Big difference in this session of kayagum lessons, it is really challenging and interesting.
There are only four people in the class and one of them has been studying intensively for a year and is quite accomplished. And the class has 3 guys in it (all Americans). Obviously someone isn't getting the memo about this being a woman's instrument.
Our teacher is a woman and she is not messing around. We are using all of the left and right hand techniques she ran through rapidfire the first week. Instead of the simple folk pieces I was learning in the fall, she has pushed us right into some really complicated solo music --kayagum sanjo, solo pieces for the smaller 12 string kayagum. Evocative and dark too, strange music, very technical. We are using western notation, but to capture the weirdness of the Korean music there are lots of little squiggles and arrows and other symbols. I don't feel like notation can quite capture it, especially when you hear the teacher play it to speed. (I feel the same way about old time music, but then again notation is new to me, I only learned to read in the fall for this class). The dsanjo requires a lot of practice on my part, which is good.
I just found this webpage with some 1966 field recordings of kayagum sanjo playing, some great music and some neat pictures (with the heavily saturated 1960s color). He has also posted some pre-WWII sanjo. The oddest and coolest is the sanjo played on the Chulhyun gum, which is a modified steel guitar with different frets and played with a stick, definitely worth checking out.
These were recorded by Robert Garfias, who is an ethnomusicologist at UC-Irvine. (He also has posted a bunch of other field and vintage recordings worth checking out, music from Japan, Okinawa, India, and the west too. The Okinawan stuff is something else entirely, sounds not unlike Eno).
There are only four people in the class and one of them has been studying intensively for a year and is quite accomplished. And the class has 3 guys in it (all Americans). Obviously someone isn't getting the memo about this being a woman's instrument.
Our teacher is a woman and she is not messing around. We are using all of the left and right hand techniques she ran through rapidfire the first week. Instead of the simple folk pieces I was learning in the fall, she has pushed us right into some really complicated solo music --kayagum sanjo, solo pieces for the smaller 12 string kayagum. Evocative and dark too, strange music, very technical. We are using western notation, but to capture the weirdness of the Korean music there are lots of little squiggles and arrows and other symbols. I don't feel like notation can quite capture it, especially when you hear the teacher play it to speed. (I feel the same way about old time music, but then again notation is new to me, I only learned to read in the fall for this class). The dsanjo requires a lot of practice on my part, which is good.
I just found this webpage with some 1966 field recordings of kayagum sanjo playing, some great music and some neat pictures (with the heavily saturated 1960s color). He has also posted some pre-WWII sanjo. The oddest and coolest is the sanjo played on the Chulhyun gum, which is a modified steel guitar with different frets and played with a stick, definitely worth checking out.
These were recorded by Robert Garfias, who is an ethnomusicologist at UC-Irvine. (He also has posted a bunch of other field and vintage recordings worth checking out, music from Japan, Okinawa, India, and the west too. The Okinawan stuff is something else entirely, sounds not unlike Eno).
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