When people think of Germany, what often comes to mind is beer, sausages and football. But there’s so much more to the country than that. With cover bands being the minority here unlike Singapore, the numerous music venues littered across Germany together form not only a fulfilling circuit for overseas acts to tour, but also opportunities for a whole slew of local indie acts to organically grow their fan bases.
Though I’m sure that I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface, here are some of the amazing German acts I’ve discovered through my travels and Spotify:
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About three months ago, I packed up my life in Singapore and moved to a charming little city in Germany called Göttingen. I happened to visit this city once on tour , and it slowly grew on me, as I made plans to move out from Singapore.
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By the time this post goes live, I would’ve taught what would possibly be my last guitar lesson for a long while. In the blink of an eye, 10 years of teaching guitar has flown by. As I sadly said goodbye to each student these past few weeks, a truth from reflecting on this season in my life became clearer to me.
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For a week or so, my mind has been recalling the time I accompanied my mother and her friends to trek in Nepal. I think it’s because something I learnt then has finally begun to become truly relatable to my life.
I saw the trip as an opportunity to not only spend quality time with my mother, but also to try something new to expand my perspective. I also hoped I could healthily gather song material and inspiration post Forgiefan, instead of seeking a new muse to break my heart. Little did I know what was in store for me.
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One piece of advice to songwriters floating around the internet is to finish one song a day. Though there is some merit to that, it isn’t that one can’t complete a song but rather write one that they know they can be proud of years later. What these songwriters don’t realise is that, they can’t grow in songwriting if their internal world isn’t.
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In the recent years, I’ve encountered other musicians who were relatively young in their journey. They share a similarity in their attitudes, which I strongly feel is hindering them from truly succeeding in their music. Most encounters consisted of them asking for help, which is a good place to start, but just going about it incorrectly.
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I count myself so lucky to have had people and retailers support my passion all these years. I did a long overdue stock take recently. I can’t believe I have actually moved more than 700 units of Forgiefan and 400 of I Have Damned Every Moment Over!
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There was a time I was not comfortable with posting on social media. Despite encouragement from friends, I refused to record and upload covers on YouTube. On Instagram, I hardly posted anything regularly, because I was critical of my body image and felt that I didn’t look good in photos. There was this negative voice inside that kept saying things like “this photo sucks, you look terrible, it’s not perfect, why would anyone care?”
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A new year has arrived and with it, comes uncertainty about the future but also, hope for better things to happen. I’ve decided to share my “mission statement”, a set of overarching principles, that I’d work to keep to for 2019.
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In the blink of an eye, 2018 is already coming to a close. Where did all that time go? The end of the year tends to make me feel nostalgic and stirring with wishes, with hope.
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In 2017, I travelled the furthest ever for my music, to a town called Enkhuizen in the Netherlands. It was the last show of my European tour that year, which included a performance televised to 4 million households in Germany, and I stood at the water’s edge, thinking how fortunate I am.
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For the past two years, a big part of my life has been spent learning German. Has it been challenging? Have I missed out on what regular people do on Saturdays? Have I studied so much that I replied my mother once in German by accident?
Yes to all the above! Along the way, I also learned other things and wanted to share them with you.
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Performing music is a relatively safe process. You get to a venue, do your soundcheck, have a small dinner, pour your heart out for an hour or more and receive love from your audience in return. Then there are the other nights, when trouble will find me.
Before memory fades, here are a few interesting stories from the years of performing.
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Lately I’ve been preoccupied with the future, not in that “living in the future” way though! Reason being, I’ve been quietly setting things up to prepare for a new chapter in my life (will announce it properly when the time’s right). Honestly, it’s scary and uncomfortable.
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It’s been several months since the Terrible Luck tour wrapped up. Though I definitely learnt a lot on this tour, it wasn’t easy to form those thoughts into precise words.
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I wrote this article on touring overseas back in 2015. It was wonderfully edited by Daniel Peters and subsequently published by Bandwagon and Red Bull. I'd like to thank Daniel for giving me the opportunity then, it was a great experience working with him :)
Though it's been a few years since, I believe that its contents still have some relevance today and would be of help to any musician aspiring to tour outside of their home country.
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2018 marks 10 years since I began this solo project. After so long, I sometimes find myself losing sight of why I decided to pursue this crazy dream of mine.
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Hello! Welcome to my blog, the place I have assigned for all my tl;dr musings.
I'll be writing about my journey, internally and externally, as an independent musician from Singapore. I will also be starting on a new phase in my life very soon, and am planning to journal it too.
The first post will be published on 16th August 2018, at 4:30pm!
