A way to ‘free play’

I finished the book, free play and have learned so much from this book. I cannot describe how much I got from this small, red book. This book gave me the most important lesson for my music: Art for life’s sake.

 In this book, the author wrote that the free play of creativity is not the ability to arbitrarily manipulate life. It is the ability to experience life as it is. Before I read this book, I thought creativity is something unusual and only extraordinary people pocess that special ability. Before I read this book, I didn’t know about the real thing that blocks my creativity. Now I know that the creativity is a kind of energey that

 

Experiencing vocal psychotherapy and escaping from the judging spectre

In our last class, we had a chance to experience the glimpse of a  vocal psychotherapy by Dr.Dian Austin. it was a very special experience. First, she introduced us a ‘name game’. When I first heard about it, I was getting ready to be alert, because I thought it would require my ability to memorize, but instead I had to relex myself. The name game is to use the sounds, phonemes of our name and play it with our lips and tongue like we did when we were a baby. She explained the children just use their lips and tongue to play with the sound for the pure enjoyment and as we grow up, we forget that joy. She herself showed us how to play with the sound of her name. Just by looking at her demonstration, I started to feel safe to express in whatever way I want to, in other worlds, I felt it’s o.k to be somewhat just primitive. As she suggested, I closed my eyes, because I felt a little shy and just try to play and with the sounds of my name. I started with s sound and then the tension grew up so the s sound became z.. and I played around with n sound a little and my tongue just started to play with that n sound. As I was doing the name game, I was still trying to ‘good’ in some way and I felt a little shy, too. Everybody  did their own play in turns. After that, Dr. Diane introduced us an activity to first to mirror the movement of the person in front and then convert to another by myself and then show it to the person next to me. The person will see my movement and follow and after that he/she will convert to another and he/she will show it to the next person. She emphasized that we have to just believe, trust our body to transform the movement. Instead of trying, or contriving to make up something, we should just let our body to figure out. First, I got worried, because I am far from being a physically active person and I am so bad at dancing. However, I decided to just follow her instruction and try to trust my body and try to let my  body to flow.  First, Diane showed some movement to Dr. Gilbert and he replicated it and then he started to change it and showed it to me. I followed his movement and then, in the middle section I kind of tried to lose myself and then came up with a little diff rent movement. It was a like a mirroring and altering. She also introduced the activity with both sound and movement which is the similar activity but with the sound also. As time goes by, my rigid thought that I have to be ‘good’ has gone and I was just enjoying the activity and watshing the unexpected outcomes from each person and the child-like side of everybody. Doing the activity, I thought it was much like a musical improvisation or musical ensemble.  I found that escaping myselof form the ‘judgin spectre’ was hard at first.  Stephen Nachmanovitch decrpibes about the judging spectre in his book, ‘ free play’, as an editing faculty or an editor and he worte that if this editior precedes rather than follows the muse, we have troubel. He worte  that ‘ The artist judge his work before there is yet anything to judge, and this produce a blockage or paralysis.’  Later in this chapter about the ‘judging spectre, he wrote about the way to be free from this obstructive editor as follows: ‘ The easiest way to do art is to dispense with sueccess and failure altogether and just get on with it. Thus Seng-Tsan writes in the eigthth century, ” The way ( Great Tao) is not difficult, just avoiding picking and choosing.” But this is easier to say than to practice. We are assaulted by the pushes and pulls of desire, aversion, and vascillation, and all the afflictive emotions that accompany then such as envy, anger, greed and self-importance, but their root- like the root of addiction, procrastination, and other forms of blockage- is fear.’  In the last activity, we could have a chance to tap into our deeper psychological state that hidden inside of us. By looking at her gesture or the facial expression, we had to express musically with our voice. To express, we had to catch what kind of emotion she was expressing. In the process of figuring it out, we reflected at least some of our mind inevitably. I thought what her therapy involves many aspects of vocal and musical elements as well as the drama. In my opinion, as the vocal is so closely related with the breathing, it is a very effective way to contact or control our inner-self. By toning exercise, we could tune our voice, feel our vibration and find the comfortable pitch as an inner sonic massage.

I found many aspects of these activities are so useful as a creative process itself or as an application to many other musical things. I thought this could be also useful as a way to keep our mind calm and healty especially as a musician.

