played tgt exactly. the last page was as exciting as ever and the band ended together! no screw ups or whatsoever. at the end of speech day Mr Ong praised us and said we played even better than last year. i felt so pleased in the end. :D

anyway, i wish Ms Sia wld come and we do not let her down. i wish she wld one day conduct us and at the end of it say "if you play like that, i will dare to show my face." there are so many people's hopes on us. not blind hope, but faith that we can make our mark, that's why their hoping and believing in us. we mustn't let them down..we won't. it's just a bit more, we can work wonders with the little bit. we wouldn't let any of our efforts go to waste.