The Creative sound project assignment in Element2 assignment is about free topic that asks you to create a song by referencing and utilizing various technical methods that you have learned in class. In this post, I’m going to flesh out my plan for the assignment.

Initially, I thought about writing a literally ‘free’ piece using the techniques we learned, but I realized that this would not be enough to expand my musical world, so I decided to go in a different direction. I thought it would be interesting to use the topic of ‘Korean traditional music and its development’ that I am studying in another course, Global Sonic Culture, and become the subject of its development, and I thought that I should write a song using various elements that can be found in Korean traditional music, such as traditional instruments and traditional rhythms.

MoonMyo JereAk, one of the traditional Korean court music, is a royal ceremonial music that was introduced in the Song Dynasty of China and corresponds to A-Ak. The instruments used for this music were made using only eight materials, and I thought it would be interesting to use them as my musical materials. The eight materials are iron, stone, thread, bamboo, gourd, soil, leather, and wood, which can be mixed and shaped into instruments, but I thought it would be more interesting to utilize the sound of the materials themselves to create a variety of sounds, rather than building an instrument.

Steel is hard and creates a lot of resonance, and the most intuitive thought that came to mind was the sound of a blacksmith shop or construction site, which is probably because hammering is the most common thing we hear in our daily lives. I don’t think there’s a lot of variety in the sounds you can make with iron, so I’m going to test it out with kitchen utensils at home.

Stones are hard and have little resonance, and most natural stones have a rough surface, so I think it would be good to utilize the sound of stones hitting or scraping against each other.

Thread is difficult to make a sound on its own, but if you tension it and make it taut, it can be used to create a sound by vibrating, like a stringed instrument. I think it would be good for making soft sounds, and I think it would be better to utilize the properties that can create any kind of melody rather than percussive properties.

Bamboo is one of the hardest trees, and because it is hollow, it can be used as a wind instrument by passing air through it, or it can be used as a percussion like a marimba, so if I record it in various ways, you can extract various sounds.

Gourd also has similar properties to bamboo, but it is not shaped like a pipe, so it would be difficult to use it as a wind instrument. Therefore, it will be used as a percussion instrument with a large resonance, and it will create a good resonance when used as a second resonator when using bamboo as a percussion instrument.

Soil is a good material for making noise, and because of its small particles, I think it should be placed in a gourd and shaken, or shaken or rubbed on its own to create sound, rather than used as an instrumental element. Perhaps dirt could be used to create fine noises or sparkling sounds.

There are many ways to use leather, but it was originally used in court music as a hitting point for percussion instruments like timpani. In fact, I’m still thinking about how to use it, but I have an idea to make a whip-like sound by using its good elasticity.

Since wood has a different resonance depending on its shape and is the easiest to work with, I plan to get different shapes and sizes of wood and manipulate them in different ways. It can be used in a variety of ways, such as percussive or rubbing, and I think it has the best versatility.