Music man

As far as music ambitions go, Eric Ng's fell on the modest end of the scale. "Since I was 16, I just wanted to play in a pub every night and get $800 a month," he says.

His achievements, however, have far exceeded his goal.

Ng, who turns 38 on Dec 27, is now an established tunesmith, arranger, producer and touring musician who has worked with the biggest names in the Mandopop industry.

He has composed hits such as Hostage for A-mei, Paper Plane for Sandy Lam and Alone for Jolin Tsai. The list of singers he has worked with is an impressive who's who in the Mandopop scene, including Elva Hsiao, Wakin Chau, Jaycee Chan, Fish Leong, Stefanie Sun and Tanya Chua, whom he dated for 11/2 years in the early 2000s.

And as part of the creative team for the upcoming movie I Want You, he made it to No. 4 on the annual Power List put together by Life! for 2013.

The film, spun off from the popular reality singing show The Voice Of China, is produced by mm2 Entertainment's Melvin Ang and directed by That Girl In Pinafore's (2013) Chai Yee Wei.

Ng says that I Want You is the first Singaporean movie to hit a mainstream China audience, "and I'm very proud of what we've done".

He composed two original songs for the film and one of them has already garnered more than 290,000 views on China video website Youku, ahead of I Want You's release on Dec 29 in China.

Qu Ming Hui Yi De Shi Guang (Make Up A Name And Remember Last Time The Glory is the translation Ng offers with a laugh) is sung by contestantsturned-actors Wu Mochou and Li Daimo.

The moviecould well herald a new chapter in his Mandopop career, a journey made all the more remarkable by the fact that he started out listening to English-language hard rock bands and is a self-taught musician with little formal training.

By his own admission, the piano lessons his parents tried to force on him as a child were a "disaster". "After I got my Grade 1 certification, my piano teacher told my mother, 'I advise you not to waste any more money because he's hopeless'."

It was not until he came across American rock band Guns N' Roses in 1989 as a secondary school student at St Patrick's School that something clicked.

A loner in those days, he describes himself as "that fat short guy nobody wanted to talk to who was always on his Walkman".

"I didn't really have many friends. I think I didn't know how to communicate with people or maintain a friendship."

Given that he is chatty, open and quick to laugh during a two-hour-plus chat, it is hard to imagine that he once found it hard to make friends.

Years later, when he met his schoolmates from St Patrick's and Catholic Junior College, he says that "nobody remembers me".

This may be why he declares: "I felt that my life started only after I found music."

The piano lessons did not work out - he gave them up after Grade 1. But he picked up the guitar when he was 16 and taught himself all the chords in one to two weeks. A school performance of Stand By Me by the "cool kids" convinced him the instrument was easy to play.

He bought the cheapest guitar he could find for about $120. "I had savings because I had no life," he says easily.

He soon mastered the chords, unaware that not everyone could learn to play the instrument with such ease.

He would go on to pick up the drums, the bass guitar and, once again, the piano. The first piece he learnt on each instrument was a Guns N' Roses song - Sweet Child O' Mine on guitar and bass, November Rain on piano and another track that he cannot remember on drums.

The heavy metal foundation of his music education stood him in good stead. For one, all the rock bands have that one power ballad. He muses: "In the Chinese music industry, everyone highly values that ballad, and I think I have a good grasp of that genre from listening to all those melodic power ballads."

At 18, he was playing gigs and any time a band needed to plug a gap for any position, he was there. "I played for four to five bands because I had no life."

It led to gigs at Mandarin folk music cafes such as Ai Qin Hai and he began to earn a reputation as the guy who wielded his instrument as though he was playing heavy metal by "bashing the hell out of the acoustic guitar".

Eventually, he became the go-to guitarist for radio station 88.3 FM when artists came to Singapore to promote their albums, and he performed acoustic sets for the station.

"That was how I met everybody," he says. "Everybody" includes A-mei, when she was here to plug her debut album Sisters (1996), as well as Coco Lee, Chau and William So.

It was So who first suggested that Ng try his hand at composing.

The idea was new to Ng as his favourite artists, such as Alanis Morrisette and Metallica, wrote their own songs "so I never knew people needed songs to be written for them".

He started to write music in 1997. "It was all rubbish," he admits readily.

It was not all pointless though. "No one told me songwriting, production or arrangement was difficult. I just did it and people gave me feedback," he says.

"I realised that a lot of things I did was rubbish. But the rubbish I churned out and let people listen to meant that I got feedback. That was when I started to improve."

Ng might love music but he is not overly precious about his craft or the creative process.

He would send his demos to artists such as Valen Hsu and Mindy Quah and be met with responses such as "next time" or "hai hao" (it's okay). He later learnt that "next time" meant never and "hai hao" meant it was not up to scratch.

At the age of 21, he decided to interrupt a three-year degree course in business computing at Informatics to do music.

He told his father: "Just give me one year to see what happens."

He says that was the only time he remembers his parents quarrelling. His mother, now 68, told his dad: "If you want to keep this son, you better let him do what he wants or else he's not going to come back."

