The Mooncake Melodies - Celebrating 2011's Mid-Autumn and Lantern Festival, Featuring Yam Ah Mee

As we are about to approach 2011's Mid-Autumn Festival, I would like to contribute to this year's festival in my own way. No, I am not contributing a mooncake recipe, nor am I close to anything near that.

Instead, my musical instincts have led me to write and record a special musical album for this occasion called The Mooncake Melodies.

It is a collection of 10 instrumental tracks that are uniquely Chinese and Oriental in nature.

It also features a cover of Andy C and the New Horizon's "Oriental Dance" and I hope he will like my version of his amazing tune.

Andy was actually featured with  me during my interview on Channel 8 news and has written some fantastic music combining modern and classical Chinese music undertones.

In addition, there is also a cover of Goh Su Yong's Autumn Harvest, which features him playing er-hu. It was an amazing track, and he is really one of the best er-hu instrumentalists out there.

I also took one of his other compositions, and added my part and turned it into a collaborative composing effort, Autumn Glory, which opens the album.

Mr. Goh is a supreme composer, and writes some of the most moving Chinese music I know. I really thank him for allowing me the privilege to work with him and letting me arrange and produce his music.

There will be more collaborations with Mr. Goh in the future, and I will slowly bring our efforts so far to fruition in the coming months.

And as part of the festivities, I was privileged to be invited to demo my iPad music stuff at the People's Association Headquarters in conjunction with their own Mid-Autumn celebrations and festivities.

Yam Ah Mee and the Silver Chef

I also had the honor to meet up with PA's chief, Mr. Yam Ah Mee to demo my iPad and Garageband workings to him. He was particularly impressed and seemed to enjoy dabbling with the various virtual instruments on my little ol' iPad.

It was certainly a great pleasure to meet up with the popular and charismatic Mr Yam, and the crowd simply could not let go of him.

Finally, I leave you with The Mooncake Melodies, which is a free download at Last.Fm and also as an audio stream from Soundcloud. It is my gift to you, my faithful readers who has made my blog such a joy to write.

Here's wishing everyone a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2011!

Click here to download The Mooncake Melodies for free.

And click below to hear a live stream of the album.

The Mooncake Melodies by ianlow32