I first began
tinkering on a piano in 1976 at MPIK/STTI where I also first learnt what a
treble clef was. I was aged 32 then. No piano cikgu but only relied on ownself
with my knowledge of guitars and chord progressions learnt. I was much inspired
waching all my lecturers play it – Mr. Khoo Soon Teong, Mrs. Ranji Knight, En.
Nazri Ahmad and Puan Shamsiah.
I asked my lecturer Mrs.
Knight to tutor me on the piano. I went to her house and started playing chords
and hummed the tunes along.....she was flabbergasted and did not know where to
start with me and, instead, asked me how
I was employing chord movements on my right hand and playing the bass line / chords
on my left hand.....and that was the end of my piano tutoring. She recommended
me to get the John Thompson series of books and I bought two and started practicing
simple exercises on my right hand and with a severely handicapped left hand
(till today).
And thus began my “piano
playing”. I also listened a lot to the
piano music of Richard Clayderman besides observing other piano players esp.
the professional musicians whom I performed with – Ahmad Wan Yet and others but
could not decipher their chords but could figure out their adlibs. When I went back to schools as an itinerant
music teacher covering four schools I kept on practising and playing the piano
for simple children’s songs. In this
way, I reached some level of pano playing which still, BTW, baffled those who
played especially classical piano style….they envied me much more than how I
envied them and their fingering techniques.
In the 80’s when my
full 6 pc. band, The Shades of Time was not getting much gigs (tak laku lagi) I
started playing on a Casio keyboard with the auto chord setting and performed
nightly with a solo singer at pubs and clubs quite successfully too. I had also bought my first upright piano and
played it often at home. It was a Kimball. I got a 2 year gig at the Ria Hotel in Seremban as
the resident 3 pc band with me on the piano accompanied by a bassist and
drummer and we backed Filipino songstresses who were changed every 6 months. These singers were not the type of dancer
singers that flooded Malaysia later. If
the singer sang in B major I was not permitted to play in C (my favorite key
till today) or Bb….I will get reprimanded immediately. So in this way I started
also playing the dreaded sharp keys. I sold my Kimball off in 1984 when I went
to USA on a government scholarship to study formal music. By then I already had
my Grade 8 (Theory) certificate already.
Me playing the keyboards as a one man band in the 90's. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mjJ7NZt2M
I learnt more jazz
theory there and played it on the guitar and also the piano. When I returned I was back in MPIK / STTI and
“showed off” my piano playing and many of my students were “impressed” and/or
inspired too. Many classically trained
pianists who were my students ( Grade 8 and LRSM requirement) came to Seremban to learn
jazz voicing on the piano and how to solo” / adlib…and paid me handsomely too.
By then I could play the keyboards on my own and started performing professional
gigs and stints again with singers like Azizah Basri, Dorothy Barnabas, Ronnie
Rajamoney and Augustine Manuel. Today ?? Yes, I still play the piano alone for myself at
home with very much “rusty” hands. So
there. That’s my story.
No comments:
Post a Comment