His father, now 72, eventually relented. His father was in the education business and his mother did administration in the company. Ng, the younger of two children, decided to explore the Taiwan music scene based on the contacts he had made over the years.

One of them was well-respected veteran musician Jonathan Lee, or Li Tsung-sheng, who was the judge in a music-writing competition Ng had taken part in 1997. Lee steered Ng towards his commercial breakthrough.

First, he got Ng to arrange songs for Hong Kong artist Karen Mok. Ng says frankly: "I didn't feel pressured because I didn't really know how big a star she was. I also learnt that the more famous people are, the more they appreciate it if you treat them like normal people."

Lee, 55, notes drily in an interview that "there's nothing great about Eric as a musician". He adds though that he likes working with him: "A good musician, very often, is not about how technically proficient you are or how complete your music education is. Rather, it's how well you work with others to achieve a result that everyone is pleased with.

"And Eric is easy-going, is interesting as a person and, in making music, often comes up with new ideas."

Lee introduced Ng to his then-wife, Hong Kong superstar Sandy Lam. Ng visited them in Shanghai and knocked out 11 songs in four days with Lam for the album Truly (2001).

He says: "I've never spent more than half an hour on a song. Paper Plane happened in the middle of a rest break when I was just playing the guitar and then the song came out."

The lyrical mid-tempo track was a hit and Ng had his epiphany.

"I realised the difference between writing a song and writing a hit song, the difference between doing music and having a music career. I decided, okay, I want to write hit songs now. Before that, there was still that hippie side of me that just wanted to write whatever I felt like writing."

He reckons that one can make a few hundred dollars for writing a song, but a hit song is worth four to five figures.

At the end of the day, however, he could not bring himself to pursue music just for the money. Lee offered him a job but he knew he would burn out if he stayed on in Taiwan.He would visit for short working trips but never lived there.

He does not regret making the decision to remain based in Singapore in 1999: "I think I made the right decision. I lasted longer than some other Singaporeans who went to Taiwan."

He adds with a smile that Lee, with whom he still keeps in touch, called him the "spoilt Singaporean" for not being able to work at that frenetic pace.

Lee says though: "I still encourage and invite him, at any stage of his life and career, to come to Taiwan and stay for a while. I think it will be of benefit to him as Taiwan is a major engine of the entire Mandopop industry."

Hong Kong-born, Taiwan-based Chau, 52, also sings Ng's praises: "Eric is essentially my idol. He's very relaxed in approaching every song, be it arranging, writing or playing, and he will complete a song in a happy manner, even if it's a sad song.

"I've learnt quite a bit from him as I sometimes get too hung up and too tense over one particular track."

With his self-deprecatory attitude and youthful attire - cap, rock band T-shirt, jeans and colourful glasses and watch - it would be easy to dismiss Ng as a slacker. But make no mistake, he works hard.

Lyricist Xiaohan, 39, who has worked with him for 16 years, says Ng is "very fast and very hardworking". She describes him as a "happy-go-lucky guy who's always full of nonsense".

Marriage and fatherhood however have kept him grounded. Ng met his wife, then finance manager Chia Li Juan, 29, at nightspot Butter Factory in 2010.

He chuckles and recounts: "It was totally random. I want to say she picked me up but she will say no."

They got married last year and their daughter Lyla was born in May this year.

In keeping with Ng's down-to-earth character, there are no pictures showing him hobnobbing with celebrities in his home. But you will see several pictures of Lyla in the five-room HDB maisonette in Bukit Panjang.

A baby grand piano, 30-odd guitars and a sound-proof studio are obvious clues that someone who loves music lives here.

Asked if having a daughter has changed his priorities in life, he says: "My priority has never been just career. I have to be happy. I have to spend time with my wife, my friends and my kid."

While he has to travel for work, he says he gets to work from home when he is in Singapore. "I spend more time with my kid and wife than most people who work in an office do."

In 2000, Ng set up Funkie Monkies Productions, which did music production. Four years later, he teamed up with Xiaohan and turned it into a publishing house. In 2006, they added a pop music school and artist management arm. It is now focusing on two artists: Singapore PR Ming Bridges and upcoming Singaporean actor-singer Kenny Khoo, who had a supporting role in That Girl In Pinafore. Ng's finance-trained wife is now helping out at the company.

He continues to wear various hats as arranger, session guitarist, producer, songwriter, school director, music label manager and event organiser. He wants to groom new people and believes there is talent out there.

"If I and Xiaohan can do it, I don't see why others can't. Maybe they lack the channels, but I have the channels."

The pragmatic side of him comes to the fore when he adds: "The music business model is always changing. If I continue staying on one path, what if that path doesn't work anymore one day?

"So I want to have a finger in every pie and be happy trying."

But the hippie rocker is never far from the surface.

"My initial ambition was $800 a month and what I have now has super exceeded that. So I'm very content with what I have. And I'm very prepared to risk everything to fail again."

bchan@sph.com.sg

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