MUSIC♪♬

When I think about the memories related to piano, I just laugh. Wow, how much I hated playing the piano. I truly, from the bottom of my heart, hated playing the piano. Especially, I hated having piano lessons. But since I studied music, I had to know how to play the piano, because piano is close to the basic of music. It is not that I didn’t like the sound of it. I hated playing it. Anyways, do you want to hear how much I hated playing the piano? Okay, then here it goes. I can remember it so clearly. I learned how to play the piano since I was more or less 5. I saw a pianist on television, and she looked beautiful. It seemed like her fingers were flying like little humming birds. And all of my friends know how to play the piano, so I asked my mom if she could find a teacher for me. I had two lessons per week. When I had the first teacher, I was so excited that I put stickies that had notes on my room’s door and I played the piano until my neighbours told me to be quiet. However, I do not know since when, I started losing interests. It was probably because the new teacher that I had when we moved gave me too much homework. Also, she expected too much from me; she made me to play Mozart’s piece when I was only 9. Maybe it wasn’t that I hated piano; I might have hated the teacher. When she called my home, I just hung up as soon as I heard her voice. And when my mom wasn’t home I pretended that I was not at home. (I hope my mom will not read this essay.) When I was 12, I decided to have lesson once in a week, because I was way too tired to study, practice my instrument, and practice piano at the same time. I still loathed piano at that time. It felt like I was the only one who was not getting better at all. And my fingers were not moving smoothly. I wanted to give up playing the piano so bad. But my parents did not allow me to, because they thought my musical talent would be not as good as the others’. Then, when I moved to Costa Rica, I didn’t have any chance to have piano lessons. My mom did ask me if I wanted to have piano lessons. But I didn’t want to, because first of all, I had to have it in Spanish, which is the language that I do not know well. Also, I wanted to be free from the stress of the piano. But guess what happened a few weeks ago. I have been interested in playing the piano, again! I get the music pieces from the Internet, because I like playing the songs that I like to listen. I would like to sing if I knew how to play the songs perfectly.

I thought that it would be a great idea if I post the videos of my own on the blog! I actually recorded them about a month ago, but I had to stop in the middle, because my blisters popped while I was playing Kayagum, and it hurt a lot. (The blisters I got…—->)I finished the rest of the song a few days ago, and it took me a long time to find out how to post videos.

The song I am playing on this video is called “Chun-Seol (Spring Snow)” made by Byung-Ki Hwang. It’s pretty long, but I hope you will enjoy!

*The sound is a little bit slower than the video.

When I listen to music, there are several artists that I really like to listen to their songs. Most of the songs that I listened to are Korean. It is not that because I am a Korean. I don’t actually mind which country the songs are from. I do not care about languages. Last time, I saw a quote on the Internet. “Music is the universal language of mankind. “~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer. I like this quote, and I agree on it. I believe that even though people do not understand what the singer is saying, they get their emotions. But when I think about it, the reason why I listen to Korean ones mostly is that my best friend from Korea, Sharon, suggests me to listen to some songs that she liked very much. And when I find that I like them, too, I listen to them days and days. I never get bored of them. That’s the charming of the electronica music. Sharon’s most favourite one is Clazziquai Project. And all of a sudden, it became one of mine, too. Clazziquai’s songs are mostly on electronic music, jazz, house, and groove. There are three people: DJ Clazzi, Ho-Ran, and Alex. Ho-Ran and Alex are the main vocals, and DJ Clazzi is the one who manages producing. They have released three official albums, and three remix version. Also, their albums have been popular in Taiwan and Japan. Their first official album, Instant Pig, was released in 2004. The second one. Color Your Soul, was published in 2005, and the third one, Love Child of the Century, was announced in 2007. There is a list of songs that I like by Clazziquai:

• She is…
• Nova Bossa
• Fill This Night
• Nal-Jja-Byun-Kyung-Sun
• Gentle Giant
• Love Mode
• Come To Me
• Dance
• Color your Soul
• Romeo ‘N Juliet
• After Love
• Robotica
• Sunshine
• Sweety
• Be My Love

They are not the only songs by Clazziquai. I guarantee that there are more songs that I would love. Since it is hard to get Korean CDs in Costa Rica, I download them from the Internet, or get them from my friends. However, it is hard to find them on the Internet, because in these days, the rules with copyrights have been stricter, therefore it is harder to look for songs on the Internet. So, I am planning on buying some albums of Clazziquai when I visit Korea, which I don’t know when it will be. The reason I couldn’t get any CDs when I went to Korea this summer was because I was not that interested in this group. I really like Clazziquai Project, because they are very enthusiastic with music. And they have very soft voices that make me comfortable. I can’t wait until they release new album! If you would like some more information about Clazziquai, go to: http://www.clazziquai.co.kr/

