visaisahero. says:
\neh i meant the random music they play in the background here and there
\nas filler
\nand on stuff like, TV commercials maybe?
\ndharma s. says:
\noh ok at NDP i think out of all the music played, i’d say a good 90+% of it is local music though
\nTV commercials it’s different hahaha a lot of it isn’t local
\nbut if it were all local, it’d be almost exclusively Electrico and perhaps The Suns
\nand Shirlyn
\nand Tanya Chua and Stefanie Sun and Taufik\/Hadi
\nthat’s about it
\noccasionally maybe WGB
\nand maybe also Great Spy
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nan increased percentage would be a start
\ndharma s. says:
\nbut i think that’s pretty much it as far as the local bands go
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nit’s a cyclic thing
\nit would be good for there to be more incentives for bands to take their stuff more seriously
\nbut there has to be a reason to give those incentives, it can’t be charity
\ndharma s. says:
\nwell…i dunno
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nif more bands take things more seriously then there will be a growing larger pool of material to choose from
\nand if they have to fight for it they’ll push each other to be better, in terms of writing or production quality
\ndharma s. says:
\nwe already have it so easy here in singapore, i’m not sure it’s worth encouraging folks by making it easier
\nit just means the quality drops
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nyeah it shouldn’t be EASIER
\nthat’s definitely wrong
\nit’s far too easy as it is
\ni mean at the bottom level of entry
\ntoo many people go to those random-chapalang gigs with terrible bands
\nand are completely turned off
\ndharma s. says:
\nwe spent so many years campaigning for more avenues for bands and now that there’s an explosion of bands we’re also seeing a huge drop in quality. there are so many gigs available now that so many bands that are just god-awful can gig whenever they want
\nvisaisahero. says:
\ni think alot of the newer people don’t realise that
\ni tend to forget too that when you guys were starting out (and i just started being interested in the scene at all) that there were far fewer bands but more quality
\ndharma s. says:
\ni think it’d be good if the media featured local music, but i guess i wished there was a larger pool of commercially digestable local bands, but that’s not something that can really be controled
\ncontrolled
\nhahaha yeah man, there were a lot less bands
\nand a lot of them were still terrible
\nbut the ratio of good bands vs terrible ones was much better than the ration now
\nit was like 1 good band to every 4 or 5 awful ones?
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nwe need to focus on the best. there are some newer bands that have solid potential
\nhahaha now there’s like 1 to 15
\ndharma s. says:
\nnow it’s like 1 good band to every 100 awful ones?
\nhahahahaha
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nk
\nhehehehehehe
\ni am still encouraged whenever i catch a young new band that’s really good
\ndharma s. says:
\nyeah but at the same time, if we start singling out bands and “grooming” them, it kinda takes the fun out of it
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nyeah it needs to be self-sufficient
\nor efficient
\ndharma s. says:
\nbands need to grow on their own, and their success depends on how motivated they are to push themselves
\nvisaisahero. says:
\n… it needs to take care of itself
\npeople tend to be more motivated if they have hope in something
\none thing is alot of bands don’t dream big
\nplay baybeats or new year countdown or some big gig once or twice ok can die happy
\ndharma s. says:
\nhaha ok i may be old school here but WGB’s sole motivation is to have fun when we play music
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nthat’s staying power for ya
\ndharma s. says:
\ni mean, of course you need to have goals, but the goals should not override the PURPOSE
\nour goal was to play baybeats by 2nd year and tour by 3rd year, and we’ve done that
\nbut our purpose was to have fun and write whatever the hell we felt like writing
\nand that is still our purpose
\nso i think we can’t confuse the two, and if bands don’t have a sufficient PURPOSE to make good music, then you can’t rely on them to achieve GOALS
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nthat is such an important message.<\/p>\n
dharma s. says:
\nif a band isn’t self-motivated enough to practice and prepare and push their marketing and their performance and their own musical ability, JUST so that they can be the very best that they can be, then offering them the chance for their music to be showcased on tv is selling yourself short
\nbecause from then on the band won’t be interested in being at their best
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nyes!
\nyes!
\ndharma s. says:
\nthey will only be interested in pursuing the showcase
\nthat’s what i mean
\nvisaisahero. says:<\/p>\n
dharma s. says:
\ni think it’s dangerous to offer bands a goal if the band doesn’t already have a purpose to its existence
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nbands with no purpose burn out after some time
\ndharma s. says:
\nbands shouldn’t need a “sweetener” or something to motivate them
\nand we shouldn’t offer it as an incentive for bands to function
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nhmm
\ndharma s. says:
\nwe should reward it if it is done freely
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nbut then and again right
\nif goals help you reach your purpose
\nand you have higher goals
\ndharma s. says:
\nhaha, end justifies means?
