Horrible, horrible sound quality, but here’s a clip of me messing around with my flute. I’m playing the most famous of Korean folksongs, “Arirang”, which is one of those, “My baby’s gone, what shall I do?” lost-love songs.
As you can hear, I still can’t really play the flute. But since it’ll be my only instrument for most of my stay in India (barring my buying something new to learn there), I shall probably be not-bad at it once I get back to Korea… as long as I practice everyday, that is!
From what little memory I have of the Korean that my Korean friends used to teach me in high school, anything with ‘rang’ means love, right? So I take it you’re playing a love song? Hehe, a little something to serenade those snow monkeys with. (okay, sorry! i know, enough of the monkey jokes already!)
btw, you should check out the Irish tin whistle as well. It’s incredibly cheap and incredibly easy to learn. I taught myself how to play it, and no matter how crappy you are at music-related things, you will come out sounding like a pro. Plus, it produces such a lovely sound.
hey, i just finished d/l-ing that clip of you playing the flute, and it sounds lovely! is that the western flute, or a traditional korean flute?
Aaaaaaah! Snow Monkeys!
Well, “rang” can mean a lot of things. “Sarang” means “love”, but “nugurang” means “With whom?” But it might be possible that “-rang” is a suffix used in other words meaning love, which I don’t know. I used to think that only “hengbok” meant happiness but I met a classmate in my swimming class whose name was GiBok and she told me her name meant “happiness”… and then a friend explained that it was an old, ceremonial word for happiness in a more religious sense. But “-bok” can mean “costume” or “outfit” or “suit” as well… “hanbok” is Korean traditional costume, and “yangbok” means a Western suit.
In any case, yes, there are several arirangs in Korea, and I’m only playing the most famous one. (I can’t remember which city’s arirang it is… they’re apparently regionalized.) It’s a song about a woman whose lover had to go far away, and how she misses him, fears losing him, sad stuff like that. This tune is, more than the national anthem, the national song in Korea.
Ha, I think it sounds not so good, my clip, but thanks. There is a guy in a band in Korea, Cocore, who plays things like harmonica and tin whistle. I suppose if I saw one I might pick it up, because I’m just trying to learn to play any instrument I can to add to my musical arsenal, and the penny whistle has the advantage of being both cheap and light. On the other hand, its main limitation is that it’s in one key, usually C, and since 80% of the songs on our previous album were in C, we’re playing in a lot of other keys now.
By the way, it’s a standard western transverse flute that I am playing in that sound clip… you know, the kind you see in symphony orchestras. I once tried to make a sound on a traditional Korean flute, because they have such lovely sound, but after 5 minutes of blowing with not even a little sound, I gave up.
I used to play the standard western flute from fourth – seventh grade. You might not thing you sound great, but belive me, you’re better than I was. Bleh, I plain sucked. :P