Mar 5, 2016

SAFRA The Ultimate Voice 2016


SAFRA organizes an annual singing competition called The Ultimate Voice and we were in time to sign up for our very first singing competition as a 3-piece band. There're solo category and group category.

We're required to submit an audio clip of our performance, if I don't remember wrongly, the duration is limited to less than 2 minutes, where I had a hard time deciding which portion of our cover to be trimmed, we submitted "The Scientist" by Coldplay by the way.

Quarter Finals @ SAFRA Toa Payoh (20 Feb)

We're informed that we're in the quarter finals on 16 Feb, an awesome start for us. And later on I found out that one of our Temasek Hall band juniors, Yoke Ling was also in the quarter final, what a coincidence. Check out her blog entry about SAFRA TUV.

I think there were 19 quarter finalists from group category and 100+ from solo category! That's crazy, and no wonder they limit the duration to 1 minute 30 seconds per contestant.

We performed a mashup of "Shut Up and Dance" by WALK THE MOON and "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, it's random I know, and there's barely any link between the songs but somehow they key Gary sings these two songs in the same key of B♭ major, plus the similar tempo, ultimately I think we're just trying to be 'different'. LOL...




Thanks to Hannah for the video, and we got into Semi Finals. So did Yoke Ling.


Semi Finals @ Bugis Junction (27 Feb)

This time round we're competing against another 11 groups of semi finalists. Thinking that we could perform a song in full length, we're informed that the time limit is 2 minutes 30 seconds for a song.

We performed the Lady Gaga Medley, you can watch our official YouTube cover of the song here. It's a mashup of 5 Lady Gaga's songs, originally covered by Sam Tsui. And the good thing is, the length of the song is very close to 2.5 minutes.




Good job En Qi for drawing the number "5" for our grand finals sequence. :P




Grand Finals @ Far East Plaza (5 Mar)

Alongside another 6 groups of finalist, we're to come out with a 3.5-minute long song for our finals. It always takes us a while to figure out what to perform for competitions, always till the last moment when we're randomly searching for some renditions on YouTube. We found out the mashup cover of Uptown Funk & Lips Are Movin by Sam Tsui, and that's it, we're doing it. We're totally the 'Mashup Band'. XD

The challenge for doing mashup for me is the substantial melody lines that I have to cover, mostly at the parts with layers of lyrical melodies.

It's a mixture of feeling for having to compete against others in the grand finals - things are gonna be uncertain because there was indeed competition in our midst.





Our THreshold junior Yoke Ling won 1st-runner-up for solo category!

Not sure why, but we somehow felt that we're not gonna win this competition, and when the 2nd and 1st runner ups were announced, I was totally like calming myself to be prepared to go home bare handed.

As the host read out the contestant number of the champion "03..", I got a bit blown while thinking, "Aren't we the only finalist with the contestant number starting with 03?".

It was us.

I couldn't recall exactly when was the last time I was so dumbfounded, this time I certainly was. O.o





Thanks to our friends who came to support us!


To precisely describe how we felt, "Emotional rollercoaster. It's really unpredictable.", said En Qi in the post-finals interview.


It was a fruitful day. In fact I had a certification exam in the morning, finals in the afternoon and our regular gig at night, all on the same day.

Few days ago I was asking Gary if we should setup a Facebook page. He said, yes, if we win this thing. And this was how The Tripsters got their Facebook page, do follow us on Facebook! :D

A remarkable milestone for The Tripsters, and for myself. Thank God for all this.

Last but not least, not to be forgotten that, it was this cover which we started off with, "The Scientist" by Coldplay.

Javin Tham A master's degree graduate in engineering, a musician at heart, loves playing with soft toys.

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