My class can now play a 3 note song. And I have a big fat blister on my index finger. I guess that means I’m doing it right.
I received the playing 3 string guitar lesson in the mail, and it’s FREAKING BRILLIANT playing by ear. If only I’d been taught Suzuki as a kid, maybe I wouldn’t be a musical retard right now…And I still can’t find hardwood to make a guitar neck, so I can’t play around. So frustrating!
Here’s some modern day 가야금 병창 (playing gayageum while singing)
She’s playing a modern iteration of the instrument called Dahyeon Gayageum. It’s got 15-25 strings and tuned diatonic so it can play with other modern instruments. We’re learning on the traditional Sanjo 12 string.
Also —
I just found lots of cool music video’d all around Seoul on my beloved internet!
Now that I’ve broken through, there’s an easy trail to a giant pile of indie artists to search through! This makes up for all the other social crap I have to deal with. Now I want to move to Seoul and find these bands and hang out in cafes and…Jesus, why do I have to be 46? And not enough hours in the day.
Hello Korea ! 
I am definitely a sucker for gayageum artists. I do not know what it is but the sound and the movement of the artist makes my heart pound louder and especially when she is wearing hanbok. :) Don’t let being 46 stop you and this is coming from someone who is 49.
You should have been a jazz groupie. Or maybe a rock/punk one.
I’m not. But it’s a limiting factor.
groupie – eeuwww…
Whereas I can appreciate a genre such as jazz, a steady diet of it would quickly become monotonous. Rock/punk has moments of brilliance, but mostly it’s dumbed-down, less artistic version of earlier musical precedents, in my opinion. I’d much rather gather whatever speaks to me from all genres.
Lass, thanks for that link to the gayageumist. Her voice is lovely!
My favorite players of traditional Korean instruments are the Kim triplets, who call themselves Infinity of Sound. Here they sing a Korean translation of a Russian song by a Latvian composer about a Georgian artist who loved a Russian actress:
and Ms. Luna, who here uses both traditional plucking techniques and also the lyre block-and-strum technique:
I agree with you that the indie music scene is very exciting these days.
Yeah, I was impressed with her musicianship – that she could play the gayageum plus also sing expressively. Not an easy feat to pull off so well!
Thanks for the Infinity of Sound link! I wish they’d smoked a few cigarettes before they sang, but I like the Koreanized rendition of Russian music. I love Russian ballads…
And I ran across Luna before, but thought I had posted too much in this post and was going to add it later. She’s a little too jazzy for me to listen to a lot of, but in rotation a very nice addition.
Try this one on for size:
Her videos are fun, because it shows how music is a full-body proposition. And she’s so very nimble with her interpretation.
I actually like jazz a lot, but I’m more of a trumpet jazz kind of person. Too smooth and I feel like the music’s been shrink-wrapped in plastic. Kenny G makes me want to commit harakiri…There’s a back catalog of jazz standards in my head, due to my father being a stand-up bassist. It’s the one thing I can thank him for…
I totally loved that, btw.