Written by Jobert Jeong

The behind-the-scenes story of how Ming clinched the win

While nearly a thousand students are still scratching their heads about how Ming beat the other houses to win RCHK Idol, few are as qualified to speak about Ming’s rise from obscurity to opulence as I am. Being the lead, only, and best trombonist in Ming’s Idol band, my first-hand experience practicing behind-the-scenes with all the other members of Ming Idol makes me the perfect person to reveal how we ended up clinching the victory.

The pieces we performed during the actual performance were (in order) Can’t Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bubblin’ by Anderson .Paak, The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala, Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley, Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, Going Bad by Meek Mill (ft. Drake), and Crazy In Love by Beyonce (ft. Jay-Z). Initially, we also planned to perform Bohemian Rhapsody, the Game of Thrones theme song, and the Avengers theme, but cut them out due to time constraints, lack of proper instrumentation, and in the case of the latter, the realisation that it had been stolen by Qing House

Our first official group meeting for Idol practice was on May 16th, but nobody attended aside from the leaders and myself, possibly because it clashed with the Syrian refugee Skype call session. As this was supposed to be the meeting where we would get a briefing on the plan for this year’s performance, it seemed like we got off on the wrong foot for the second year in a row, but at least I learnt about the tentative running order of the pieces we would be playing.

Our next practice session on May 20th was not much better, since almost nobody except for the leaders, Markendeya and myself came. Due to the lack of artistic contributors, I did nothing for the first half of the session, and almost left then since I felt bored and useless. The second half of the session was better, as I helped to come up with the trombone parts for Jailhouse Rock and Bubblin’, practiced them, and provided some suggestions for these pieces to make them sound better.

The next day, we continued to practice Jailhouse Rock and Bubblin’, along with the transition from the end of Bubblin’ to The Less I Know the Better. Very few people came again, with Maisha Maryam being a special guest (and hopefully not a spy for Qing). Six days later, we started practice with the vocalists on Crazy in Love and continued practice on Jailhouse Rock and Bubblin’. I switched to a bass part for Bubblin’, since it was easier for me to play on the trombone, and I could provide a good bass boost. After timing a set of these three pieces, the leaders said that our performance could not reach the time limit at the rate we were practicing. Even though I was a bit anxious at not using our time to the fullest, there was still some hope in the room that our full set could meet that expectation.

On June 3rd, we started practising Bohemian Rhapsody, but we ran into some problems during practice, so the leaders ultimately decided to cut it from the lineup later on. We were finally up against the clock on June 10th, with only 8 days left until the actual Idol performance. We started practising the whole set as listed above from Can’t Stop to Going Bad. The dress code of tie-dye shirts was also decided during the weekend, and I got new parts to play for Going Bad, Can’t Stop, and Crazy in Love, which I worked on in preparation for the performance.

On June 13th, we mainly practised Jailhouse Rock and Crazy in Love, perfecting what we had. The next day (June 14th), I was only here for the latter half of this session since I had a service commitment that day. After I arrived, we ran the entire set from the top two times, and I managed to memorize all my parts for the pieces we were playing. After the session ended, the performers present went to the art room to dye the tie-dye t-shirts for our performance.

June 17th was the final rehearsal before Idol day, so we ran through everything once, and worked on some areas in specific songs that weren’t doing so well. I choreographed some routines for myself on stage (such as the swinging trombone in Jailhouse Rock), and watched the dancers sort themselves out.

Based on talks with other Idol performers from other houses (Song and Qing), we agreed that we had much less time this year to practice and organize, so we lamented that this year’s performances may be of a lesser quality than last year’s. Thankfully, our hard work and efforts proved that statement to be untrue in hindsight.

On the day of the performance (June 18th), we rehearsed the entire set 4 times before performing, deciding where everyone was standing on stage and testing out the acoustics. The test runs all went well, so we thought that the performance would be just as smooth. Though I didn’t expect us to win based on what I saw of the other houses’ performances, it was still a solid performance all around, and I thought that our hard work wasn’t wasted at all in the end. It was during that time that I came up with the idea to shuffle with my trombone, and implemented that idea into Going Bad without anyone noticing.

Since we were the last house to perform, I had the opportunity to personally judge the other houses’ performances. In my opinion, Song and Tang’s were the best due to Song having the best musicians overall in the entire school and Tang having a wide range of instruments on display, while Qing would be dead last due to their abrupt transitions between the Avengers theme and Don’t Stop Me Now. All of the other houses had massive crews of musicians and dancers that they could swap out, while Ming was stuck with a skeleton crew compared to their numbers, which made me doubt that we could actually get the victory.

When it was time for us to be on stage, our show was mired with technical difficulties . Justin’s mic didn’t work during the beginning of Can’t Stop, causing us to have a ‘soft reboot’ of our performance, throwing us off guard, and made me play a wrong note for the intro, while the PAC lights turned on and off randomly during our performance, which ruined the atmosphere of our show. Thankfully, we stuck to what we had practiced, so the rest of the show managed to go as planned.

While the judges were tableauting the results backstage and the teachers were performing, I predicted that we would get 3rd based on what I saw. My rationale for this judgement was that I felt that Tang and Song’s performances were better than ours in quality, while Qing wasn’t as good. As the judges announced the placings, I was relieved that my prediction of Qing being 4th was correct, while being massively surprised that we weren’t 3rd, as Tang was announced as the 2nd-runner up.

After Tang’s placing, I thought that we would get second place, the same as last year, losing out to Song. When Song was revealed as the 1st-runner up, there was some confusion as to how the rankings were announced, so I didn’t register our actual ranking during the moment. Imagine my shock and excitement when our victory was fully realized!

To this day, I still have no idea how we won, since the judge’s feedback hasn’t been given out yet as of the time of writing, but whatever the case, thank you to all of the Ming Idol team for making such a wonderful experience possible!