Amplitude

Attended Amplitude just now at UCC, NUS. Amplitude is a performance by choir and a cappella groups of NUS Halls of Residence as well as NUS Choir and Resonance (a cappella). It is part of the Exxonmobil Campus Concerts as well as the NUS Arts Festival 2007.

I'm crazy, right? Go back to school on a Sunday just to watch some performance. I was actually undecided between going back to school or staying at home to watch Phantom of the Opera (a classic!) and Ugly Betty. Due to certain circumstances, I ended up going to school. Can't say that I'm glad I went because although most of the performance was pretty alright, there were some sections that really spoilt the whole experience. Not to mention that I was seated beside a girl who would shake her head so hard I could feel her through the chair and who just shook her head even harder when she clapped. In fact, her head was twisting about when she was clapping and it was kind of scary. I was also, for a short period of time, seated in front of a guy who was slapping out the beat on his thigh.

The performance itself was alright, not excellent but passable. I was surprised there were so many a capella groups in school. There are some real talents in there. There was this girl in Sheares Hall choir who look really sweet and neat and somehow I traced a really marvellous voice to her. Really liked watching her and would have liked to listen to her sing solo.

On the other hand, Sheares Aca's performance of "This Love" by Maroon 5 started out nice but at the end the girl was singing so loudly into the mike, I physically shrank into the seat and stuck my fingers into my ears.

Another group, a choir, sang songs from Les Miserables. It started out interesting with obviously strong and loud voices as well as interesting movements. But the soundtrack was far too loud, so loud that I could hardly hear them and almost gave me a headache. It was utterly horrible, not really because of the headache but because it was obviously too freaking loud for the choir. I was so pissed off with that and with the fact that somehow nobody in charge was noticing it, that I was on the verge of asking the usher to please inform whoever was at the sound controls to lower down the freaking volume. Or I'd walk out there and then. I'm fired up now even just thinking about it. Anyway the costumes for this group were too excessive because there were not a lot of moving around or acting. Would have preferred more acting and real soloists instead of having one person stand in the spotlight yet having everybody sing the part. For goodness sake, you're singing a well-known musical! Do it well or don't do it at all! I was just praying for it to end quickly.

Sorry. I realize I might be a bit too worked up, but all these really gets on my nerves. Anyway those 2 performances were the ones I had the worst impressions of. There were others, but I'll just skip over them. Of course there were also very good ones like Resonance and others whose hall names I can't remember. =P

There was also guest a capella group Regu A, one of Indokustik winning groups. I don't know about them, but they're really very good and I enjoyed it a lot. Of course this is the part when the girl beside me started her clap-hand-shake-head ritual.

Glad that Regu A ended the night. Cheered me up considerably.

Here's "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence. This song was performed by the guys of Sheares Aca and that particular performance was quite good.



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