Motivation

Background

Since I am from South Korea which is located totally on the opposite side of Europe or Western civilization, I have grown up with a different cultural background (language, social manner, ideology, outlook, and environment) that is also reflected in art or music. In art, Western painting gives an impression of orchestration that fills in the whole space of the canvas with various colors like harmonization in western classical music. Contrastingly, eastern painting or Korean painting uses limited colors while applies spatial elements actively and shows the texture of the tool directly. In music, Korea has a long history with its own instruments. The mechanisms of these traditional Korean folk instruments were made more than a thousand years ago and still to this day they have kept the same design. Consequently, the mechanism of these instruments is very old fashion, which allows the instrument to contain less controllable features, which modern instrument building to a certain extent has sought to even out.

Since I have been playing jazz, I had this dilemma that I have a different cultural background with traditional jazz which is built on the combination of African roots and the theory of Western music. At the same time, this has allowed me to use the element of foreignness in my work as a differentiator. In my previous works, even though they were close to typical jazz form and style, other fellow musicians and I have sensed a strong influence of my cultural background. After I moved to Norway for my Master’s studying, I have been immersed in free improvisation. Different approaches and distinct elements in this style allowed me to discover another perspective and explore other possibilities. Moreover, similar features of musical factors that I found out between free improvisation and Korean folk music led me to investigate it deeper. This naturalness that I extracted from both genres is developed to the concept that emphasizes the shape of sound and the distinctive structure by weaving varied elements.  

The development of my musical journey

Influences of free jazz/free improvisation → Link to folk music → Approach to the new composing method → Natureous Music → Apply to another medium

Since I have been studying in Norway, I have been exposed to various music styles, crossovers between different genres, and unconventional products. Especially, I have gotten vast influences from free improvisation. My first impression of free improvisation was that the music consists full of idiosyncratic and ugly sounds, incomprehensible context, and a series of coincidences. However, it did not take a long time before this music began to appeal to me with certain strengths that are 1) the wide spectrum of the notion of sound, 2) direct and instant interaction between musicians, 3) reflecting the environment, atmosphere, emotion actively, and 4) flexibility and variability of structure and direction. It affected me to have an understanding of another perspective and concept of music and sound.

In the aspect of sound, it opened up my musical vocabulary. This expansion has allowed me to think about not only pitched notes but also other aspects of sound such as texture, mass, depth, density, pulse, etc. The notion of sound in my head is widened and I established a new definition of sound that demolished the boundary between sound and noise, right and wrong. Another aspect is the music-making process. In conventional music, each musician has a fixed role and music has a specific structure with an arrangement. Contrastingly, the co-creation process in free improvisation has a democratic and equal relationship between musicians. The decision-making of the direction of the music has a procedure in which all musicians participate as a soloist and an accompanist at the same time and there is no hierarchical division. 

I encountered a similar value in Korean folk music that led me to explore it deeper. Many old folk instruments contain unequal timbres with simpler constructions since they were invented before the development of modern technology. Consequently, the sound in folk music includes many different factors and it has a similar aspect with the sound in free improvisation. I discovered and was inspired by the many nuances of timbres, the improvisatory character, and the immeasurable timing. These influences resulted in flexibility and adaptability in my music.

Not only the music itself but also the background of it shows similarity which is a spiritual character. A lot of folk music has a root in spiritual ceremonies such as shamanism. Even though the ceremonies themselves might have disappeared with the passing and changing cultures and traditions, the music still carries an immanent spiritual tendency in its sound. In addition, the music tends to have a simple arrangement but focuses more on expressing atmosphere, emotion, and energy. 

A new concept emerged from the encounter of those two fields, free improvisation and folk music, and I created a new composing method by applying this idea to the new project. In this project, I exaggerate unconventional elements in both sound and composing. Meanwhile, it has an aim that music demonstrates the theme as the audio-movie concept in which the listener follows the music as it is experienced as a film. About the project, I will explain more details in chapter 5.