 

Life is a moving

Watching the films each team made in our class web site was quite a different experience than making a film. Honestly I thought it looked better embedded in website with the titles at the beginning. Each film was similar but different. I thought other team had better control over the camera and their screen looked stable. I was surprised at the amount of the street noise especially the cars make all over the film. I got so used to it, so it never annoyed me. Watching all the films, I was tempted to make audio samples of the street noise, car honking, talking of peoples and the male singers singing and piano sound and sound of the handballs’ bouncing by extracting and chopping and make it sound like some music by  editing. It must require a lot of editings. I got an idea of establishing a  rhythmic pattern using handball sound by copying and pasting many times and adding some other sounds here and there. As I was asked to create something using the films as a source, watching our films, all of the sounds in them suddenly sounded like sound source to me. Street noise sounded like a ambient bass sound, car honking sounded similar to horns and there were so many sounds to be heard like a sound source to music. Someday, I want to explore these idesa and play with it and see how it comes out.

 I wrote a poem inspired by the film ever team made. Watching the videos that captured the movements, I realized everything was moving and life is a movement. If something is not moving, it means it is rarely alive. The title of my poem is

                               ‘ Lif is a moving’

                                 World is moving.

                                 World is moving.

                                 People walking. Pigeons flying.

                                 Dogs are barking.

                                 Cars are honking.

                                 Flags are waving.

                                 Signs are blinking.

                                 I am watching.

                                 I am smelling.

                                 I am recording

                                 the world is moving.

                                 Life is a moving.

 

 

 

Video taping of the surroundings

In our class, we were asked to find any movement in our surroundings and record it with video camera. We were divided as 4 teams named sky, water, earth and fires. Our team was sky. Jeff,Laurie and I were the members. We all became scavengers of the street. As we walked out of the building, I thought there were not much movements, so I suggested our team that we might go to the street basket ball place near the west 4th subway gate. As they agreed, we start to walk toward the basketball court. Walking the street, I saw a white dog, and I asked lauire who was holding the camera to record the dog, just becauseI really liked the dog. As soon as we get to the basket ball court, I started to record their game. It was the first time I recognized there was a handball court right beside the basket ball court. I started to record both people playing hand balls and basketball. I couldn’t caputre  the clean image because of the cage. Regular sound of the hand ball’s bouncing was pleasant and somewhat rhythmical. The jumping movements of the people who were playing basketball was very active and seemed so elastic. After taping the sport players,  Lauie took over the camera and she started to tape the moving cars and walking people in the street. As she was recording it, I found myself carefully observing the movements of the people, how they walk, how they talk and and their small gestures suddenly looked very significant to me.  As I was trying to find some movement I can assimilate with my body, I concentrated on every movements of the surroundings including peoples, birds, flags and squirrels. I’ve been passing by this area for more than two years and that was the first time I observed the surroundingswith so much care and concentration. Even the people, I’ve never paid any attention to them. It was the time I realized that how much I have neglected on the world I belong to, so I was happy I could have the chance to look carefully at the world around me. Although Dr. Gilbert asked us to record the movements, all of my senses got acute and I could hear all the sounds on the street clearly which were never recognized so much like that by me. It was a chance of recognizing, finding the things,movements as well as the sounds. As Dr.Gilbert wrote on his creative blog, ‘The world is teeming with art waiting to be discovered. Visual, sonic, kinesthetic, text materials exist in such abundance that the works we uncover can dazzle and astonish us.’ Video taping was a chance to wake up and look at the world closely and actually find the movements and sounds that surround us. Those could be the materials or the inspirations of our creation with the touch of our creativity that reside inside us.

 

Theme and variations

It is 5:00 in the morning and after just finishing the weekly readings for the class of ‘Intro to social & educational policies’, I checked out our creative process blogs. In Dr. Gilberts’ blog, I listened to ‘I know where I’m going’ and was amazed how a simple and single line of melody could sound so comforting to me. Maybe because it’s dawn, maybe it’s because I just finished the burden of readings, but it sounded so good. I am sure everyone in our class has the similar experience as to feeling so comforting by bumping to certain music at a certain situation. I think music could feel so different depending on the situation.

In last week, Dr. Gilbert played us Paganini theme and variations by Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and by the modern composer that I couldn’t remember the name of.

I was amazed by how the simple theme can develop by the creative ideas. I secially liked the Rachmaninoff’s and the modern composer’s variation.

When I took a private lesson on classical composition for the first time in my life in the second semester of masters, I was assigned to compose one theme and four variations. I found it was very hard to develop different a lot still staying in the theme. I felt like I was deviating too much or too similar. However, the variations on Paganini’s theme sounded amazing. I wish I could have more creativity and musical ideas.

