Me & my teacher. Photo by Elliot Choi.
After 171 lessons and 22 months, I am now on an indefinite hiatus from gayageum learning, as I no longer live in Los Angeles, where my dear teacher resides. Sitting through our two hour lessons, twice a week over the past two years has been an incredible opportunity, yet another that I never thought to dream of.
I didn't get to finish learning "If Tears were Pearls," the Sung Keum Yun masterpiece but maybe another time... my teacher said it'll probably just take another month to learn the rest of the piece. But actually learning to play it with the bending tones and feel will likely take years, if not a decade or two. I tried to audio record our last lesson because I wanted to have it as a reference, but she refused. I could have hid it in my bag and recorded but I figured it's best to respect her and just do what she says. I am certain that I will forget most of it (especially since I barely have any of that piece memorized and only was able to play while watching my teacher play along with me) but she said that's okay. Better forget and relearn than listen back and practice along and mess up the piece. I just hope I have a chance to relearn it.
We did, however, perform "Arirang" at my last LA show on August 10th and my sister recorded a video, which you can watch below. I find the double flicking (쌍튀김) especially difficult of the various plucking methods and haven't been able to do it successfully without stumbling yet. But overall, the piece went fine for where I'm at and my teacher said we should be glad that none of the strings broke in the middle of the performance. I was happy to be able to share a humongous part of my LA existence at a place that has an equally big part of my heart and time in LA, blue whale jazz bar, with so many people and communities that have become special to me, like Passion Church.
The first video, right above the "Arirang" video, is of me telling my Resonations stories (stories that correspond to each of the twelve strings of the gayageum), which are on the home page here. Even though I told myself to speak slower, watching back, I see that I could have taken much more time... when will I learn to not rush?
I'm still not quite certain of the tuning of the gayageum - my teacher always says that I try to match it to the piano notes. Also, she mentioned in passing a couple times that the tuning varies on the type of gayageum piece, like from minyo to sanjo. You put the anjok (bridge below the string) higher on a song like "Arirang," because you don't bend notes the same way you do on a piece like "If Tears were Pearls." Furthermore, I think she said that you only bend notes on certain strings and not on others. I don't know how/ wasn't allowed to bend notes much but I hope I can learn to do that because it evokes some emotion from deep within. Until then, I think those inflections may come out in my singing.
From the beginning, my teacher has continuously said that I need to learn this the right way so that I could teach others in the future... I'm not sure that I will get to such a level. The next time I go to Korea, I will look into purchasing a modern gayageum that I can plug into an amp, with twice the number of strings, so that I can play all the notes of the Western scale, and accompany myself singing all kinds of songs. While the 22 months of learning won't suffice for me to perform gayageum in the traditional way, I think I've a good foundation that I can apply to a modern gayageum and play in way that is supportive to the kind of music I sing and write. Of course, I may be mistaken. And I would like to continue to learn to play traditionally, as well. But it will have to be in another season of my life. Observing the trends in my life, it will probably come unexpectedly, yet with perfect timing.
I am tremendously thankful for my teacher. Retired and with back pains that are exacerbated by hours of sitting at the gayageum, she welcomed me as her only student. And she let me use her best gayageum for the performance! It's because she loves me, I am sure. When I become old, I hope I'm as sophisticated and cute a lady as her :)