Noise Singapore, a media-based arts festival for youths aged below 25 is back for the third year to help make some noise about the works of young artists in Singapore.

This year’s edition was launched with a concert in the Heeren shopping mall on Jul 26 with an hour-long concert featuring performances by musicians from last year’s competition like SkiVe, Freaky Z, Psykes and Allura.

UrbanWire spoke with National Serviceman Leonard Wang, 23, a former Ngee Ann Polytechnic student who was a finalist in last year’s music category. Better known as Leo, he shared with UrbanWire on whether his participation at last year’s event has changed his life, and where he’s heading.

UrbanWire (UW): So how has 2007 been going for you?

Leo: 2007 has been a very interesting year. I did a musical recently called Believe, which was shown at the Esplanade. It was a joint production by Outram Secondary School and the musical society here in Singapore. From what I see, it was a pretty big success. I was the arranger in the musical.

UW: What were your responsibilities as arranger?

Leo: My role is to piece the music together from the original sources. For example, if the composer has a guitar track or a piano track or he sings, I’ll put all the missing elements like the drum tracks and the ambience in. So basically, I arrange everything together, I do the mix down and make it sound CD quality.

UW: So the CD is on sale now?

Leo: From what I heard, they don’t exactly sell the CD but they gave a couple of the demo CDs away at the Esplanade, just for promotion-wise.

UW: You mentioned on your website that with the help of Noise Singapore, your music was featured on MTV Asia and on local radio stations. So how did you first know about Noise Singapore?

Leo: A friend of mine introduced it to me. And I saw the criteria for the music genre; you just got to send in your tracks. I actually tried to send them in digitally but it didn’t work. So I just sent them a CD – the slow mail method.

UW: Has Noise Singapore changed your life in any way?

Leo: It hasn’t really changed my life. It is just cool to hear my music being played on the radio and how I actually got to know about it is that one time when I was in camp, and I was talking on the phone with my friend and he was like “Dude, we’re in McDonald’s right now and we’re hearing your music being played on the radio” and I was like “Wow. That’s great.” If I’m not wrong, it was on Power 98 or probably 98.7 FM.

UW: What about the exposure and platform that Noise Singapore provided you with?

Leo: Well, definitely I can put on my website and my CV that my music has been featured on MTV Asia. I mean, how cool is that? But in terms of exposure-wise and contacts, not really. So I wish Noise Singapore can do something more contacts-based instead of on-the-surface stuff. Why not help growing artistes get to know more media people? For example, have more media contacts around and introduce them to us.

UW: Out of the 5 tracks you submitted, 1 of it was used for an event and the others were played over the radio. Tell us about the music.

Leo: All of my music are not just unplugged. I actually sent in some electronic music tracks and some tracks of me singing and playing the guitar and the drums as back-up. Everything’s like what you hear on commercial CD. There were actually 2 tracks that were played on radio – “What U Mean 2 Me” and “Psycho”.

UW: A little more about yourself. You started out as a gaming music composer. What’s the market like and how hard is it to get clients? Tips for being recognised, if any?

Leo: It’s still a fresh market but it’s catching up. I mean, clients are not really hard to get but paying clients is another thing altogether. There are people who want you to do pro bono and I was thinking I might as well just run a charity organisation. I guess for paying clients, you [have] got to source for them. There’s this website – igda.org – that’s started in America and has a Singapore link, and I just post my website at their forum and that was how I got approached by Nexgen (Nexgen Studio is one of Singapore’s leading game developers) to compose music for some of the games they produce.

UW: Well, you’re considered professional already by industry standards. What about those fresh new faces who are still experimenting with their talents. Would Noise Singapore serve them at all?

Leo: I think to a certain extent. I mean non-professionals can benefit from this as well. If you have your tracks being shown on TV, that’s not too bad.

UW: How else do you think Noise Singapore can unearth new talent and inspire groundbreaking content from youths in Singapore?

Leo: I think you have to do more than just a once-a-year kind of launch. You have to do a couple of gigs and get people from key industries to come over and talk. When I was at the launch [last year], there were only people from the Media Development Authority (MDA). So that’s just for the music genre. As for photography and art, it’s just people passing by and checking it out. It’s just like a platform and feels like one of those hi-bye things. You got to have follow-up in order to be successful and in order to really help people.

UW: You were also once in a band and you guys actually got 2nd place in this ethnic band competition – in 2005 – that promotes racial harmony. What happened after winning the competition? Why the decision to go solo now?

Leo: It’s hard to drag 3 other people in your same direction. Everybody wants to go this way or that way and for music-wise right, there’s musical differences and I want to go more to rock and electronic, and people want to go more into old-school. It’s also hard to meet up and instead of dragging everybody along and trying to make money and make sense to you, why not just take everything over myself and use software. Software is like everything into one and it’s like your best buddy. You reap all the benefits from it.

UW: Any possibility of you being in a band again and producing music records?

Leo: I don’t think anytime soon though. Maybe just to help lookout for some other bands and give them some advice here and there, do some of their music mix-down. But I really wouldn’t go into a band, unless just for jamming, like for fun.

UW: So what’s next for you? Do you still plan to migrate to Canada?

Leo: Yes, definitely. I would like to go to Canada or some other countries to pursue my music. For further studies. I would see myself opening a little company where people who want to make music for new games would come to me and I would outsource my talents to them. Even overseas, this industry is still building up as well. In Japan, it’s like hot though. Game music composers are like worshipped as rock stars. Soon. this industry is going to be really big business, you know.

UW: Any advice to budding young artists who are still trying to make a mark in Singapore?

Leo: Be realistic. Know what you want and don’t make something that people don’t understand and only you can understand. So be realistic and think about the money as well.