New Friend

think pink!

I think I will call him/her/it mikey..

Mikey changes colours.
Freshman year is also almost over, yay, time to plan for the summer!

Asian Appeal

This is Anthony Neely, he was a contestant on Taiwan's version of American Idol, One Million Star.

With a new album out and HIM International Music promoting him, he has come a long way from his life in California.

Like Wilber Pan and Wang Leehom and many other ABC (american born chinese) talent, he made his way over seas to establish a career. Shouldn't the competition be about the same.

Neely has a very warm voice and what is more impressive is his Mandarin when he sings! It is not easy to accurately form the right tone while carrying a tune, but he does it as if it were his mother tongue.

I think his cover of Damien Rice's Blower's Daughter was absolutely raw and heart felt. Sounds almost just like Damien's voice.

Medina.

So typically, mom and I go back to Taiwan every December to celebrate the holidays and such however for once in a long while we chose to stay home in America and live up the good ol Texan Christmas. My we have some relatives who live in Medina, TX and it is really nice to just go veg in the middle of nowheres. This will be the second time we have gone this year, we already went over Thanksgiving.

Here are somethings that I love about going to Medina.

-Nobody ever knows where it is!!

-scenic drive with a lot of open range land.. and hills

-It is one place where I can get a front row seat to view the stars at night.

-There are camels~! Other wild life as well like goats, donkeys, llamas, horse...

-Medina is the Apple Capital of Texas = delicious apple strudel~~

-You can drive pretty fast...and across the double yellow lines

-Good quality bonding time

It's very nice to just let go of any stress or worry and be there in the middle of nowhere.

Happy Holidays yalll!

Inspired or Unintentional?

One of my favorite activities while listening to songs is to compare to other ones that I have heard and see whether I can find its match, like its "Doppelgänger" (to some extent).

We all have heard of parodies,composer intentionally uses same accompaniment and cleverly changes lyrics. We have heard different musical quotes or lyrics are thoughtfully placed within compositions, but I am curious to know whether composers have accidentally composed identical melodic themes and have no realized that it could sound like copying.

Another thought, could our minds subconsciously remember musical ideas that somehow inspire us to write down the same and we are convinced that it is our own because we dont know otherwise? sense? Perhaps we just like a theme and want to elaborate it our own way. I say we, but I have no one in particular to direct this towards.

To be more specific, at the moment I am listening to 2 songs that are similar in the beginning.





To save space on the post, I will just list out some other songs that I found similar..or just reminded me of the other..

Rihanna - Unfaithful vs. Rob Thomas - Lonely No More
Jet - Look What You've Done vs. Bonnie McKee - Somebody
Phil Vassar - In a Real Love vs. KC & Jojo - All My Life
Holly Brook - Giving it Up For You vs. [fill it in when i remember later]
Plain White T's - 1,2,3,4 vs. The Pretty Reckless - You Make Me Wanna Die

and the controversial
Avril Lavigne's - Girlfriend vs. The Rubinoos' - I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend


Sure these are small similarities, but I find it interesting, almost as interesting as when Rob Paravonian quoted songs using Pachelbel's popular cello chord progression.. (obviously not Pachelbel's solely)

Could it ever be possible that we run out of musical combinations?!?

BTW, there are blogs dedicated to this topic of songs that are alike!!

http://www.thatsongsoundslike.com/

Tim Be Told

Twist of fate, Wednesday I decided to volunteer at a cultural event at UT, and as it turns out they had a special guest band there who played. IT WAS SO AMAZING!!!
It was worth putting of my hw, because I found this band very inspiring. Their lyrics express positivity and hope for our time.

They had a free download of this song on their myspace :).. so that night I listened to that song nonstop.
I even took my own video of some of the songs Tim Ouyang sang.

Tim Be Told-Analyze

TEAM JUMBA FTW

I LOVE THIS SO VERY MUCH!! I hope that team jumba can go very far in this competition!!

Met my future?

Today at the coffee bean and tea leaf at the domain, while my mum finishes her order of cafe mocha, I am standing there at the other end of the counter waiting for the guy to serve me my order of iced water..and i look at the girl who is also waiting for her drink. Turns out that she is wearing the same identical summer dress that i am wearing, the only difference is that she wore a white cardigan over it and I had on a white laced shrug. what are the chances of that?

The laughter at the coincidence was the introduction of conversation, what we learned was that this girl's name was Yuki and that she was getting her doctorate in music at the same university that I will start attending this next week!

Makes me wonder how incredible this coincidence is, perhaps it really is nothing..but I'd like to think that there is a reason for this encounter. Who knows.