Hello everyone! Eizaz here, and this is the end result of all our hard work over the past couple of months. Everything is finally complete; all teaching rooms, offices, stage, jamming studio and recording studio all under one roof. I'll allow the pictures to do the talking!

The Mama Treble Clef board of directors and the new premises. Finally we have a photo - it's about time!

This is the interior of the store, our selection of electric guitars, amplifiers and keyboards, From Fender to Ibanez, Gibson and ESP, we've got them all!

Our bass selection encompasses entry-level basses from RM400 to professional-grade instruments costing thousands of dollars. Our in-house repairman and luthier ensures quality control throughout.

The higher range of guitars and basses go here. We carry American Stratocasters, Mexican Stratocasters, Music Man, Japanese Ibanez Prestige and the new Ibanez Premium range. We've also got a selection of Taylor acoustic guitars so check them out!

This is the new recording studio and a wicked, kicking set of drums and cymbals. We will lease the studio out for practice at RM50 per hour, and recording rates from RM100 per hour, including mixing and some minor engineering. Full miking for the drumkit and a killer room to boot!

This is a photo of yours truly at his drumkit. I've been playing for years and years on the same Tama drumkit before we moved here and I finally have a proper drumkit with proper cymbals, pedals and hardware. There is much to add on to the kit, like a cowbell and percussion but after years of waiting I finally have something proper! For comparison's sake this is what the drumkit (and player) looked like around 4 years back.

More photos of us in the studio.

And this is a photo of my partners and their lovely daughter. We've gone through so much in the past few years and I am very grateful to have met them along the way. Through thick and thin (man, when it was thin, it was THIN) we've somehow managed to reach the next level of development together. There's more to come from the team so stay tuned and please drop by - you are all invited for the grand opening!

Jack Thammarat Live Clinic, Presented by Mama Treble Clef Studio in co-operation with Yamaha Malaysia

By Eizaz Azhar

What a day it was! On the 11th of November, 2011 - 11/11/11 (an interesting date as well), the guitar virtuoso and YouTube superstar Jack Thammarat, winner of Guitar Idol 2009, came all the way from Thailand to do a guitar clinic for our students and regular customers.

We basically set up the stage, sound system, mixers and amps and drums and lights and everything you can imagine in the span of two days. Here are some of the interesting equipment I had to set up on the day;

You see, Jack is a newly-crowned Laney artist so all the amplifiers on the day were Laney amps. Jack's personal amp is the new Ironheart; it's a 300W monster tube amp with incredible tone and warmth. Each amplifier was miced up using a condenser mic directed at the speaker.

For the gig I used a hybrid drum kit ala Akira Jimbo style; it's basically a DTX520 combined with real cymbals and my favourite Pearl steel snare drum from the late 90s. I used the DTX for the kick and toms, mixed together and lined out into the mixer (my trusty Iron Cobra Power Glide pedals are also visible) whereas the snare and cymbals were miced up. All in all I got apretty good sound - but alas the overheads weren't plugged in for the gig and I lost my cymbal sounds! Oh well.

This was the stage setup for the day; I'm running everything through a Yamaha MG24FX mixer and a smaller cheap power mixer on the left for the stage monitors. Each channel is I/O-ed into a Roland UA-101 audio interface for mixing with Cubase. I usually mix digitally so I can save the settings and edit them easily. The house system is powered by two 1200W power amplifiers and a Behringer EQ (set to flat - didn't have time to balance everything), a crossover and a compressor. (P.S. everything here you can purchase from Mama Treble Clef Studio - call 03-95432201 and we can help you set up a stage and sound system and balance it as well.)

The bass amp was DI-ed (direct inject) to the mixer and we had 4 stage monitors. The house system was run through a set of EV 15' speakers and 18' subwoofers - I was quite pleased with the sound overall!

Guitar virtuoso Jack Thammarat gives a live clinic on the stage of Mama Treble Clef Studio. Held on the 11th of November 2011, Jack runs through some of his pieces in this video series and even jams with our in-house teacher's band at the end! It was an awesome show, with a full house of over 120 people and everyone had their photo and guitars autographed by Jack. We hope to have him here again!

Guitar: Jack Thammarat

Guitar 2: Lee Onn

Guitar 3: Mustaffa "Tapok" Ramly

Bass: Tengku Dinkhalish

Drums: Eizaz Azhar

Sound Engineer: Eizaz Azhar

Thammarat (born December 25, 1979) is a guitarist from Thailand. Best known as the winner of Guitar Idol 2009 competition. He has acknowledged the influence of many guitarists including Pop the Sun, Prart, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather, Gary Moore, Scott Henderson, Robben Ford, Frank Gambale, Greg Howe and more.

Finally everything comes together, and this is the result. Jack's videos are below - do enjoy the show!

Jack Thammarat Live Clinic at Mama Treble Clef Studio

To our music friends and family, we have confirmed Jack Thammarat's guitar clinic at Mama Treble Clef Studio to commemorate his introduction as a Yamaha artist. It will be a free clinic and jam session. November 11th, Friday, 2:30pm to 3:30pm. Venue; Mama Treble Clef Studio, Lot 3010, 3rd Floor, Endah Parade (Carrefour) Sri Petaling, KL. Call us at 03-95432201 for more information!

Come one, come all!

By Eizaz Azhar

So we've gone through Phase 3 of construction of our new premises and what a challenge it is proving to be. We're basically done with almost 80% of the entire project, all in the ridiculously short period of a month! Here are some photos of past and present - guess which one is which!

The new premise is enormous and presents a completely different challenge as compared to the last location. With so much space, it takes a lot of time just to get around. Communicating with everyone is an issue as for every error you make, the time factor is multiplied by five fold due to the sheer size of the store. It takes a good 3 minutes to get to the new recording studio (i.e. my office) and another 10 minutes to get it set up!

