Rewind to The Idea Of North, Alexis Bistro, Great Eastern Mall, some 28th of November 2007.
Nicholas Begbie on tenor. The young awkward dude.
Andrew Piper on bass! He looks a bit like Will Ferrell.
Patricia Delaney-Brown on soprano.
Naomi Crellin on alto.
This German vocal-effect-ful song, My Hat It Has Three Corners, was cute!
Some of the songs performed were Sergio Mendez – Mas Que Nada (yeah the song that Will.i.am bastardized with the Black Eyed Peas), The Beatles – Sister Sadie, Sting – Fields Of Gold and Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive. There were also jazz standards which I never knew the names of.
Then there was Stevie Wonder – Isn’t She Lovely (with an excellent vocal harmonica solo by Nick.)
Though, to be honest, I wasn’t completely blown away until they did the vocal effect bits. There’d be nothing to set them aside from a top-notch acapella group that does contemporary covers. In that sense, maybe I like unconventional acapella, like simulating the sound of a car starting or rockapella. It gets far more interesting when they simulate the sound of drum rolls!
That said, maybe it takes a finer ear than my rock-corroded receptors to appreciate how they pull off the simpler-sounding, less flashy stuff.
On a technical note, I shot all of these from a table next to the entrance of Alexis. Yes, that’s right, all the way at the end. Thanks Nicholas for letting us crash your table! Shot with either the Minolta 50mm F1.4 or Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at ISO1600 or ISO3200 on the Sony Alpha 700 and cropped a lot to show you how much I can get out of a ISO3200 shot. Interestingly, the noise reduction at higher ISOs on the Sony is luminance noise reduction, not chroma noise reduction like on the Nikons. Debateably the Nikon may look better at 100% because it has monochromatic noise and doesn’t have blotches of color… but the Sony retains color fidelity and tone even at ISO6400.
To simulate chroma noise reduction, load a noisy image in Photoshop, duplicate the layer, apply a Gaussian Blur of say 3 pixels, then change the Blending Mode to Color and Flatten Image. Notice that the edges lose color and you get a pastier look.
More on this here:
Alpha 700 shoots the Cirque du Soleil
It’s "I thought we had a pact". Well hello Malaysian look who can’t put on an accent! 😛
ya lah i said i thought we had a pact la!! Where got salah! Why u bully me again!! *cracks knuckles*
they’re like, so like awesome, like oh my God like can you believe, like what you heard. Like oh god. Ear orgasm, like totally. I so like, loved it.
Like oh my god can you believe they came? My auditory organ came too watafakkkk.
And Nicholas if you are reading this post, since your link is up there, I thought we’re have a pact to trade CDs. Why u bluff me 🙁 I tell your mader you bluff a ger 🙁
sorry grammar salah. We "had". I know you’re damn anal abt grammar right. Pro- grammar programmer. I’m like so tension just reading your entries cos like English exam okay please when commenting. be a little more Malaysian thank you we speaks not bad but not perfects english. well, peoples like me that is.
like you’re so gonna like totally mock me for my mistake there so imma rectify it before you say my engrish sucks like a vacuum cleaner. T
okay hahaha u must be damn excited now cos there’re 3 comments within a few minutes manatau it’s fr the same person wtf. I am waiting for mah ride and since I cant disturb u on the phone i will do it here instead. ok la ini komen tak berguna boleh delete thank you bai.
Oh, you forgot to put the quotes around the "we" as well. There there come I’ll crack your knuckles for you.