\nvisaisahero. says:
\ndoesn’t that help you achieve your purpose more “strongly”
\ndharma s. says:
\nthink about it this way
\nimagine these 2 scenarios
\n1) i offer you candy as an incentive for each A you get in exams
\nvs
\n2) you get an A in exams and i reward you with a gift of candy for each A that you get
\nboth have the same outcome
\nbut both have different processes
\nthe first process is negative, as without the reward you won’t work to get an A
\nthe second is positive, as without the reward you would still have gotten your A
\nthe second is better because it encourages you to understand the purpose behind getting the A. in order to get your A you need to be SELF MOTIVATED
\nself-motivation both earns the reward as well as brings long-term benefits because you understand why you do it
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nhmm
\ndharma s. says:
\nif my band was motivated only by exposure, as soon as our exposure is lacking we won’t give a shit anymore
\nbut exposure is not our purpose, it’s just a perk
\nfun is our purpose, and we always have fun
\nthat’s why we stick together as a band and as friends no matter whether we have exposure
\nto grow a healthy music scene, you need bands that are self motivated
\nthat work hard to earn and achieve their goals of exposure\/gigs\/whatever
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nyou are right
\ndharma s. says:
\nbut regardless of their goals, they are self motivated to be their best no matter what the circumstances are
\nso that’s what we need
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nso the question is, how do we get more people to be self motivated
\ndharma s. says:
\nyou can’t lol
\ncause as soon as you start pushing them, they are not self motivated
\nyou are motivating them
\nwhat we can do, though, is keep an eye out for bands that push themselves
\nand support them
\nlike when we saw what Caracal was doing, how they pushed their songwriting, performances, showmanship, everything, we asked them to open for our first album launch
\nthey are self motivated
\nElectrico, The Suns, AVA
\nall self motivated
\nRonin
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nYOU ARE RIGHT
\nomg.
\ndharma s. says:
\nall these bands have taken their own initiative and pushed as hard as they can, and that is why they were successful
\nnow look at artists who are not self motivated
\nTaufik
\nHadi
\nOlinda
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nso true
\ndharma s. says:
\nthese are artists who are supported by the media
\nbut their music is in the bargain bins
\nbecause they are not motivated to push themselves
\nthey are pushed by others, promoted by others
\nthey have no internal drive to expand, to be their best, no purpose as to who they are and what they are doing. they just do whatever they are told to do
\nso a) we don’t want to encourage people to lose their self-motivation at the expense of giving them media exposure, and b) we don’t want to be the ones “motivating” people so that they do whatever we tell them to do
\nbecause that would turn us into the evil Ken Lims who create clones of good singers singing awful songs and market them to the mass media
\nwe need to encourage self-motivation and integrity in our music scene
\nvisaisahero. says:<\/p>\n
thinking back
\nwhat inspired me to be self-motivated was watching ronin a long time ago at some crap gig
\ni thought if these fellas can do it i can do it to
\n*too
\ndharma s. says:
\nahuh
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nand i would want other people to feel the same feeling that i felt then
\ncheesily, that they can accomplish anything
\nso i would say that that is my personal purpose
\ndharma s. says:
\nwell i mean, i know exactly how you feel
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nmaybe not so much “accomplish anything” but rather, if there’s anything holding them back from doing what they want to, it shouldn’t
\ndharma s. says:
\nwhen i watched Surreal playing to a huge crowd at Baybeats ’04, i was like WHOA i wanna do that some day
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nyeah
\nso once we have a group of people setting a good example, others will follow
\ndharma s. says:
\nwhen we formed WGB i told the guys my purpose in the band was to see how far we could go if we actually worked hard and smart at it
\nsince then my purpose has been a combination of relaxing and having fun as well as still trying to push to see how far we can go
\nour goals, though, have been very clearly defined right from the start, and we’ve worked hard at it
\nright at the start, within the first 2 weeks of the band forming, i spelt out our 3 major goals really clearly and we worked hard for each goal and achieved them
\nso it’s a combination of everything
\nself motivation, hard work, having goals, and pursuing and achieving them
\nif you do that, eventually people will start to notice you, and at some point down the road, people may look up to you the same way you looked up to those who inspired you
\nthat’s how it’s been for us
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nsweet
\nyou should write a little autobiography of some sort
\ndharma s. says:
\nhuh aiyo no lah cannot lah
\nElectrico should write one
\nor maybe Daniel Sassoon
\none of my personal local music heroes
\nhe’s been involved in local music for so many years, he’s seen how it’s changed
\neven before he was in Livonia
\nhe was active in the Humpback Oak\/Lizard’s Convention\/Sherene’s Closet\/Mute era
\nand then he joined Electric Company and they ushered in a whole new era of local music
\nvisaisahero. says:
\namazing man
\nthey should ah
\ndharma s. says:
\nyeah man
\nDan is my hero lah
\nhahaha
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nit might just inspire random people who aren’t involved at the moment
\ndharma s. says:
\nwhenever i need advice or an opinion on something music scene related from someone older and wiser, i always go to Dan
\neverything from pedals to advice on how to pack my guitar when touring
\nhaha
\nDan even introduced me to my favourite web comic, which i have read every day without fail for about 3 years now
\nevery weekday
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nhahahah which is that
\ndharma s. says:
\nwww.questionablecontent.net
\nvisaisahero. says:
\nOH! i used to read this!!
\ni forgot about it!
\ndharma s. says:
\nhaha
\nit is awesome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
visaisahero. says: eh i meant the random music they play in the background here and there as filler and on stuff like, TV commercials maybe? dharma s. says: oh ok at NDP i think out of all the music played, i’d say a good 90+% of it is local music… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-2ut","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}