x-Music Lab 21春
Even before I was admitted to Keio University, I was willing to enter this particular seminar. My dream was to use music, which is heavily cultural, and share it across Asia in order to seek for more smooth globalization in Asia. Before joining this school, I wanted to find out the mechanism behind music being a form of Self-expression, and how I could formulate music in order to express myself over a language barrier which led me to this seminar. However, from the moment that I was put up to an interview with many of the members in the seminar, I noticed that my knowledge regarding music was not enough.
Now that I look back, it looks very inconsiderate to talk about music and self-expression when I did not know a large part of music itself. In the first term of the freshman year, this realization became clearer and clearer the longer I spent time in the seminar. In the first few classes, the freshmans (in regards to the seminar) were tasked with the “Newcomers Workshop” where we had 5 unique classes to find out what “Music” is and realize how subjective music can be. The most memorable thing that I took from those workshops was the realization of how I determined music and sound. Generally speaking, I could recognize music only when a sound has a static rhythm to it. This is why the sound of nature, or random noises that are heard can not be recognized as music from my perspective. By thinking about my past, I came to a conclusion that it might be because of drum practices that I have been continuously doing since when I was 2 years old. From when I was young, I was told to stay as much as possible on the right tempo and play the correct rhythm which might have narrowed my definition of music.
I also participated in the “readings” every Thursday which has taught me new aspects of music history and music itself. For example, I did not know how the plugins that I used during my music compositions worked. However, by attending to the reading, I have learned that most of the audio effects use sampling and delay in order to multiply the audio signals and sum them up once again in order to create the differences between the original signal and the edited signal, which comes out as the edited sound.
Currently, my partners and I are working on a project which will be exhibited this year’s first of september. Using all of the knowledge that we have learned both from seminar and reading session, we are creating what we call as “Weird Clothes Synthesis”. When we take a piece of cloth and rub it together, it creates a certain noize based on many factors, such as the strength you rub it, how fine the strings are weaved together, or how fast you rub it together. This happens continuously when you are wearing clothes, however, many people ignore this sound myself included. Our idea is to amplify the sound of clothes rubbing against each other, and using it to play music. Our plan is still under development and requires a lot more work to be put, however, at our current model, these following things are certain:
When we first started this particular project (there were multiple ideas in the basket however, through many critiques, we have finally landed on a common project that we all found interesting and work-able as an exhibition material), we first put microphones in our normal chest pockets, in order to see what kind of sounds the mic would pick up and what kind of sound pattern would be formulated from certain actions and movements. From our observations, we figured out that jumping movements allow the microphones to pick up sounds from both high and low end of the spectrum, compared to when we moved the arm, the mic was able to pick up sounds that were concentrated in the middle of the audio spectrum. Another rule that we have was that whenever the cloth hit the microphone directly, it would create a heavy bass noise, which almost sounded like a kick drum. However, these are not only nearly not enough for us to create a whole performance on, but also it could differ with use of different cloths or use of different movements and many more. This made us push forward into thinking what we would actually present in the exhibition.
The idea of instruments being a form of restriction, which came up in one of the critiques, gave me a huge impact since I never saw them as a restrictive tool in the past. This comment in the critique led to the agreement that our clothes and movement needs some restrictions. This is to limit the situation and circumstances that the clothes would rub against each other. This will allow us to create rules, as well as use our creativity to bring out the most of our clothes.
We are now deciding which clothes to use as well as considering the whole performance with the restrictions and the different sounds of different movements and clothes in mind. We are yet to decide what kind of microphone would be used to record the rubbing or what kind of staging we want to do using what type of cloths or wear. We are planning to make it a live performance with the clothes’ restrictions freeing up during the performance which would show the differences in sounds that the clothes make when certain movements are restricted. I am personally hoping for the people who would hear this piece to realize the broadness in the definition of the word “Music” (Which I certainly did during this first semester), as well as how something so close like your clothes can be an instrument that creates sounds, but stay ignored by people.
Overall, it was a very tough semester. Many difficulties including getting used to the university lifestyle, and getting used to the online meeting were hard to overcome, and yet to overcome. However, the amount of knowledge that I have received in this particular seminar is unbelievable both from my self-exploring and from the very friendly seniors around me. I hope to continue working hard on the exhibition piece and bring success on the 1st of september.