Clazziquai Project

Left: Alex

Middle: DJ Clazzi

Right: Ho-Ran

The first official album, Instant Pig, 2005

The second official album, Color Your Soul, 2005

The third official album, Love Child of the Century, 2007

Electronica might not sound pretty familiar to people. I bet they like to listen to songs that have sweet or sad love lyrics, rock, rap, etc. I like those kind of music, too. But the reason why I am writing about electronica is that I wanted the readers to read about something that they had never known before. There are various types of songs under electronica category, such as techno, trance, house, drum and base, and acid jazz. I assume that you know what techno and house are. Like techno and house are, electronica music is based on beats and melody than lyrics. It has many different kinds of “machine sound,” or I might call it as “robot sound,” that is made by a synthesizer. A synthesizer is similar to an electronic piano. I was very attracted by its hum that sounds like marbles rolling down the surface. Usually acid jazz and Shibuya-Kei, the ones that I listen to most of the time, has that kind of feeling. I know. You might now get what I am talking about. I can see your face going like, “What? What is she trying to say?” But that was the only way I could describe the sound. It makes me relaxed very much, and some songs that have sweet melody even make me happy sometimes.Electronica songs are mostly used for background music for some restaurants or stores. Without music, it would be boring, and people would not want to stay there for a long time. And if they put some songs that had lyrics from the beginning to the end of the song, for me, the place would seem messy. But electronica is perfect for background music. I feel that it is tranquility that makes me to like this genre of song very much. I will put top lists of songs that love for next post!

What is freedom of speech? What is freedom? For me, freedom means you are allowed to do something whatever you want to do however you want to; being free. But people must not go too far out of the limit, or the freedom might be taken away. For example, in our school, we could buy any school pants that were comfortable for us, if they were indigo colour and following the uniform code. However, some people were wearing sweat pants, jeans, and black pants, so we are going to have to get school pants that have our school symbol from the school store. If we were following school rules and getting appropriate pants, we could have kept our freedom of getting whatever pants we wanted. But, since we were not following the rules, our freedom was taken away. I mentioned it, because it was a great example of “not going too far out of limit.” I assume that it is the same on freedom of speech with blogging. I think that we are 100% totally free of expressing our feelings. We may disagree on someone else’s thoughts. But, we cannot just go, “I am right, you are wrong,” or insult them. It will hurt their feelings. You might get a detention or suspended consequently. Since I am writing about freedom of speech, I want people to understand that every single person has different ideas. I have not seen many of this happening in my literature class, but sometimes, some people think our class discussion is about winning or losing, so they try to persuade people. Or, at times some people make fun of the others only because they have different thoughts. You cannot force people to think the same way as you do. That is not a part of freedom of speech. I think we all should try very hard to understand each other a little bit more by trying to see things in their points of view. I know it will take a lot of practices for some of them, but in order to make a peaceful and educational blogging environment, we all should try as hard as we can.

When I was doing this blog posting, I was wondering why I like Gayageum so much. At first, it was only for fun. Then, it got me interested, and I had a dream to be a musician with this instrument. When I just started learning how to play it when I was 8 years old, I honestly hated it. I always whined why I had to carry around the instrument that was taller and heavier than me. And I couldn’t stand the pain on my fingers. I got scared when I got the first blisters in my life; I thought I was going to die. I was about to give up with playing this instrument. But afterwards, I was attracted by the graceful sound that the instrument could make and the position they were sitting with it when some professional musicians were having a performance. Frankly, I was fascinated by their costumes more. Gayageum sounds like guitar and harp. The melody rings beautifully. It can make chords by plucking many strings with both hands. You also can vibrate the left side of the string, and it also can make higher pitch by pressing it. Let me compare this instrument to piano. The similarity is that you can make chords. But unlike piano, the sound rings in an area longer, and you can make any note by pressing with your left hand. Doesn’t this sound great to you? I think it is one of the most interesting instruments. There was another reason I wanted to start studying about this instrument. I was extremely frustrated that people were only interested in the modern music. I understand that it is boring for them, but they didn’t even know what the traditional instruments were called! That just sounded terrible to me that people didn’t care about their own nation’s history or ancestors daily lives. I had a dream of making people more interested in traditional music and make them to realize how beautiful it is more than they think. I know that I am not able to do that anymore since I left Korea and stopped studying about it. But I would like to help people who work for it when I grow up.