 

Our first Harmony

I remember the third week of our class when we first tried our performance in improvisation. It was a special experience for me, because I had never tried such kind of  improvisation. I used to play in some jazz band several times, but there was a score, a specific song and a specific genre. Althogh sometimes I tried jamming with my friends spontaneity playing some modal improvisation, apparently it was limited to that one genre, jazz. However, this time in the creative class, with the various instrumental setting, there was nothing preset. Only our spontaneity and our instrument were there. I was amazed, however, by how it could sound like a composed piece with some structure sometimes. Especially when the quartet of saxophone, trombone, flute and Jihyun’s piano performed, there were lots of moments like they were flowing, talking to each other and the energy has become one big common group thing. I also had chances to play my rice shaker, the percussive instruments that I made with Chinese jasmine tea can and some rice grains with careful measuring of the amount of the rice, once with flute and once with Tekyoung’s violin. The beginning part was mostly like a reconnaissance. I couldn’t be bold or intuitive that almost I didn’t know what to play, but any way after it started I could find some way with the help of others’ playing. It was fun and I was in flutter at the same time. I wish I  be bolder and could be free. I was a little disappointed to find myself to be somewhat lack of self-confidence about my performance. The worse thing was the very consciousness that I’m feeling the lack of self- confidence was the biggiest barrier for my performance at that moment.

I remember the comments about our performance that Dr. Gilbert said. First, he said we were all good listeners. He also said that we are somewhat trapped in the thought that we have to play something all the time, so we often miss the chance to cease to listen and then play in harmony.I really thought he was right. I believe that sometimes a short moment of silence could be the best performance.  I think our first improvisation and  harmony was not so bad and it was a nice beginning. I’m a little excited to listen how we will sound next time.

 

Play like a child

Doing today’s activity that Amanda brought, I felt like I became a child again. I was just enjoying myself and having fun exploring the various combinations of the sounds.  Often I forget that one of the most important thing in musicing is to enjoy myself. That pure enjoyment of making sound must be the reason I wanted to do music at the beginning. As I get older, the simple heart I had when I first began to play music has often been forgotten. The classmates in my team as well as the members of other team seemed to be excited doing the game. Our team sang two part at one time by our member’s conducting and the other team mostly sang  four parts. I liked the sound of other team’s song of four-part polyphony melodies.

Each member of the Amanda’s team read the solfege cards in different directions in lines.Dr. Gilbert said it was like Stockhausen’s frame notation. I guess I had so much fun doing the activity, because I became curious and excited about unexpected sound and there was no close notation.( It was a close notation in a sense, because it had certain set of notes and rhythms, well..) It was like an experimenting like we did our first improvisation for the first time in our class. I hope I can purify my heart and mind through the activities in the class so that I could play with a child-like mind, without any distraction or any other thoght except for playing music, making the sound. It could be one way to draw out my creativity, I guess.

 

What is it that brings out the ‘devine play’?

In the prologue of a book, ‘Free Play’ by Stephen Nachmanovitch, there is a story about a musician introducing the concept of Lila. Lila is an old Sanskrit world means divine play, the play of creation, destruction, and re-creation. The story is about an old Japanese musician’s journey to reach the ‘Divine play’, play like a god.  The young, talented and diligent Japanese flute player started to learn the flute from an old master. Even if the young student mastered all the technical aspects of the flute, the old master always says ‘ something lacking’. The student practiced for endless hours, but the returning answer from the master was always the same for months on end. The young player got so frustrated and finally sneaked out of the place. He began to drink out of despair and he made his living by teaching flute to beginners. After living this way for years,  one morning, the past master along with his young student came to him and said they are going to have a concert and they had all decided it would not take place without him. With some effort, they overcame his feelings of fear and shame, and almost in a trance he picked up his flute and went with them. At the end of the concert, his name was called and he realized that he had nothing to gain, nothing to lose. He sat down and played the same tune he had played so many times for his teacher in the past. When he finished, there was a silence for a long moment. Then the voice of the oldest man was heard, speaking softly from the back of the room: ” Like a god!”  It was the moment that he finally reach the divine play, lila.

Reading this story, I became really curious about what it was that lacked in his previous play and what made it possible for him to reach the divine play that he couldn’t before in spite of all his efforts. If I could catch that, it would be a help for me to reach a free play and nurture my creativity. Sometimes, I feel that my musical knowledge , or some kind of purpose, or any kind of thoughts get in the way of my pure play of the music. Now I got a vague sense about what lila is and what made the flute player finally reach the divine play, but I still don’t have the clear understanding about it. Maybe my journey through the ‘creative process’ could give me the answer. I hope I can get the answer from it.

