Here is a little recap – Forming an Acappella group was an idea Cheeyang had and told me about during our catch up session in March of 2016. We were tasked to look for suitable singers to form the group. CY found Jean and Zadon, and I found the bass singer, Weixin.
Let’s pick up from where we left off, and there we were at our first tryout over at CY’s place.
CY- Tenor 1
Alejandro (myself) – Tenor 2 (Baritone)
WX – Bass
Jean – Mezzo sop
Zadon – Beatbox
Yvonne – Beatbox (Maybe)
The two songs that were given to us a week before this tryout were Evolution of Beyoncé and Rather be, both Acappella covers by Pentatonix.
The tryout took less than an hour. We went in, sang the songs a few times and it was over.
I am very ashamed to say that the above scenario of a tryout or rehearsal is the biggest praise I can ever give to any aspiring Acappella group in Singapore. If you are a casual reader, you may not get it, but any Acappella group singer/member can totally verify this. I will try not to rant, but hardly any singers here in Singapore go into an acappella rehearsal well-rehearsed. The “wing it” attitude is like a plague that somehow prefers to infect singers. I don’t understand why till this day.
For some reason, everyone in that room was fully prepared (maybe except Zadon, but still he was ok) and we did both the songs in one try. Evolution of Beyoncé has about 18 songs with I don’t know how many tempo and key changes. Almost four years in and I never had another experience like that ever again. Shout out to Marian Carmel though, when we had her substitute Jean for a few performances she had to learn 10 songs (I am not talking about 4-chord songs, I am talking about medleys, originals and jazz pieces) with less than a month to prepare WHILE having exams and she performed like she had been with us since day one. With that said, Marian gets my prestigious stamp of musician excellence. With this stamp, you automatically get exempted from all “local musician rants”. While I won’t be doing too much ranting on this platform, I still do find a need to give full credits where it is due.
Ok back to the story. You would think that tryout 1 would seal the deal for the group right? Nope, far from it. Two things - CY had envisioned a 7-member group and Zadon had planned to go solo. I think in CY’s fantasy at that point, he wanted a fuller sound and the ability to explore more complex chords, split the group into two for special features and produce more vibrant music videos, etc… Got to give it to him, the guy had a plan. Zadon went on to do many great things on his own and with his crew. We are still great friends! Zadon owes his two years in SAF’s Music and Drama Company (Basically it is a unit in the army where all you do is perform and train to perform for the entertainment of the military) to me. I auditioned him and fought for his spot despite getting rejected by management a few times. So ya, you owe me one.
Ok, here is my fuzzy memory alert *ding ding ding*. This means the following may not be 100% accurate as I cannot remember, duh.
*Somewhere between tryout 1 and tryout 2, we had a… let’s call it tryout 1.5. It was not a formal tryout but just a session to feel things out. It was for the role of the Soprano and the person who came for the session was Stella from Stellavee. Vee was by her side and we sang the same two songs from Pentatonix. Once again, fully prepared. Cue drumroll for the Prestigious Stamp of Musician Excellence. She rejected the role as she was on her way to form Stellavee. She went on to do awesome things for the mandopop industry in Singapore. It warms my heart to see good and serious musicians do well.*
End of fuzzy memory.
From here on, I was out of the recruiting process as secretly I wanted a 5 member group. I was happy with 5 as I was afraid of the potential group politics that could manifest from having more members. *Spoiler alert* I was right, but that’s a topic for another day.
Tryout 2
CY – Tenor 1
Alejandro – Tenor 2 (Baritone)
WX – Bass
Jean – Mezzo Sop
Gen – Sop
Yvonne – Alto
Bryant – Beatbox
Zadon -Beatbox
Fuzzy memory alert *ding ding ding*
*I cannot remember when I first met Yvonne so here are two possible scenarios. I refuse to ask her because I believe it is more fun if everything is just from my memory.
1) Yvonne was part of the first tryout; hence. We would have 2 beatboxers during tryout 1 and they took turns to beatbox.
