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Just a westerner man's personal blog on his journey to try to learn Chinese with the aim to write, compose and sing a chinese song for his wife on the 10th wedding anniversary on the 14/02/2010. I am legally deaf (5% hearing in each ear) and have never learnt Chinese before. It all started from a crazy idea (maybe an impossible idea) right at the start of Feb 2007. So the journey continues... ALL SONG, LYRICS (ENGLISH AND CHINESE) AND MUSIC BELONG TO GEIWODELAOPO.COM AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MAY BE COPIED WITH OUT WRITTEN CONSENTS FROM GEIWODELAOPO.COM (c) GEIWODELAOPO / 笨老公 2007/2008/2009, All rights reserved. |
Ha ha ha - write my message to my wife here...
Ho ho ho - write the stuff here for the song
Hi hi hi - write the song here.
La la la - write the song here.
La la la - write the song here.
La la la - write the song here.
La la la - write the song here.
La la la - write the song here.
Most certaintly not... let's work on the new mission...
Dummy page for spammers
Bug in the count down…
Do u know what - the count down to the Anniversary is wrong. There is a bug - it is out by one day. Anniversary is on Valentines Day or in this case Chinese New year. But the javascript that I used is out by one day. 
Any way will find some time to fix up some of the website this weekend ready for the long term of it for the next mission.
Additionally, I managed to find the keyboard over the weekend and should be able to close the deal on Saturday. Looking forward to getting it. Although will not start doing anything until after the mission - so have a clear idea on the start and end of the mission.
What have we learnt?
1) Chinese is very hard. 中文是很难的
2) Writing solo music with just voice and piano is very hard (probably a little more challenging then having a mixture of instruments)
3) Need proper instruments - i.e a proper professional keyboard.
4) The feel for keyboard and piano are completely different. I feel more comfortable on keyboard.
5) Recording is a crucial part of song writing and composing. Just relying on a digital camera really does give poor results.
6) Singing Chinese is rather difficult with all the tones (try to avoid too many words in 4th tone)
7) Songs are now maybe a little too simple - need to build up the story in the song a little more
I have a terrible voice
9) The best style is your own style - don’t bother studying other styles on other songs.
10) Creating videos is time consuming
Digital Pianos
Went to buy guitar on Monday for the children to use, learn and practice. More a Children size guitar purely for learning. New guitars really fall out of tune quickly due to the strings being new and stretching. So need constant tuning. No so hard if you use a piano or keyboard to tune them - I guess for me I will hear close enough to do it. But I guess to the experienced ear - they will think I did a crappy job.
Any way - I had a chance to play on this:
http://www.casio-intl.com/emi/piano/privia/px830bk.html
I like it very much. Am looking to get a professional level keyboard as I move to advance more in song writing. We’ve come so far in 3 years and want to move ahead in the next 5 years. Will need to write a reflection on our learning in a later blog entry.
Yes, I do have a piano - but in terms of song writing and etc - keyboard do work better for me.
Yes, I do have a keyboard - but this one is more for a children level learning. It does falls a little short of the 88 keys (which I sorely miss) and the touch to the keys is poor. I would like a Yamaha keyboard touch/feel or similar. Yet, having the keyboard was enough to learn.
Anyway I have to go back now and start studying the whole family of them for the differences. Like PX-830BP/PX-830BK, then 730s, 130s, 330s, 410s, 620s, 420s and the list goes on. Have a choice complex :p
I am looking in terms of recording music, so need some proper outlet for proper grade recording. Using a digital camera to record obviously is a poor way to record. So need to study this aspect properly.
Take it from there… see how we go.
To my wife…
Darling, here is the updated draft on the song that I would like to work on with you.
What do you think?
To My WIFE…
I know we have all come a long way in this mission. Truth is I do not want to stop. Maybe there has been some improvement over time and know over time they can be better…
Any way - I want to go on writing songs. Hope you can work with me on this one. This is the new one - Chinese not finished translating and obviously, I’ve deleted some of it and have corrections in place. I think the combination of both English and Chinese can add to some effect in which combines the two cultures.
Video credits and thanks!!!
Writing the thanks and credits for the video was difficult I think. Hard to find the wording…
Difficult creating the video
You know when you create all the art work and the video… it simply takes ages… I am no expert in graphics design so it probably takes me way much longer.
I can’t ask any one else to design the graphics design for me because it is to awkward to ask. So the video part it taking ages.
I still need to organise a trip to the beach with the children for some photo shooting to add into the video, additionally the second part of the song needs to be recorded to complete it.
Some minor updates to the website along with the credits and thank you acknowledgments for the video. I guess we are getting there.
I am really struggling in what to decide to write for the last blog entry. Truth is I enjoy this new hobby that I would like to continue this. Perhaps write other songs all in Chinese. But this time ask my wife for help directly or even write a duet can be nice. She can sing the English part and I sing the Chinese part.
Plenty of different ideas. Different directions different things that can be exciting. So I am more than hoping that this blog will continue.
Viewing flash…
Video draft
Another draft of the video:
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我的老婆
我的老婆 - My Wife
Copyright © www.geiwodelaopo.com (笨老公)
2009-2010 All rights reserved.
让我感谢月亮
让我感谢命运
让我感谢你.
给我的爱
在過去的十年中
我一直都这么快乐
伴随着许多的爱
我有一个秘密跟你说
你会听见吗
当我遇见你.
我低声对月亮说出
我深切的希望
像一个美丽的童话故事
日子便这样悄悄地过去了
让我感谢月亮
让我感谢命运
让我感谢你.
给我的爱
让我感谢月亮
让我感谢命运
让我感谢你.
我的老婆