I Can Play but I Can Sing

Written in 1985 and 1988 / Recorded in 1988 and 2013

Before I got familiarised with basic knowledge on how to name or call a chord, composing was more about products made of coincidences. A subtle mistake in holding a guitar chord occasionally gave me an idea to base a tune on and that was how this tune originally developed from. In those days, I didn’t know how to call some chords I used in the intro part nor did I know what was going on theoretically there. To prevent losing the idea, all I could do was to play it again and again to memorise each chord by its finger form.

Initially, the tune didn’t have lyrics but I had a clear intention to write utterly meaningless lyrics on it. I wanted to fill the lines with paradoxical phrases and I Can Play but I Can Sing soon became the opening line. Complicated bridging section in the middle was later added and the structure of the entire work was settled by the early 1988, when the song was rehearsed by my band called Flowers.

For making this video, I carefully removed my singing parts because the lyrics were meaningless as intended. For filling the gaps, I re-recorded the whole tune again and pieced together with original demo recording in 1988 and the said rehearsal take from the same year. Revisiting a song I wrote nearly three decades ago gave me somewhat strange and awkward feelings, though it was also a fun.

Like a Lady

Written and recorded in 1989

This tune was developed from its bridging section in A Minor initially written for a collaboration work with one of my neighbourhood friends at that time. This recording was done just for fun purpose but I thought the section I wrote could be converted for my own better composition and it didn’t take long before I completed the work. Interestingly, when the live performance of the intro of this video was filmed, the tune was not yet finished and I used the main body of the tune as a brief intro for my solo performance of a Carol King song, It’s Too Late.

As you can see in the video, I had long hair in those days and the idea to call this instrumental tune Like a Lady simply came from awkward feelings I lived with back then.

Thirst for Divinity

Written and Recorded in 1994

While I was playing in a band called Culotte, especially after 1993, I stopped to feature the rhythm machine into initial demo recordings of my own work, in order to leave the drummer a room to exercise his own creativity and imagination. This enabled me to write things more efficiently because I could save time and effort for programming the machine but also contributed to undermine the quality of initial demo recordings. I took to treat these demos more private stuff only meant to be circulated within the band, not a finished work. This was the reason why I left the lead guitar part being out of tune in this recording. At that time, it was more important to move on to next work rather than bothering myself to play and record the same part once again. Now, I regard it as a wrong decision and regret it though.

I don’t remember exactly when I wrote this tune during the year but this surely marked a kind of turning point in my composing history, not in terms of music but from where inspirations and themes are to be taken. Thirst for Divinity was actually what the composer – my younger self – wanted to express through this tune. But now I can see through that what 'he' really wanted was so-called Divine Intervention.

For making this video, I removed the lyrics he wrote and sung from the audio track. In terms of singing, he (and I) has never been good at it and things he argued in the lyrics were too immature to be taken seriously but to be treated as rather a word playing. For enhancing the original intention of the composer, I also added some images of mystical stuff belonged to him.