 

Resonance of our poems in catholic church

I thoght the catholic church I knew was the same with the catholic center, but as I approached the catholic church, I found out it was locked. I was embarrassed at first then I figured that there must be a catholic center separate from the church, but I had no idea where it was. I went into the kimmel center and asked to the security guard if he knew where the catholic center was and he told me the direction. Right after I turned into a corner of the street, there was an entrance to the catholic center. Dr. Gilbert generously welcomed me with his sense humor about my confusion, excuse for my being a little late. At the very first minute I saw my classmates were sitting around in the large space of the catholic center, I could feel quite a different atmosphere than I used to in the conventional classroom. Actually I thought it was a better place for our creative process class. A huge and open space with a grand piano and a little bit darker light and the ambiance of rich reverb of the sound  all seemed to be welcoming me to the creative journey with the guidance of Dr. Gilbert.

Dr. Gilbert began to guide us to the first step toward our way to a creative process.  The first step was to write a three line poem. I never wrote any poem in English so far, actually I don’t remember writing any poem in my mother tongue either. There was a time when I tried to write some poem, but I was never a poetess. Everyone became quiet. Everyone including me became serious and I was having a hard time trying to think of what to write, how to write. Chianan who sat next to me used his lap top instead of a paper and he wrote a great poem that nicely rhymed. Jeanie whispered to me that ‘ I’ve never written a poem in English so far’ and I answered ‘ me, neither’.  After a certain silence, our poems began to sound in turns. I was impressed how each one sounded so nice with some rhymes and how everyone expressed their feelings or thoughts in their life. Dr. Gilbert told us to play our poem like we play music. This time, our poem was a score.  From the silence, someone first read his poem softly and the others began to add their voice. Dr. Gilbert showed and suggested the ways we could play our poem in a various way. Everyone performed their poem in a various ways by varying the pitches,volumes and repeating some parts an so on.  There was a moment it sounded like a climax  and a graual ending. It was quiet a different experience , certainly an impressive beginning. I had a good feeling about this group, space and this class. It was like meeting a new person, somewhat exotic one who makes me curious and wonder about him or her.

 

Why I am in music.

To be honest, I have not thought about the reason why I am in music, or how I began this life-long pursuit of music. The beginnings of my excursion into music was rather humble.  When I was about 6 years old, I used to move my fingers in the air as if I was playing the piano and singing “Fur Elise” in my head.  Without knowing anything technically about playing the piano, I was just imitating the movement of fingers playing the piano keys, in the hopes that I could play really play the melody on the piano.As I often did this, my mom used to smile at me and ask if I wanted to learn how to play the piano.  Several months later, when I was 7 years old, she enrolled me in piano lessons at a near-by private institute.  I remember that my mother bought me a keyboard made with paper, painted like a keyboard.  I practiced Beyer and Hannon with that paper piano. Although it was just a painted, paper piano, it was so much fun to me; I was a diligent student, sitting in front of the paper piano to practice right after I got back from the lesson.  I was so happy with the hope that I might some day play Beetoven’s “Fur Elise.”  So, my first step into music started with a simple wish and a paper piano.  I had no idea that I would later major in music and have a musical career.  About 6 months later, I had a real piano that sounded so nice and felt so wonderful to touch.  I remember how hard it was at first for me to play the real piano, because I didn’t have enough strength in my fingers.  I believed that I could accomplish my first goal of being able to play “Fur Elise” soon, and I spent hours just playing anything I had happened to hear.  I could play almost anything in melody.  Later, I came to know that it was because I had a perfect pitch.  I remember how much fun it was to imitate any melody that popped into my head at the piano.I also remember how much I enjoyed listening to classical music on the radio.  I listened to music at almost every waking moment—most of the music from the radio was Western classical music like Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. I think that I fell in love with this music at that time, and that is the reason that I got into music.  Later on, I came to discover that there are a lot of good contemporary music in the pop genre as well.  I fell in love with the guitar sound which reminded me of the sound of the rain.  I also fell in love with the sound of the cello, which seemed to touch my heart.If someone askes me the reason why I am in music right now, I would simply answer like this.  It’s because I love music and music never ceased to excite and engage me.  I love trying the infinite possibilities of making new sounds and new kinds of music, and I love the various feelings I can get from listening and making music.  There was a time when I became disappointed at my musical ability, but now I am happy to be in music and to be committed to walking my musical path.