So, what exactly are we now? We will be running a music store, music school, recording studio, instrument workshop, a cafe and even a stage for live performances. It's an all-in-one center for every musical need - at least we try to make it that way!

From pianos to guitars and woodwinds and brass, strings and accessories we can now display them all. The tremendous amount of stock that we have had in our warehouse for years can finally be placed in the store, all at once and it looks like a proper showroom. We placed a large tempered glass door at the entrance where our drums greet the customer as they enter the store.

There will be weekly performances at our cafe, scheduled as soon as it opens; we will be hosting various local and international acts from time to time for our students and customers.

This is sorta how the front desk and counter looks like. Guitars surround the area, hooked on gondolas that we designed and built ourselves.

The woodwind section consists of mouthpieces, saxes, clarinets and flutes. As a woodwind retailer we have a lot of instuments and accessories in stock. A glass door will soon cover the cabinet in which they are located in. The violins and strings will also be covered in a glass panel which will further add to the atmosphere. Each cabinet has twin halogen bulbs above it to illuminate the instruments inside.

Finally we have cozy teaching rooms for our students and teachers!

This series of posts will be concluded in Part III, where everything will come together. Everyone is invited for the grand opening - do come over!

By Eizaz Azhar

Welcome back to part II of our renovation and process of moving premises. In the weeks that have gone by, there has been a large amount of work completed - roughly 30%; the framework for the new shop is finally done as are most of the guitar/musical instrument wall hangers and installation of slatwalls. The new shop will not only consist of a music shop with a variety of instruments displayed but also a cafe with a stage and performances (by yours truly), a proper recording studio, teaching/rehearsal rooms and a jamming/rehearsal studio for rent, in a monster of a venue encompassing 13,000+ square feet in total. It will be an interesting concept to say the least, and we will probably be the only music school in Malaysia with an in-house, professional-grade, fully-equipped and miked recording studio - not only for recording but also for teaching!

Interestingly enough this lot was never intended for a commercial store; rather, it is actually an allocated lot for the food court of the shopping complex Endah Parade in Sri Petaling, hence the abundance of space. Each food stall had its own dedicated lot, which sort of made things easier for us to build individual teaching rooms since the infrastructure was already up.

A dual-layer gypsum board is build for each room and insulated in layers of mineral wool to keep the sound from leaking. This also ensures better acoustics for each room and less inteferance from outside noises.

Air-cond ducts run in and out of each room via the ceiling to keep it cool and comfortable for teaching. An issue is sound leakage through the air-cond ducts but this was kept to a minimum amount due to the mineral wool.

Slatwalls - a kind of building material that allows for hanging items for display - have been installed throughout the building.

Needless to say I am at the forefront of it all...!

To be continued...

By Eizaz Azhar

Hi guys! Most of you may know me as a teacher in the music store Mama Treble Clef Studio and in-house musician (technician/admin guy/IT department/repairman/brute strength lifting dude/the guy you turn to when everything goes wrong and want things fixed in the shortest time possible without prior notice) among other things. I've been given the task of chronicling events that will be going on for the next good month or two. So here I am, writing this on my (infamous red-flamed decorated Toshiba Qosmio that weighs 7kg) notebook in a new, empty lot that we will be moving in shortly. Thing is, we've been talking about moving and all for quite some time now as some of my students might be able to attest to, and it's finally coming around. This, however exciting and fun it may seem - and actually is, I assure you - poses a bit of an issue to some members of the team (okay only two), particularly Ray Lee (right) and myself.

A bit about the company background; we started out as a small, miniature lot with practically 3 guitars, 2 pianos and around 50 students back in 2005-2006. Back then it was much simpler; a 300 square foot room that we basically furnished and renovated ourselves. A few years later we came up with the recording studio which we also furnished on our own, and the current 3 conjoined lots which, yes, we did ourselves. One reason was due to our budget (read; lack thereof) and simply because we didn't have much to do around the tiny store anyway, and also picked up a bunch of skills - mainly dangerous, tiring and monotonous - like installing partitions, wiring the ceiling and lighting, as well as sitting in an enclosed room with cancerous toxic fumes.

And now we're moving for a third and possibly final time to this monster of a venue, enough to house all divisions of the shop, inclusive of a recording studio, performance stage, showroom, cafe and music classes (natural disaster relief spot, emergency gathering area - who knows what else, really).

So anyway, we've had some experience in renovating and doing things on our own as you can see, but this is a whole different experience. It's a different thing furnishing a 400 square foot venue versus a 13,000 square foot venue. First of all, the cost involved is much larger, and there are some things you just can't do without spending half a year trying to pry open (i.e. the air-cond ventilation ducts which are drawn from the shopping complex's mains). Then there's the issue of decorating the space, purchasing enough stock to fill it up so that it doesn't look like the North/South Korea demilitarized zone, and finding reliable staff that show up on time and disappear when required (as opposed to random times and the worst possible moments where you feel like strangling the nearest form of intelligent life not unlike a Phua Chu Kang script).

To Be Continued....

Kepada semua murid murid dan keluarga,pelanggan-pelanggan,dealer-dealer serta pengemar muzik tanahair ,MAMA TREBLE CLEF STUDIO ingin mengucapkan Selamat Hari Raya AidilFitri & Maaf Zahir Batin .Semoga anda semua sihat walafiat dan diberkati Tuhan.Sokonglah muzik tempatan dan sokonglah Encik Eizaz Azhar yang berkebolehan bermain lebih dari 10 alta-alat instrumen , sila tonton video music ini dan berilah komen yang positive.Terima Kasih!