2) Yvonne joined us only during the second tryout and that will mean that there was a third tryout where Bryant joined.
I am more inclined to go with the first scenario.*
End of fuzzy memory.
Prior to this tryout, WX had expressed his disapproval for a female beatboxer as they lacked a strong bass sound and wanted to pull his friend Bryant in to fill that role instead. Bryant is a pioneer of the beatbox scene in Singapore together with the world-famous Dharni. He was highly respected as a trailblazer in the beatbox community. Being the people pleaser that I was, I joined him in trying to convince CY about adding Bryant into the mix. I admit, we spared no thoughts about Yvonne’s feelings or her standing in the group. To be fair, I only saw her once, maximum twice at that time. However, due to the immense respect Yvonne had for Bryant, she told CY that she was ok to leave the group and that it made sense for us to take an established and famous beatboxer over a small-time vocal percussionist who had done it only 2-3 years in a university interest group.
CY’s dream for a 7-member group made him decide to put Yvonne in the Alto session even though she had little to no experience in singing for an Acappella group. He definitely saw something in Yvonne at that time.
Oh yes, time to introduce Gen, the new soprano. We had known each other for a few years by that time due to a performance CY did in Singapore when he came back during his school holidays.
This is 2013, 3 years before we met again in CY’s place.
It was Feng (the guy in between CY and I) who convinced Gen to be part of this group. He was also a student at Berklee College of Music with CY. I have only good things to say about him. Gen and Feng were together at that time and they are married now. Shoutout to Caleb (extreme left), I hope you recovered from that time CY screamed in your face for playing the wrong things on the keyboard. Gen was a great musician in her own right and obviously, she was also fully prepared for the tryout. I don’t know how CY was able to find these serious and professional musicians.
Needless to say, the tryout was a success and we were all set to go. FINALLY, we have arrived at the FIRST version of The Apex Project!
The Apex Project Ver.1 : The era of the Seizure Sisters and the Calm brothers has began
(From left to right – Yvonne, Weixin, Jean, Cheeyang, Alejandro, Gen, Bryant)
(Yvonne can you not be holding hands with WX, please? It is disgusting.)
CY accomplished all these in 2 weeks. We set up a company (Yes we are a company) with its own bank account, putting Bryant and me in charge of it. He sat us down, got all casual nonsense out of the way and set our mindset straight. “This. Is. Serious.” We are doing this for real. We are ready to come out to the world, the new kids on the block are going to settle in and make a name for themselves. We placed our initial investment of $500 and off we go.
June 17th 2016 was our first showcase at the Esplanade and during this period of April to mid-May, I was away for my grad trip. I was on a cruise in Miami and I went back to Peru. Ya Peru, does my name Alejandro make sense to you now? During my absence, CY worked magic and went on a full-on workaholic mode together with Yvonne, who was appointed the group’s secretary. Another singer, named Marcus Lye (There is a reason why I use his last name too, you will come to find out soon enough), stood in for me and rehearsed with the group. Although I wasn’t around physically, the work ethic of CY and Yvonne infected me across the globe.
I finally knew what it meant to be serious, to be professional, to take what you want with everything you got. Thank you.
With only one month away from the showcase, we had to rehearse the show with me proper, record AND shoot the music video of our first Youtube cover, send out invitations and prepare props. I believe I missed many other things but you get the drift.
Our first release – I dreamed a dream + Fix you = Dream to fix you.
Showcase 1 (17/06/2016). Shoutout to Feng at the soundboard
June 17th has since been recognised as the group’s birthday. To all who attended, donated, and Marcus Lye for subbing me, CY and Yvonne for doing all the admin and planning, Jean for the awesome video and styling, Thank you. I did pretty much nothing compared to them.
That’s all for now, folks, this will end chapter 1 - “The journey begins”. The world has seen us, the next step was to establish legitimacy. How? There was only one way to start – Win the only yearly Acappella competition in Singapore - Acachamps.
Stay tuned for chapter 2.
Love,
Alejandro